Dear Julia and Elizabeth,
I am finally old.
I think it is official.
It has been coming on for a number of years, and maybe the preliminary step was my decision to get rid of social media and sever most of my online contacts. By 2019 I decided I would be a friend with you in real life, or not at all, with very few exceptions. This was my first step away from contemporary online discourse. Everyone else seemed to be moving forward in one direction, and I purposely turned back. When it comes to “social media,” I had become antisocial. I dissented. After 2018 or so the future of communications technology could move forward without me. The online world had moved on, piloted by mostly younger adopters of new technology mediums. That was fine. It is almost to be expected as one gets older.
Maybe the second step is right now.
As I do research this morning about Mark Zuckerberg’s new “Metaverse” I have come to a realization: I want no part of it.
According to Wikipedia, the proposed technology is this:
“A metaverse is a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social connection. In futurism and science fiction, the term is often described as a hypothetical iteration of the Internet as a single, universal virtual world that is facilitated by the use of virtual and augmented reality headsets.”
It means a world where you can be playing the video game Fortnight while using virtual reality to see a friend in another part of the world at a music concert, and then you zoom in with her and sort of be present dancing to the music with her and get invited to an after party — an experience all in a mass of pixels pumped at high-speed around the globe, connecting us all to one another. To be in the metaverse is to be all-in to the online virtual world we are constructing (at the unavoidable expense of failing to be present in the real world). It is the “hive mind” on steroids, everybody together online (but separate in the real world). Zuckerberg wants it to be our shared future.
I hate it.
I want nothing to do with it.
A metaverse would accelerate several negative trends already at play in American society, in my opinion.
To live mostly online, to breathe in the digital dust of a pixelated simulacrum. To embrace fully Plato’s shadows on the walls of the cave as reality without thinking further about it. Americans looking for technological tools to lessen isolation and loneliness and in the process making matters worse. Mark Zuckerberg thinks this is a good idea? The metaverse is a step backwards, not forwards, in my opinion.
I am against it.
Perhaps I am just too old to perform the metaphysical gymnastics required by the metaverse. Maybe it is a simple case of an inability to teach new tricks to old dogs. It is possible.
But my father never lived like this, and he is my role model.
I will live as my father did, and his father. Like almost all previous members of the species homo sapiens did.
I will not be leaving the real world for the metaverse.
The rest of humanity can do whatever the hell it wants. It can choose mostly to live immersed in the online world of social media and video games – swim forever in a digital sea of dazzling and colorful hypnotic pixels 24/7. The “Metaverse,” or something similar.
But I won’t be there.
And neither do I want my daughters in it: that is a hill I am willing to fight and die on, and it is the reason I am writing you this letter, Julia and Elizabeth. You will be dealing with this technology long after I am dead and buried. You will have to decide how to interact with it.
So daughters, a benediction: live like your father. And his father.
Eschew the digital opium.
Live in the real world, as much as possible.
What does that mean?
Let me tell you, daughters:
Sweat and touch and flesh and sex and solitude and sunsets and sadness and ennui and bliss. Real people, face-to-face. The natural world, not an unnatural one. Earned happiness, not ersatz excitement. A difficult world, not an easy one. If you descry even one hint of marketing, run in the other direction. True contentment comes from within, not without. The answer lies inside you. It always does. Beware of anyone who tells you otherwise. Most likely they are selling snake oil. (A question: What is Mark Zuckerberg trying to sell you?)
Or at the very least, daughters Julia and Elizabeth, limit your digital consumption. Examine the technological tools of the day with wary eyes and a skeptical mind. Be open to them, without being seduced by them. I have no idea what bright shiny technologies might evolve over time. But I am sure they will arrive with fanfare and aplomb. They will tell you that you must have them. Maybe they have a point.
But maybe they don’t.
Weigh the pros and cons carefully on the scale of judgment, and act accordingly.
And don’t forget where you come from.
Julia and Elizabeth, please remember your childhoods replete with books printed on paper read to you by your doting father at bedtime, the California sunshine on soccer field and tennis court contests, with family and friends with you almost all the time.
Not with you virtually via technology. But family and friends right there with you in flesh-and-blood.
This is the stuff of life.
Seek out something similar, if you want a life worth living.
Not video game matrices or social media buzz or whatever form online life might assume in the future – the hypnotically dancing pixels which mesmerize the mind, the new mind-blowing technology of the moment. Look at this trailer for a 2018 Spielberg film about a similar future in virtual reality —
— that world seems like a nightmare. Isn’t that the point of the movie?
Will the future see some version of this? A move to spend even more time in the online world than we do now?
Almost for sure.
Beware, beware, my beloved daughters.
The “Metaverse” might prove a thrilling short-term snack. But it will leave you hungry for more.
This emptiness will become a scratch you cannot itch. You’ll feel unfulfilled, and you’re not sure why.
Perhaps your real life is less than ideal? So the metaverse one looks attractive by comparison? I am sure this will be the case for many.
But instead of spending so much time escaping to an online virtual world, maybe seek to make your life in the real off-line world better and more enjoyable? Invest more in flesh-and-blood friends and real life adventures?
Let me put it simply, my daughters: I, and all those who went before me, leave you a legacy.
Watch me talking to newborn Elizabeth on the afternoon of February 16, 2010 in the labor-and-delivery ward when she was only one day old —
Remember that. It is a benediction, to Elizabeth and Julia both.
We human beings have always had what we need to be happy. Do we “need” a metaverse? Indeed, might a “metaverse” distract us from what we have always had?
You will have to judge for yourself in the future, my beautiful daughters.
The choice will likely be a blessing and a burden.
Judge well.
And even if I am not alive anymore at that time, as long as you think of me and the years we shared, I won’t be far away. Trust me in this. I have heard my mother’s voice in my mind all the time in the twenty-six years since she died; she lives in me, and she will continue to do so until I die. As Walt Whitman sings how we transcend time and place and live on after death, using his own mortality as an example:
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.
You come from good stock, my daughters. We Geibs have always known what to do, when push comes to shove. So it will be with you. I have tried to invest in you everything I know; as a father, I have put in the “hard yards.” I was all-in. You are well-launched into life, and what is well-begun is half-done.
My patrimony rests fully vested in you both.
I love you,
Your Father
