Into The Metaverse (The Media Matrix — Part 3)
Corbett • 08/02/2022
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
We stand at a precipice. On one side is “reality”: the original, authentic, lived human experience. And on the other side is the metaverse: the world of constantly mediated experience. In the middle is hyperreality, that blurry space between the real world and the mediated world. And, living as we do on this side of the electronic media revolution, it is the only place we have ever known.
Watch on Archive / BitChute / Odysee or Download the video
For those with limited bandwidth, CLICK HERE to download a smaller, lower file size version of this episode.
For those interested in audio quality, CLICK HERE for the highest-quality version of this episode (WARNING: very large download).
TRANSCRIPT
VOICEOVER: Media. It surrounds us. We live our lives in it and through it. We structure our lives around it. But it wasn’t always this way. So how did we get here? And where is the media technology that increasingly governs our lives taking us? This is the story of The Media Matrix.
PART 3: INTO THE METAVERSE
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, if you saw anything, read anything, listened to anything, it was, more likely than not, placed in front of you by one of the handful of corporations that controlled the major television and radio networks, newspaper syndicates, film studios and music companies. These companies didn’t control what people thought; it was more subtle than that. These companies controlled what people thought about.
We all knew the daily news from the newspapers. We all heard the latest Billboard chart topper. We all saw the latest episode of Must See TV and we all knew about the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Even if we managed to avoid these media ourselves, we knew them anyway from cultural osmosis.
Yes, by the year 2000 we had arrived at the pinnacle of mediated reality. The media oligopoly’s control of society was complete, and nothing could ever come along to change it.
And then something did.
SINGER: You’re riding on the internet! Cyberspace, set us free! Hello, virtual reality! Interactive appetite, searching for a website, a window to the world that to get online. Take the spin now you’re in with the techno set, you’re going surfing on the internet!
SOURCE: Kids Guide to the Internet (1995)
Given that the only thing most people can agree on these days is that the internet is ruining society, it’s difficult to remember that the general public’s introduction to the World Wide Web was accompanied by a torrent of hyperbole and over-the-top enthusiasm that would make a pimply-faced teenager blush.
The internet was going to solve all of our problems! It was going to democratize information. It was going to give a voice to the voiceless. It was going to bring the world together. And most importantly, it was going to help us order pizza without having to pick up our phone!
[Sandra Bullock orders pizza on the internet.]
SOURCE: The Net (1995)
It’s easy to laugh at the gee-whizery and pie-in-the-sky promises of the Information Superhighway hype. But make no mistake: the advent of the web was a revolution. It did upend the economic model that had given rise to the media oligopoly in the first place. And it did give a voice to countless millions around the globe who would never have been heard at all if it weren’t for the advent of new media platforms.
JAMES CORBETT: This is James Corbett of corbettreport.com, and I’d like to welcome you to a new episode of a completely new news update series that I’m doing with my good friend, and the host and webmaster of mediamonarchy.com, James Evan Pilato. James, it’s great to have you on the program today.
JAMES EVAN PILATO: Thanks a lot, man. I’ve looked forward to doing this.
CORBETT: Yeah, me too. . . .
As the general public started to get online in the 1990s, not even the wildest flights of cyber-utopian fancy could have imagined the sea change in news and information that was about to sweep over the public. As the printing press had given birth to our very concept of “the news” and as radio and then television again transformed our understanding of what it meant to hear or see the news, so, too, did this new medium change our perceptions of world events and our relationship to them.
Suddenly, “the news” was not something you heard a well-coiffed elderly man in a three-piece suit in a million dollar studio reading to you from a teleprompter. In the online age, the news was as likely to be a story written from home by a guy in his pajamas or a video of a protest uploaded from someone’s smartphone or a tweet by an anonymous account. Blogs and websites, and, later, Facebook feeds and Reddit posts, became places people went for news and analysis on breaking events. Information was condensed into memes, and meme literacy became necessary to even understand what was happening online.
