Happy Nice Mall

I’ve spent much of my career insisting that all of our technologies, both in Silicon Valley and beyond, have histories and even pre-histories, and these stories are far from orderly and orderly, in fact, they are messy, contentious, and contradictory. with competing narrators and meanings.

Transforming from a niche term to a household name in less than a year, the metaverse is a perfect example. Its metamorphosis began in July 2021, when Facebook announced it would dedicate the next decade to bringing the metaverse to life. At the company’s concept presentation, the metaverse was something great: an immersive, rich digital world that combined features of social media, online gaming, and augmented and virtual reality. “The defining quality of the Metaverse will be a sense of presence – as if you’re there with someone else or somewhere else,” wrote Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, “envisioning a creation that will reach one billion people, house hundreds of billions.” commerce and business support for millions of creators and developers.” A number of other major American tech companies, including Microsoft, Intel, and Qualcomm, had their own articulated metaverse plans by December 2021. When the Consumer Electronics Show kicked off in January, it seemed like everyone had a metaverse angle, no matter how impossible or banal. : tactile vests, including one with air conditioning to create your own local climate; avatar beauty creators; virtual delivery trucks for your virtual home.

There has been a lot of discussion about Meta (née Facebook) involvement and its current complex position as a social media platform and a considerable acquisition in our daily lives. There was also broader talk about what form the metadata store could or should take in terms of technical capabilities, user experiences, business models, access and regulations, and – more quietly – what purpose it would serve and what needs it would meet. .

“There is an easy temptation in stories that make a technology look brand new.”

These are good conversations. But we would be flawed, both in truth and in the ideas it contains, if we didn’t take a step back to ask what metadata is or where it comes from, not who is going to make it. If it was actually invented, who invented it? What about previously built, imagined, augmented or virtual worlds? What can they tell us about how we put the Metaverse into effect now, its dangers and possibilities?

There is an easy seduction in stories that make a technology look brand new, or at least don’t deal with long, complicated histories. Seen in this way, the future is a space of reinvention and possibility rather than something intimately connected with our present and past. But histories are more than just past stories. These are the backbones, plans, and maps of previously traversed regions. Knowing the history of a technology or the ideas it contains can provide better questions, uncover potential pitfalls and previously learned lessons, and provide a window into the lives of those who learn them. The metadata warehouse, which is not as new as it may seem, is no exception.

So where does the metaverse come from? A common answer – a clear and uncluttered one – is that it comes from Neal Stephenson’s 1992 science fiction novel. Snow Crashdefines a computer-generated virtual world made possible by software and a worldwide fiber optic network. In the book’s 21st century Los Angeles, the world is in turmoil, filled with social inequalities, sexism, racism, gated communities, surveillance, hypercapitalism, fiery megacorporations and corrupt policing. Of course, the novel’s Metaverse is also messy. It also grapples with social inequalities and hypercapitalism. Not everyone can find their way there. For those who do, the quality of their experience is determined by the caliber and bandwidth of their kit, their ability to afford electricity and computational horsepower. Those who can afford it can have carefully personalized digital images. Others should be content with simple flat sketches bought off the shelf – “Brandy” and “Clint” packs. Perhaps we should not be surprised that many who read the book see it not only as cutting-edge science fiction, but also as a critique of late capitalism and techno-utopian visions.

In the thirty years since then Snow Crash After it was published, most of the foundations of Stephenson’s virtual world, such as social networks and artificial intelligence, were realized. And the metaverse, like other ideas foretold in the cyberpunk tradition, persistently found its way into wider conversation. He has appeared in recent films such as Ready Player One and free man. And it has shaped much of the digital landscape we now find ourselves in. However, I think it could be more than just a metadatabase. Snow Crash and re-embodiment of the present.

In fact, today’s conversations about the meta-universe remind me of many of the conversations we had nearly 20 years ago about Second Life, which Philip Rosedale’s Linden Lab launched in 2003. Rosedale is very clear about the ways in which she draws inspiration. Snow Crash. However, it is also clear that a trip to Burning Man in the late 1990s forever shaped his thinking about virtual worlds, their inhabitants, and their values. Second Life would be “a 3D online world created and owned by its users.” It was hugely successful – dominating news headlines and conversations. Companies and brands fought to establish themselves in this new space; We’ve given lectures and concerts in Second Life and even in the church. In the early 2000s, millions of people flocked to the platform and created lives there. Anthropologists studied them*; Policy makers and politicians have discussed them. And the realities of a full-fledged virtual world quickly clashed with regulators and policymakers; Concerns about fiat currencies, money laundering and prostitution have all surfaced.

However, I think there are older dates that might inform our thinking. Before Second Life. Before virtual and augmented reality. Before the web and the internet. Before cell phones and personal computers. Before television, radio and movies. Before any of these, a massive iron and glass building appeared in London’s Hyde Park. It was the summer of 1851 and the future was on display.

