The Metaverse was born of occult dreams. It will keep growing until the power is cut.
You don’t need physical strength to master virtual reality. You don’t need spiritual insight or moral fortitude, either. In the Metaverse, all you need to achieve a peak experience is a set of VR goggles and a decent WiFi connection. The machine takes care of the rest.
The Metaverse, briefly defined, is a parallel digital realm that will exist alongside our own. It will be populated with 3D replicas of our real world, as well as rainbow unicorns, electro extraterrestrials, animated angels, digital demons, and Lego-man avatars for us to “embody.” Indeed, the Metaverse is billed as the “embodied Internet.”
Much like magicians enter the astral plane using ritual implements, the average schlub will access the Metaverse—both enclosed virtual worlds and ethereal holograms superimposed over physical environments—through VR goggles or augmented reality glasses. Instead of watching bad movies on Netflix, we’re to become characters in a digital dream that bleeds into the real world.
ZuckerBorg Claims the Metaverse
On October 28, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook’s new parent company will be called Meta. Many think this “rebranding” is an effort to deflect attention from recent bad press, including the bogus “whistle-blower” scandal. This deflection theory is erroneous, though. The Metaverse is not some knee-jerk reaction. Facebook’s longstanding ambition is documented in a rallying cry sent out by an Oculus executive in 2018:
“The first metaverse that gains real traction is likely to the be the last,” [Jason] Rubin wrote. “We must act first, and go big, or we risk being one of those wannabes.”
Last summer, Zuckerberg announced that within the next five years, Facebook will be seen as “a Metaverse company.” His recent cringe-inducing Facebook Connect Conference, where he announced the new name, was probably in production already.
Normal adults relentlessly mocked the phony, Michael Jackson-like behavior exhibited at that conference, but it wasn’t meant for legacy humans. The promo was aimed at technophiles and naïve children.
Unfazed by the disgusted public, Meta will pour some $10 billion into their transformative endeavor. They’ll also bring on ten thousand new employees to help build their parallel universe. Without a doubt, children will be as eager to dive into the Metaverse as they are the ball pits at McDonald’s. Every fixed mutation first appears in a fresh generation.
To that end, Meta is funding Project Cambria to develop high-end VR goggles that read eye movements, facial expressions, and body motions in order to translate your physical self into expressive avatars in virtual space.
Additionally, Project Nazaré is producing ultra-light, 5mm thin augmented reality glasses that will populate your visual field with holographic cartoons and Terminator-style data streams.
All of this represents the socio-religious evolution inherent in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. If our living world is an accident of random mutation and natural selection, then tech and social engineering are our only hope for intelligent design. If the pearly gates open to nothingness, virtual reality is our only stairway to heaven.
The XR Association and the Fourth Industrial Revolution
This is not a flash in the pan. There are many Metaverses bubbling up from the void. Microsoft already has Mesh and their HoloLens 2 augmented reality systems. Apple is working on a similar AR device, known only as N301. But a fully “embodied Internet” can only exist within a robust infrastructure.
The XR Association is a New Normal partnership between Facebook (or Meta), Google, Microsoft, Sony, Vive, and many other tech corporations. Their goal is to use public funding to manifest their “mixed reality” (XR)—or what Klaus Schwab describes as “a fusion of the digital, biological, and physical worlds.”
The XRA’s infrastructure plan sounds like the voices in my head when I take off my tinfoil hat:
Immersive technology will play a vital role in America’s drive to Build Back Better. … As the World Economic Forum has recognized, we are at the beginning of the Fourth Industrial Revolution – one in which a range of new technologies will fuse the physical and digital worlds, impacting all disciplines, economies, and industries.
On the basis of that global paradigm, the XR Association is pushing Congress to fund research and development grants, workforce training and retraining programs, and various infrastructure projects—particularly broadband—to accelerate our transition to a cyborg culture.
Futurists claim this progress is “inevitable.” But the coronavirus pandemic—celebrated as “The Great Reset”—made it all possible. Lockdowns, corporate Covid policies, and induced germaphobia forced the population to fuse with their machines.
In the near future, many work-from-home meetings will be conducted via sophisticated holograms. As with obedience masks, if you don’t wear your augmented reality glasses, you won’t keep your job. Anyone who refuses to adapt to this new environment will not be able to compete. Holdovers will be socially Darwinized.
Most importantly, schoolchildren will rapidly acculturate to these virtual worlds. They’ll be socialized to treat digital entities—both avatars and AI-powered bots—as if they were real. Virtual reality will become a way of life.
By Joe Allen
