18 Leaders The Economist November 20th 2021
“A
revolutionary approachon how to connectourworld
without being superweird...In the Icelandverse, there’s
...skies you can see with your eyeballs, volcanic rocks you can
caress, and really big geysers you can observe from a safe dis
tance.” So runs a viral advert designed to lure tourists to Iceland.
The target of the parody is Mark Zuckerberg in particular, and
Silicon Valley in general, for whom the idea of the “meta
verse”—a sort of 3dsequel to today’s twodimensional internet,
in which users work, play, buy and sell inside immersive virtual
worlds—has become the latest Next Big Thing.
Iceland’s tourist board is not the only sceptic. When, on Octo
ber 28th, Mr Zuckerberg rebranded Facebook as
Meta Platforms, to signal his commitment to
the new idea, many assumed it was a prstunt to
divert attention from the socialmedia giant’s
scandals. When Satya Nadella and Jensen
Huang, the bosses of Microsoft and Nvidia,
made their own pitches a couple of weeks later,
people muttered about bandwagonjumping.
Mr Zuckerberg may well prefer to think
about exciting new products than deal with the downsides of his
existing ones. And hype is the water in which techies swim. But
to stop the analysis there would be too dismissive. There are
good reasons to take the metaverse seriously.
One is historical: as computers have become more capable,
the experiences that they generate have become richer. The in
ternet began its life displaying nothing more exciting than white
text on a black background. Flat images were added in the 1990s.
Video came to dominate in the 2010s. On that reading, a move in
to three dimensions is a logical consequence of the steady
growth in computing power. Thatprogression is more than merely theoretical. Google
Maps already offers a virtual space that contains the real world’s
stations, shops and streets. The videogame industry—the only
type of entertainment fully exposed to the compounding power
of Moore’s law—has been selling virtual worlds for years (see
Business section). “EverQuest”, an online game launched in
1999, had half a million subscribers at its peak. (Players quickly
coopted it for socialising, and even weddings, as well as dra
gonslaying.) “World of Warcraft”, which arrived five years later,
hit 12m. These days 200m people a month hang out on “Roblox”,
a videogamecumconstructionset. Many spend their real
money on virtual goods. It is hard to argue that
an idea will never catch on when, for millions
of people, it already has.
Finally, mockery is an unreliable guide to
the future. When YouTube was launched in
2005, commentators wondered why anyone
would want to watch spotty teenagers filming
themselves in their bedrooms when the de
lights of cable tvwere a buttonpush away. In
two decades, online dating has gone from being furtive and em
barrassing to take its place as a perfectly normal way to meet
people. Smartphones are some of the bestselling devices ever
built. In the 1990s their bricksized predecessors were mocked as
crass status symbols for insecure investment bankers.
This does not mean every Silicon Valley brainwave will auto
matically succeed. Nor does it mean a fully fledged metaverse
will arrive overnight, any more than the world wide web or the
mobile internet did. But it does suggest that something meta
verseshaped lyinginthe relatively near future is an idea worth
taking seriously.nVirtual worlds are already hereDon’t mock the metaverse
The future of the internetSimilarly, Gabriel Boric, the candidate of the hard left, has
seemed poised to win the presidential election. A former stu
dent leader, he is a democrat. But some of his allies, who include
the Communist Party, are not. Much of the left has failed to con
demn the criminal violence of a hard core of protesters and has
opposed the widely popular deployment of the army to quell a
lowlevel insurgency among some Mapuche, an indigenous
group in the south.
Mr Boric wants to expand tax revenues by 8% of gdpover six
to eight years (impossible, say many economists) and review
trade agreements in order to engage in industrial policy. The
laudable intention is to diversify the economy, but by means
that seem likely to do far more harm than good. Mr Boric might
well prove to be more pragmatic than his programme suggests.
But plenty of Chileans are alarmed by it and by his allies.
That is why support has grown for José Antonio Kast of the
hard right (see Americas section). He has exploited fears of dis
order, violence and uncontrolled immigration, offering a mano
dura(a firm hand). His promise of big tax cuts just when Chil
eans want better services is as delusional as Mr Boric’s revenue
target. Whereas Mr Boric promises the most leftwing govern
ment since the chaotic SocialistCommunist administration ofSalvador Allende, Mr Kast offers the most rightwing one since
the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, whose crimes he
sometimes denies. Neither offers the combination of stability,
economic growth and reform that the country needs.
The seeming advantage of the extremes owes much to the
discrediting of politicians from the two mainstream co
alitions—and to their loss of selfbelief. Some have embraced
populist measures, such as letting workers spend 30% of their
retirement savings, guaranteeing a future pensions crisis. None
offers a convincing counternarrative to the radicals. In fact, the
past 30 years were far from the disaster they are now painted as.The boast of Utopia
There are two moderate candidates, Yasna Provoste of the cen
treleft and Sebastián Sichel of the centreright. Either, and espe
cially Ms Provoste, would offer hope that Chile can draw back
from its dangerous polarisation and find a new consensus. Chil
eans would be wise to vote for them, not least to provide an in
centive to Messrs Boric and Kast to move to the centre if they
reach the inevitable runoff next month. It is high time for Chil
eans to come to their senses, and see the meritsofthe moderate
record that they are on the verge of disavowing.n