And all the while, the media whose hold over the public mind had seemed so unassailable mere decades ago was now old hat, reduced to just another stream of information accessible on the always on, infinite scrolling online content feeds.
But if we have learned anything from this study of mass media history by now, it’s that a predictable pattern is at play: a new technology transforms the way people communicate and promises a flowering of knowledge and understanding. The existing power structure then spends all of its considerable resources censoring or co-opting that technology and, ultimately, using the new media as an even more effective tool for spreading propaganda.
As we saw in Part 1 of this series, the Gutenberg press sparked a true revolution, overturning the social, political and economic order and empowering individuals to share ideas on a scale never before imaginable. But we also saw the censors swooping in to repress those ideas before the corporatization of the press finally tamed the mighty juggernaut that Gutenberg had unleashed.
And, as we saw in Part 2 of this series, the commercial radio revolution prompted the Rockefellers and other entrenched financial interests to begin studying how best to use the electronic media to shape the public consciousness. And television, with its ability to put its viewers into an alpha brainwave state of susceptibility, proved to be an even more effective tool for the corporate interests that soon monopolized the public airwaves.
The story of the World Wide Web follows a depressingly similar trajectory. Whatever promise the internet held to kick off a new Gutenberg revolution—putting the power of the press back in the hands of the average person—that promise has been consistently betrayed by the the centralization of online discovery and identity into corporations, as even Twitter founder Jack Dorsey now admits.
Perhaps the fact that the web has been so quickly co-opted into a medium of control isn’t surprising. After all, the internet is no movable type printing press. However much work went into the design of the printing press, it was still possible for a skilled fifteenth century craftsman to create and operate one with nothing more than the knowledge of the latest technologies and the capital of a few business partners. But the internet arose not from a medieval tinkerer’s workshop, but from the bowels of the Pentagon.
The long history of collusion between Big Tech, the Pentagon and the US intelligence community is by now a well-documented one. The story leads from Silicon Valley—home of Big Tech and the site of much of the research that helped birth the personal computer revolution and the internet—through Pentagon research grants and In-Q-Tel investments to the development of the ARPANet, the birth of the internet, and, eventually, the rise of Google and Facebook and the World Wide Web as we know it today.
The result of that history is apparent to all by now. A medium that should be the most participatory medium ever invented has become a web to trap its audience in an infinite scroll of social media distraction, one designed specifically to keep its users seeking the scientifically scheduled hit of their next dopamine reward.
SEAN PARKER: If the thought process that went into building these applications—Facebook being the first of them to really understand it—that thought process was all about “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?” And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever, and that’s gonna get you to contribute more content, and that’s gonna get you more likes and comments. So it’s a social validation feedback loop. I mean, it’s exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. And I think that we—the inventors/creators, you know, it’s me, it’s Mark, it’s Kevin Systrom at Instagram, it’s all of these people—understood this consciously and we did it anyway.
The results of Big Tech’s experiment are now in: the would-be social engineers were successful beyond their wildest expectation. The zombie apocalypse has already happened; in its wake lay the increasingly mechanistic automatons of the social media revolution, eschewing the dull world of human interaction for the cyber world of likes, shares and dopamine rewards. The smartphone has become the digital god of the zombie hordes, demanding we bow down in prayer at every free moment.
Perhaps most frightening of all is the astonishing speed with which this revolution is taking place. As transformative as Gutenberg’s press was, it took decades for the technology to propagate out across Europe, and it took centuries for the effects of that technological upheaval to play itself out in the body politic. The electronic media revolution took the better part of a century of development from its earliest iteration, the telegraph, to its introduction to the average person’s living room in the form of radio sets, and, later, televisions.
But the online media revolution has happened with astonishing speed. In the span of one decade, smartphones went from curious novelties to ubiquitous items, and they are now on the cusp of being made mandatory for participation in everyday life. This incredible change is already manifesting in a world of profound and rapid dislocations in every facet of our lives: political, economic and social.
