HUMAN WRECKAGE

Notes from an Alarmed Luddite

Last week both The Economist and The Globe and Mail ran stories about the rising cost of real estate. In the metaverse. I sat back twice stupefied, wondering just when my grip on reality and modern life had begun to unravel. As far as I knew, the “metaverse” existed solely in a feature length Spider-man cartoon – I loved Spider-man when I was a kid; I’m a quasi-qualified adult now, somewhat evolved, Spider-man doesn’t matter to me anymore.

In this moment of time, the metaverse is in its primordial state. And there are a few of them, parallel metaverses. One becomes a real estate mogul in a metaverse by spending cryptocurrency. My mining involves borers and backhoes, catastrophic collapses, explosions, scarred landscapes and lung cancers. I can’t get my head around blockchain and computers mining various cryptocurrencies, dollars to drachmas. Are funds electric?

When did the future get ahead of me? When did my present become passé?

There was a time when one required a portal to access the world-wide-web, or Internet, a grand, expansive headspace quickly populated by gamers, lunatics and scam artists. A Mayflower of knowledge and democracy. And then internet became a common noun, sometimes it’s pluralized and even transfigured into interwebs. Portmanteau neologisms. It went mobile, so many dedicated internets, but it also stayed home because of the “internet of things,” consumer durables smarter than the consumers who own them and prone to gossiping amongst themselves about their owners. The Amityville Horror was just a house wired to the teeth via some sort of hellish router.

I used to think Bluetooth was a popular band I’d never heard, like Radiohead or the Flaming Lips. Political discussions with one of my best friends are strictly monitored by his Fitbit or a like digital sensor bracelet device. When it informs him his blood pressure is red lining, surging toward an explosive level, we quickly hop aboard the A Train and ride it to E Street or Gasoline Alley. Dial up a dial down.

Nothing ever goes as foreseen, as planned. I assume primordial metaverses will experience a number of big and bigger bangs, disruptions, chaos, before they evolve into a singularity that will not include jazz clubs and seaside bars. Yet a virtual land of hopes and dreams beckons from the digital beyond, lit by Coca-Cola signs, Nike swooshes and Amazon smiles, Times Square by Disney (been there, done that in person). A brave new world awaits crypto investors and trolls, a new addictive game complete with non-fungible tokens and suitable for the ages, all of them. As the creators of the metaverse will be genuine flesh, blood and bone humans, I’m confident there’s very little chance of anything going awry.

Digital progress has always struck me as something of a runaway mystery train, more wild Elvis than sophisticated Duke Ellington. But it’s always ahead of schedule, steaming into the station hauling a baggage car crammed with unintended consequences. I’ve missed the "5:15," out of my brain and killing time on a recently refurbished platform, roped behind a yellow line that cannot be crossed, mind the gap, scanning the real estate classifieds in a newspaper.         

                                             

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of contemporary confusion since 2013. My novella Of Course You Did is my latest contribution to contemporary fiction. Visit www.megeoff.com to find your preferred format and retailer.