The article featured below is a response written by Megan O’Gieblyn in response to a Wired subscriber who asked: “I kind of want to live in the metaverse. There will be all the same stuff as my regular universe – friends, work, shopping, entertainment – but it will somehow be more thrilling. When I move, will I still be myself?”

In her response, O’Gieblyn likens the promise of the Metaverse to that of religion: a promise of life eternal world without end. She says, “The evolution of the metaverse recalls the fate of so many religious eschatologies, which the true believers are forced to adapt and reinterpret once their prophecies fail to materialize”. People will make new interpretations if their previous conceptions are found to be false

But O’Gieblyn says that rather than longing to live in the metaverse, people should realize that they already have a metaverse within them – human imagination. She says, “It is intrinsically augmented – by our hopes and fears, our idle daydreams and our garish nightmares. This inner world, invisible and omnipresent…is the seed of the metaverse itself. Even now, amid the persistent, time-bound entropy of the physical world, you can access this virtual realm whenever you’d like from anywhere in the world – no $300 headset required”.

Editor’s Note: Articles admitting to the religious-like devotion of some people to AI and the metaverse are rare in technology-centered publications, especially Wired. The article highlights the reality that the Metaverse is nothing more than an escape from day-to-day life. It is not a refuge nor a haven, but merely a distraction to what is truly meaningful.

While we appreciate the way O’Gieblyn answered the question, she failed to expound on the non-physical source of human imagination. She fails to explain how some people, knee-deep in their day-to-day problems, might choose to continue facing their challenges instead of escaping to the metaverse.

As a short response, well, not everyone will have the capacity to take part in the metaverse [read TRANSHUMANISM: IMMORTALITY FOR THOSE WHO CAN AFFORD IT]. But more importantly, there lives in each of us an individual who knows that the challenges we are facing are nothing more than lessons that will help us evolve and reach our fullest potential [see AWAKENING TO THE TRUE HUMAN: AN ANTIDOTE TO THE DARK SCIENCE OF MODERN SOCIETY].

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