Augmented reality (AR) and the metaverse are media technologies that aim to present content in the most natural form possible – by seamlessly integrating simulated sights, sounds, and feelings into our perception of the real world around us. This means AR has the potential to alter our sense of reality, distorting how we interpret our direct daily experiences.
Early Augmented Reality (AR)
Augmented reality will fundamentally change all aspects of society and not necessarily in a good way
- Concerned about the legitimate uses of AR by powerful platform providers that will control the infrastructure
- Worried about the negative consequences of bad actors hacking the technology or otherwise hijacking our good intentions
You can’t ever leave the metaverse
We will become thoroughly dependent on the virtual layers of information projected all around us.
- If we are not careful now, AR could easily be used to fracture society, pushing us from our own information bubbles into our own custom realities, further entrenching our views and cementing our divisions.
A dystopian walk in the neighborhood
We find ourselves in a society where countless layers of technology exist between each of us and our daily lives, moderating our access to news and information, mediating our relationships with friends and family, filtering our impressions of products and services, and even influencing our acceptance of basic facts.
- We now live mediated lives, all of us depending more and more on the corporations that provide and maintain the intervening layers.
- And when those layers are used to manipulate us, the industry does not view it as misuse but as “marketing.”
The metaverse could make reality disappear
Over the last decade, the abuse of media technologies has made us all vulnerable to distortions and misinformation
- At least we can turn off our phones or step away from our screens and have authentic real-world experiences, face-to-face, that aren’t filtered through corporate databases or manipulated by intelligent algorithms
- With the rise of AR, this last bastion of reliable reality could completely disappear.
- And when that happens, it will only exacerbate the social divisions that threaten us.
