Our most dangerous experiment yet

Should we upload our whole existence to the cloud?

Credit: Canva

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Year Million, a 2017 six-part documentary-drama series from National Geographic, explores what being human might look like in the not-too-distant future (the title can actually be a little deceiving). It begins with a car crash that claims the life of a couple’s only daughter, and they are given the option to copy her consciousness and revive her as an A.I.-enabled android. Weaving together fictional storytelling and interviews with scientists and futurologists (the likes of Ray Kurzweil, Michio Kaku, Peter Diamandis and Brian Greene), the series illustrates how current technological advances could be setting the stage for a world that is radically different from our current one - where artificial intelligence is ubiquitous, mortality becomes a thing of the past, the human species inhabits other planets, and communication is revolutionized through virtual telepathy. In the same vein as the sci-fi anthology Black Mirror, Year Million paints a vision of possible futures which may seem unfathomable or even unpalatable at times; perhaps thrilling to some viewers, and horrifying to others. But, whether we like it or not, one of the key points that the producers wanted to get across is that many of these developments are already well in the works.

This message hit home for me recently as, in a matter of days, I was exposed to a sequence of headlines, tweets and emails that made reference to the Metaverse. Meta what? Oh yes, the Metaverse (a.k.a. Internet’s successor, the “macro-goal for many of the world’s tech giants”). I was vaguely familiar with the term but suddenly it was in my face all the time. According to one definition, the Metaverse is “a place where our digital and physical lives converge; creativity is limitless; and location-defying worlds bring people together”.

Hum, bring people together … where have I heard this before?

One of the things I came across was a video clip of Mark Zuckerberg performing a demo of Facebook’s new Horizon Workrooms, the remote-working app for its virtual reality Oculus Quest 2 headsets. As many companies continue to promote work-from-home after the Covid-19 pandemic forced physical workspaces to shut down, the app is meant to allow people to hold meetings as avatar versions of themselves. Ironically, Zuckerberg has described the Metaverse as an “embodied internet” (as opposed to a “mobile internet”). Funny thing is, when you look closely at his beta-test of Workrooms, participants appear to be anything but “embodied”.

Floating in Cyberspace

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Admittedly, I’ve got much to learn about computer technology, virtual reality, “mind melding” and “non-fungible tokens”, among other things. And while my curiosity will always keep me motivated to try new things, I also remain cautiously skeptical when it comes to gigantic leaps in digitalization (especially those accompanied by business models that depend on people spending as much time as possible on their platform). Just imagine how something like ‘viral content’ could evolve in this kind of ecosystem …

More importantly, I believe we need to collectively pay a lot more attention to a phenomenon that gets commonly overlooked, namely what is known as “disembodiment”. Disembodiment is usually understood as a soul, spirit, or consciousness that lacks a physical form; but it can also be defined as lacking in substance, solidity, or any firm relation to reality.

Once we begin entertaining ideas such as uploading our minds to the cloud and looking at the world through VR headsets (for who knows how many hours a day), it’s easy to convince ourselves that the body is no longer required (a nuisance of sorts), and that our sense of self or identity is in no way defined by, or linked to it. The big question is: have we carefully thought through the possible consequences of adopting an avatar lifestyle?

In my humble opinion, we have not. In fact, we are being constantly bombarded with all sorts of incentives to avoid thinking altogether. These incentives come mostly in the form of distractions, addictions or manipulations. And there are also irresistible financial incentives. The modern-day gold rush seems to be all about transcending our physicality, our biology, and reality itself. But as promising as many of the on-going developments might be, they should also make us pause and reflect on how far we want to take them, and how quickly. Even more crucially, we must consider the implications of extremely sophisticated tools being controlled by extremely ambitious individuals or groups.

Amidst all the craze surrounding the “unlimited potential” of the Metaverse, it’s easy to forget that the more disembodied we become, the less capable we are of cultivating presence (not surprisingly, tech enthusiasts argue the exact opposite). The more “connected” we are in cyberspace, the less time we spend in contact with Earth. The more our lives revolve around driving “engagement” (code name for rank-based popularity), the less we build actual relationships. The more hooked we are on our performative routine (look at me! like me! tweet me!), the less we stay in touch with our true essence. The more enamored we fall with algorithmic intelligence, the less we appreciate the value of being conscious, sentient beings. And the more lost we get in the parrot jungle of the clickbait industrial complex, the less we can think for ourselves.

Beware. We have embarked on the most daring, yet most dangerous experiment in the history of humanity. Maybe it’s a good time to invoke the old adage: just because we can doesn’t mean we should.

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