So where is this revolution taking us? Can we learn to navigate this new world of nearly constant mediated experience? Should we?
To answer that, we need to look at the nature of media itself.
Media, from the earliest smoke signals and scratches in clay tablets to the printed page to the recorded images and sounds of the modern era, has always existed as a means for extending our bodies in space and time. The written word is an extension of our mind out into the world, allowing people in far-distant places and far-off times to read our innermost thoughts. The phonograph was an extension of our voice, the filmed image an extension of our bodies themselves, permitting them a type of 2D immortality.
But somewhere along the way, the balance between the media and the real world that it represents began to shift. We went from this world to this world, where most of what we see, most of what we hear, most of what we think we know about the world comes not from the people and places that populate our direct, lived experience, but from mere representations.
We have our friends, of course, but we also have Friends. We have neighbours, but we also have Neighbours. We have something better than real life. We have reality TV!
We have entered the world of the simulacrum.
JEAN BAUDRILLARD: Mais dans la définition que j’ai du réel, au sens où je l’ai dit : c’est-à-dire faire advenir un monde réel, c’est déjà le produire, c’est déjà quelque-chose comme un simulacre.
Pour moi, le réel n’a jamais été qu’une forme de simulation. Le principe de réalité, c’est la première phase, si on veut, du principe de simulation, quoi . . . Mon postulat ce serait : il n’y a pas de réel, le réel n’existe pas. On peut objectivement le cadrer, faire qu’il existe un effet de réel, un effet de vérité, un effet d’objectivité, et cetera . . . mais moi je n’y crois pas au réel.
SOURCE: Jean Baudrillard — Mots de passe (documentaire 1999)
At a certain point, the boundaries between the real world and the world of media begin to blur. Is television reflecting the types of people we are, or are we emulating the characters we see on TV? Are the sad songs we listen to the product of broken-hearted people or the cause?
But if nothing is less real than reality TV, what is the reality that that TV is attempting to portray? Does it even exist anymore?
This is no idle question. As pervasive as the online media has become, as important as our participation in that mediated world has become for our daily lives, a new medium has already appeared. The metaverse. Introduced to the public consciousness by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, the metaverse represents the apotheosis of the media revolution. Soon, the internet will not exist as a cyperspace that we access through our clunky smartphone gadget. Instead, it will be a fully realized, immersive, 3D virtual world that we can literally step into.
No matter our reluctance to enter this virtual world, we will soon, all of us, have the opportunity to enter the metaverse for ourselves, whether by putting on the glasses and adding an augmented reality layer to the world as we know it, or by strapping on the goggles and entering the cyber domain completely. And, after we do so, we may find the idea of living our lives in bare, unmediated reality will be as quaint, as unthinkable, as living in a world of smoke signals and clay tablets.
[Scenes from HYPER-REALITY]
We stand at a precipice. On one side is “reality”: the original, authentic, lived human experience.
And on the other side is the metaverse: the world of constantly mediated experience.
In the middle is hyperreality, that blurry space between the real world and the mediated world. And, living as we do on this side of the electronic media revolution, it is the only place we have ever known.
It has been suggested that the metaverse is not a space—not a virtual world that we can jack ourselves into and live a virtual life, like in The Matrix—but a time. Specifically, the metaverse is that time when our digital lives become more meaningful to us than our “real” lives. If that is the case, then who can deny that, for an increasing number of people around the world, that time has already arrived?
In this series we have examined the history of the mass media, from the Gutenberg Revolution to today. But if we don’t understand that history, then we will be like the ignorant masses identified by George Santayana, condemned to repeat a past that we cannot remember.
From one perspective, the history of media is merely the story of the development of the machinery of communciation. The movement from the printing press to the telegraph to the radio to the television to the internet to the metaverse is a story of technological progress, and each new technology brings us closer to the ideal of total communication.
