If you were anywhere online two years back, it was impossible to avoid the revived hype surrounding virtual reality, particularly Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse. Like self-driving cars, AI, and solar-powered homes, you can throw VR on the pile of futuristic technologies that eggheads have been swearing since the 1980s were “just 20 years off.”
The tech oligarchs seem to have gotten a bee in their collective bonnet over the delay of the nerd rapture, so they’ve made renewed pushes to make these wonder technologies not just workable, but standard. If you’re Gen Y or older, you recall that Big Tech companies dust off these marketing campaigns every couple of decades, promising that this time, their favored toys are here to stay. Their main problem is that all of their precious inventions still suck. Our looming problem is that these technologies’ state of unreadiness is no detriment to Big Tech forcing them on the public.
A dismaying vision of where our tech overlords’ hubris could lead came across my desk just this morning, courtesy of @SCHIZO_FREQ on X.
Employers know “work from home” is a huge meme by now
They have the data. These guys talking about how they’re 3x more productive WFH are simply lying. Or delusional, maybe
It’s not like your macbook stops working when it’s outside the office, everyone just dicks off if you can’t see them
Related: Adobe’s New TOS Makes You the Product?
Big finance firms used the miracle of capitalism to solve the issue early, but nobody likes what they came up with – “employee monitoring tools.”
Full OS access so employers can make sure you’re not hiding personal browser tabs. Webcam access so they can make sure you stay focused on the screen for 8 hours straight
Some even gift you a fancy new camera, purely because they care about you – and your eyetracking data that shows the exact part of the screen you’re looking at.
Companies using these systems noticed they improve employee efficiency regardless of whether they’re WFH or at the office. Their new ideal isn’t just banning WFH, but forcing the full office into one of these systems.
It’s a tough sell though, so most without a big name and reputation for being ruthless haven’t succeeded yet. That’ll change tho
VR is gonna be used heavily in the workplace. Not every company, every role ofc – just some.
Yeah, VR might not be good enough yet for hyper-realistic videogame simulations. The motion tracking might not perfectly replicate reality, either. It’s fine for meetings and excel tho. It gives employees access to (effectively) unlimited monitors, too. And they can use these while traveling – or even working from home!
Related: Dead Internet
Wait, what? Didn’t we just say companies hate WFH?
They don’t hate WFH, they hate unmonitored employees. ‘Extra monitors’ isn’t enough on its own, but fortunately VR is also the most advanced employee monitoring system of all time.
The moment you put that headset on you’re teleported to a perfect corporate panopticon
“Oh wow! It’s awesome how Apple Vision Pro just knows what I’m thinking! How does it get so much information just from where I’m looking??”
Because it has like 20+ cameras and other sensors 2cm away from your eyes to collect the most detailed eyetracking data in the world
If you thought the data mobile phone companies had access to was bad, VR is like some orwellian nightmare doomsday apocalypse scenario. It’s about as close as you can get to neuralink chips in your brain without surgery.
You cannot prevent your eyes from moving in reaction to your thoughts. It’s all out there.
They know where you’re looking every microsecond of the work day, they know where you are because you’re wearing cameras now and they control all data you access because it still flows through them.
Using eyetracking to detect lies is trivial. This “most people break eye contact for a second when they lie!” meme lifehack stuff is done. There will be no guessing.
They’ll know the exact picosecond your gaze falters, how long, where you looked instead, how much your eyes widened at what point, whether you’re defocusing in an attempt to blur everything out and trick the whole system, etc
Even stuff like your heartbeat and breathing are easily inferred with enough gyro data, mics and hi-res sensors staring at your eyeveins.
Plug all this stuff into the AI model they have of you and bossman’s not gonna believe your excuse for missing the meetings anymore.
They’ll know exactly how you feel about everyone, too. And that you’re thinking about Cassy naked now. And that you’re still flaccid despite this – probably because your new SSRIs are interfering with the way your blood vessels dilate and contract. Just a guess tho idk
I don’t think this is something everyone has to deal with, either. There’s only so much juice for the squeeze. I would not, however, want to be in a role with a lot of extra juice this next decade.
Neuralink is a spooky, but it’s probably a while before employers can force you to get chipped. In the meantime, I might suggest refocusing your fears towards a more “reasonable centrist” doomsday scenario. One where a good portion of workers get enslaved by dorky goggles
Listen – I’m not happy about this either. But it’s just the way things panned out.
They could’ve worked harder from home, but they didn’t. And now the corporations are gonna strap them into a VR biopanopticon until they’s lost the ability to produce usable labor
Sound dubious to you? Well, that thread echoes what author David V. Stewart predicted two years ago.
So, circling back around, do I think Meta will fail at the Metaverse?
The answer is no.
The reason is Facebook itself – it’s mandatory. You have to use it to advertise; you have to use it to keep up with friends; you have to use it to log into a bunch of sites, or use third-party apps. It doesn’t matter that your timeline has been useless for the core purpose of the platform for ten years because there is no alternative that also has your friends and family on it. Contrary to current popular opinion, I don’t think Mark Zuckerberg is stupid or “just got lucky” with Facebook. Meta will find ways to make the Metaverse mandatory.
I think the main avenue will be your work, not your personal life. You won’t be sucked into the Metaverse because it gives you something you want. You won’t begrudgingly join because all your friends are on it, and you don’t want to miss out. You’ll be in the Metaverse because a job (or school) will require you to be in it.
The pandemic revealed many things, and high on the list is the realization that corporate workers don’t enjoy being in the office, they don’t actually need to be in the office to do their work, and along with that, that most corporate work time is wasted. The classic work arrangement is much more about controlling the worker than it is about productivity. You can write emails and enter data from anywhere, but how does the corp know they are getting eight hours of work out of you? How can they make sure you are properly afraid of being fired, of losing your insurance and paycheck, so as to keep giving the company your time and effort? How can the company be sure that you won’t just up and quit your job and leave them in the lurch? The stated productivity goal is secondary to maximizing the asset that is the worker.
So, do I agre with Lukas and David that Meta will finally force the techpriests’ beloved VR down society’s throat, and they’ll use employers as the vector?
A brief glance at the history of the workplace over the past half century suggests I’d be delusional to disagree.
Within that time, workers have put up with:
- Experimental drug mandates
- Sensitivity training curdling into anti-white struggle sessions
- #MeToo culture turning every interaction with a female co-worker into a potential career-detonating landmine
- Affirmative action divorcing job advancement from merit
And so on …
The Greek philosophers wrote that some men are fit only to be slaves.
While I think that chattel slavery is immoral, it’s also impossible to ignore that large swaths of the populace can only function in environments where they’re compelled to follow orders under constant supervision.
If that wasn’t that case, self-employment in America would be at 90% instead of 2%.
So yes, most people will submit to working in the Matrix. Becuase corporate employment is the bit in people’s teeth that our overlords have steered them around by for decades.
Frequent readers may know that I was exiled from corporate life for daring to buck the cultic groupthyink and asking questions.
At the time, I thought my life was over. But in the years since, I’ve come to realize it was among the greatest blessings God ever bestowed on me.
I’m never going back to the rat race. I couldn’t if I wanted to.
Dr. Luke Smith was right. You’ll never go wrong choosing independence.
It’s not that all technology is bad. The key is getting into a position to use new tech voluntarily.
Like more and more creators are doing to earn a living independent of the Metaverse Biopanopticon.
That’s one reason I’m such a big supporter of Neopatronage.
And I want that blessing for you.
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