Covid drove us all inside to go contactless and rely on our digital devices. Those digital and virtual solutions performed a collective miracle by allowing us to continue to work, conduct business, be entertained, stay connected at a distance, follow all the staggering developments on the national and world stages, order food, and so many other basic human functions. But those intense digital and virtual experiences remind us of the necessity of analog experience.
Contactless meant we lost close contact.
We need to get it back, to set aside those convenient tools and rediscover the analog world and authentic analog experience with friends and family, the natural world, the events in our communities, and the intimacy that defines our humanity.
A vivid example of how we’re moving ever closer to the digital and virtual taking over the analog and the intimate is the dawn of the metaverse.
How many people actually want to spend their personal and working hours with a VR headset strapped to their faces? Could there be a more artificial, intimacy-destroying, socially isolating practice?
Proponents of VR and virtual worlds point to a number of potential benefits:
- Enabling rich educational experiences
- Saving the planet by saving on energy for travel
- Advancing remote work options
- Dealing with certain emergency situations faster
- Having fun and being entertained
- Getting people moving, getting them up from their sedentary TV viewing
But we will pay the price for those advantages in the quality of our lives, if we don’t balance the digital and simulated experiences with the analog. We will sacrifice authenticity, rich and nuanced full sensory connections, and deep appreciation for what has defined our humanity for thousands of years.
And Big Tech will own our experiences and our data and privacy, while they hoard our money and attention.
Full disclosure: I have never donned a VR headset. No doubt I would find the experience compelling, entertaining, and possibly bordering on addictive – and I have an addictive personality.
No doubt as well that I would quickly tire of the inane and return to the analog reality that is my family and friends, my old house in a stately old neighborhood, my fountain pens and paper journals and writing by hand, rich and dark coffee early in the morning, and my love of the Colorado wilderness and trout streams.
It’s no surprise that the perpetual geeky teenager that is Mark Zuckerberg would bet his company’s future on such a juvenile and dorky experience that is the current Metaverse from Meta/Facebook.
Zuckerberg and his defenders and apologists always point to all the good they have created in the world, all the connections and community and joy.
That is not to be denied – and neither are all the abuses, crimes, falsehoods, privacy scandals, political manipulation, social terrorism, and the nefarious financial dealings. If you go to work and build useful interactive tools, that does not excuse or forgive you if you then go home and beat your wife and kids.
Any social platform will always allow the worst elements of the human condition to be focused, innovated, amplified, and abused. As the provider of the platform, you are not responsible for those dark arts, they have always and likely will always darken men’s hearts.
But you are responsible for the application and targeting of those tools if those social dysfunctions harm others. The metaverse could be the next source of harm if we lose track of the beauty, truth, and goodness of our analog humanity.
All outcomes in business happen only through the experiences we create.
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I’m Bob Berry — researcher, speaker, writer, and innovator on the art of compelling experience.bob@itstheusers.com / LinkedIn / http://ItsTheUsers.com
