New Scientist - USA (2022-02-19)

19 February 2022 | New Scientist | 27

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The columnist

Chanda Prescod-

Weinstein celebrates

weather satellites p28

Aperture

Polar bears take

over abandoned

Russian buildings p30

Letters

Observations on

the new quantum

perspective p32

Culture

Why we need a Blue

New Deal to protect

our oceans p34

Culture columnist

Petrov’s Flu is a

feverish Russian sci-fi,

says Simon Ings p36

H

ARDLY a day goes by

without some new

claim promising to

bring us closer to the metaverse

in the not-too-distant future. Meta

(the company formerly known as

Facebook) and Microsoft are both

enthusiastically pushing virtual

reality worlds and staking the

future of their multibillion-dollar

businesses on our receptiveness

to the idea. Vodafone is predicting

that smart devices could monitor

our health and even our brains by

2030. And Elon Musk has claimed
      his Neuralink technology may be
      able to help people with paralysis
      walk and enable everyone to
      upload their memories to
      the cloud within the decade.
      On hearing about this, some of
      us will feel sheer excitement – but
      others will feel unsure, uneasy or
      downright opposed. Our habit in
      recent history has been to shun
      or scorn those with misgivings
      on technological progress. It
      may be time to re-examine that.
      There has been a backlash
      to technology since historical
      records began. Every new form of
      communication – from telegram
      to telephone and beyond – has
      attracted criticism for increasing
      the pace of life. Novels were
      condemned for ruining attention
      spans, and people once feared
      that cars travelling at 20 to
      30 miles per hour might deprive
      their passengers of oxygen,
      perhaps fatally.
      With the benefit of hindsight,
      contemporary resistance to
      MItechnological advancement
      CH
      EL
      LE
      D’U

RB
AN

O

Comment

can look like utter folly – but often

it isn’t. The Luddites, for example –

the smashers of mill machinery in

the early industrial revolution – are

generally referred to as a historical

punchline. But if we look at their

real grievances, it wasn’t some

naive anti-progress movement;

it was about economics. Cotton

mills replaced skilled, home-

based, independent work with

lower-skilled or even unskilled

work, in unsafe conditions in a

factory, accompanied by much

less autonomy and much less pay.

The mill might have been more

efficient and thus more profitable,

but it would take decades of

campaigning to distribute those

gains even approximately fairly –

with the birth of the trade union

movement, health and safety

laws, the welfare state and more.

Seen through that prism, was

resistance really so irrational?

When we look at the latest

hype cycle, while cryptocurrency

and metaverse advocates would

like to paint sceptics as simply

rooted in the past, at least some

doubts are well founded.

The reasons to be wary of

the next wave of technology

are manifold. One is simply

whether the technologies in

question are where they are

claimed to be. Musk, in particular,

has a habit of overpromising,

whether on travel to Mars, ultra-

high-speed trains or self-driving

cars. Few in the know take his

claims for Neuralink seriously.

Other more imminent

metaverse technologies rely on

virtual reality, which still largely

consists of clunky headsets and

odd arm controls – all just to be able

to manoeuvre an avatar through

an awkward online world. VR has

been “the next big thing” for

decades and the public has

consistently felt otherwise: there

isn’t much to do once you are there,

the technology gives many people

motion sickness and, perhaps most

problematically of all, the whole

thing just seems irredeemably naff.

Beyond a relatively small group

of enthusiasts, health tracking

hasn’t caught the wider public

by storm, not least because many

consumers worry about what

will happen to their data. More

broadly, while some of us love

the idea of uploading our minds

one day, others feel an innate

horror at blurring such lines.

There is much to anticipate as

we bring online and offline worlds

together. But we should learn not

to dismiss concerns or wariness

about this, either. There are many

rational reasons for people to

take part in the techlash.  ❚

Trouble in the metaverse

Throughout history, there has been backlash to technological

progress – so why should now be any different, asks James Ball

James Ball is the

global editor of The

Bureau of Investigative

Journalism