Surely that would bring civilization to a miserable end, for economic as well as philosophical reasons.Įver since the advent of video games in the 1970s, computers have been used for two entirely separate purposes: as productivity-enhancers for activities that take place and relate to the real world, and as escapes from the world altogether, in which the ordinary difficulties of human interaction can be ignored.Īs enhancers of our capability for managing our real-world activities, computers have been spectacularly successful.

Electronic reality, already highly competitive with the world we live in for gadget users’ attention, may take over completely. Whether Zuckerberg or someone else succeeds in creating a convincing Metaverse, it seems to me a wholly negative development for humanity. Facebook ( FB) chairman Mark Zuckerberg announced last week that he was changing the company’s name to Meta, because he believed that the “Metaverse” of virtual reality would become the company’s most important business in the future.

Civilization 2 advisors