Arc lamps and hydraulic presses (powered by a stealth steam engine), electric telegraphs, a prototype fax machine, mechanical birds in artificial trees, a submarine, weapons, the first life-size and realistic sculptures of dinosaurs, Goodyear’s vulcanized rubber, Matthew Brady’s Daguerreotypes , even Britain’s first flush public toilets. There were red buntings and three-story niches spread out over 92,000 square feet of glossy glass enclosures proclaiming each exhibit’s country of origin—the Crystal Palace, as one satirical magazine called it.

It was a whole world dedicated to the future: a world in which almost anyone could be immersed, educated, challenged, inspired, tickled, or provoked.

The Great Exhibition of Industrial Artifacts of All Nations, as the extraordinary event is officially known, was the idea of ​​Queen Victoria’s beloved wife, Prince Albert. It would display more than 100,000 exhibits from all over the world. The Queen herself would have attended at least 30 times. In his opening speech, he clarified his agenda: “It is my greatest desire to promote among nations the development of all these arts that are fueled by peace and contribute to the maintenance of world peace.” The age of empire may already be in decline, but the Great Exhibition was all about delivering a strength and a vision for England’s future. And even if colonies all over the world were needed for that to happen, what a modern, industrialized future that would be.

Of course, London was already a city full of exhibits and exhibits, where you could visit wonderful and strange places. Charles Babbage was part of Merlin’s Mechanical Museum with its many automatons. Others preferred dioramas of the Holy Land and Paris. The Great Exhibition was different because of its scale and the power of the empire behind it. This was not just a show; It was a whole world dedicated to the future: a world in which almost anyone could be immersed, educated, challenged, inspired, tickled, or provoked. It was not small pieces, but a big, majestic, inescapable expression.

The Great Exhibition met with many critics in its time. Some were worried about the old elm trees that found themselves inside the gigantic structure in Hyde Park. Others were concerned about the tensile strength of all that glass. It was ridiculed in the press for months, and one politician described it as “one of the greatest hoaxes, frauds and bullshit ever known”. In the Houses of Parliament, some questioned Prince Albert’s motives, referring to his status as a foreign prince, and suggesting that the Great Exhibition was merely a publicity exercise to encourage and perhaps mask the rise of immigration in Britain. Still others suggested that the Great Exhibition would attract pickpockets, prostitutes, and spies, and called for an extra 1,000 policemen on duty.

Not surprisingly, the serious warnings were exaggerated, and for a sunny summer, people from all over Britain flocked to the huge glass house in the park – taking advantage of the rapidly expanding rail network. The organizers set the entrance fees at one shilling, making it accessible to the British working classes. “See the world for a shilling” was a common refrain that summer.

A surprising portion of the literary and scientific community of the day made their way to the Crystal Palace. This roll call includes Charles Dickens, Charles Dodgson (who will become Lewis Carroll), Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Michael Faraday, Samuel Colt, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Babbage and George Eliot. Dickens hated it: it was too pervasive materialism, and his latest biographer claims his experiences there shaped all his work thereafter. On the contrary, Brontë wrote: “It seems as if only magic could gather this mass of wealth from around the world – as if no one except supernatural hands could have orchestrated it with such a contrast of flame and color. marvelous potency.” Dodgson had one such moment when he entered the Crystal Palace: “It gives the impression of bewilderment when you walk in. It looks like some kind of fairyland.”

And then, just like that, the Great Exhibition closed its doors on October 15, 1851. During the five-and-a-half month period, it is estimated that more than 6 million people visited the Crystal Palace (at that time). , England had a total population of just 24 million). During its short life in Hyde Park, the Great Exhibition also made a substantial profit of £186,437 (over $35 million today). Some went to buy land in South Kensington to create London’s current museum district. Another part set up an educational foundation that still provides scholarships for scientific research. The Crystal Palace was dismantled in the winter of 1851 and moved to a new location; He would continue to display all kinds of wonders until a catastrophic fire in 1936 turned him into a smoldering iron skeleton. If fantasy takes you, you can still visit the Great Exhibition today with a virtual tour hosted on the website. Royal Parks.

The Great Exhibition ushered in more than a century of world’s fairs—spaces of spectacle and curiosity that in turn would shape the world around them. In America, these world-class events included the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair, an entire city with more than 200 gleaming whitewashed structures that showcased technologies as diverse as a fully electric kitchen. dishwasher, electric chicken incubator, seismograph, Thomas Edison’s kinetoscope, projectors, Morse code telegraph, polyphase power generators, moving walkways and the world’s first Ferris wheel. More than a quarter of Americans would attend the World’s Fair in less than six months.