But there is a more fundamental perspective, one that sees media not as a technology, but as the expression of our need as human beings to connect with others, to fight off our original state as beings cast alone and naked into the world through communion with others. But as our technology of communication begins to create its own world and as we increasingly place ourselves inside that media world, we would do well to ask ourselves, “At what point do we lose our essential nature as human beings? Once we’re jacked into the metaverse, are we still homo sapiens, or will we have become homo medias? Have we considered what that means? Do we care?”
Perhaps it’s inevitable that the curved mirror of the Gutenberg conspiracy has finally brought us here, to the black mirror at the doorway to the metaverse. Perhaps we were destined to end up here. Perhaps this is an expression of a fundamental urge that is part of human nature.
Perhaps. But it’s also good to know that this has an “off” button. That the real world still exists. That you are watching an image on a screen. And that the power to turn it all off is still in our hands.
The Media Matrix
Written, Directed and Presented by James Corbett
Video Editing and Graphic Design by Broc West
Recording Assistance: Murray Carr
Special Guest Appearance by James Evan Pilato
Series Title Theme “What Hath God Wrought” by KODOMOSAN
Transcript and links: corbettreport.com/media
Share this:
- Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
- Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
- Click to print (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
- More
- Click to share on Skype (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
Related
August 2, 2022 - Posted by aletho | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video
No comments yet.
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Featured Video
BIDEN TO END COVID-19 EMERGENCY
For more videos go to the Aletho News – Video Category
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Ukraine babies in stem cell probe
By Matthew Hill | BBC | December 12, 2006
Healthy new-born babies may have been killed in Ukraine to feed a flourishing international trade in stem cells, evidence obtained by the BBC suggests.
Disturbing video footage of post-mortem examinations on dismembered tiny bodies raises serious questions about what happened to them.
Ukraine has become the self-styled stem cell capital of the world.
There is a trade in stem cells from aborted foetuses, amid unproven claims they can help fight many diseases.
But now there are claims that stem cells are also being harvested from live babies. … continue
Blog Roll
-
Join 2,472 other subscribers
Visits Since December 2009
- 6,184,659 hits
Looking for something?
Archives
Calendar
Categories
Aletho News Civil Liberties Corruption Deception Economics Environmentalism Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism Fake News False Flag Terrorism Full Spectrum Dominance Illegal Occupation Mainstream Media, Warmongering Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity Militarism Progressive Hypocrite Russophobia Science and Pseudo-Science Solidarity and Activism Subjugation - Torture Supremacism, Social Darwinism Timeless or most popular Video War Crimes Wars for IsraelTags
9/11 Afghanistan Africa AIPAC al-Qaeda Argentina Australia BBC Benjamin Netanyahu Brazil Canada CDC Central Intelligence Agency China CIA CNN Colombia Covid-19 COVID-19 Vaccine Da’esh Donald Trump Egypt European Union Facebook FBI France Gaza Germany Google Hamas Hebron Hezbollah Hillary Clinton Human rights India Iran Iraq ISIS Israel Israeli settlement Japan Jerusalem Joe Biden Korea Latin America Lebanon Libya Middle East National Security Agency NATO New York Times North Korea NSA Obama Pakistan Palestine Qatar Russia Sanctions against Iran Saudi Arabia Syria The Guardian Turkey Twitter UAE UK Ukraine United Nations United States USA Venezuela Washington Post West Bank Yemen ZionismRecent Comments
brianharryaustralia on MHRA Caught Not Doing Its Prom… Peter on Latest IMF data shows Russia o… Peter on Russia ramps up global food… Peter on ‘Türkiye and UAE told to… Peter on Attempts by France & Germa… Peter on Merck’s Taxpayer-Subsidized CO… Peter on Ex-Pentagon Analyst Doubts Chi… Peter on Facebook and Instagram delete… papasha408 on Report: Israel commits 3,532 v… Thomas Lee Simpson on US announces first transfer of… brianharryaustralia on Drink it, snort it, smoke it –… Peter on Drink it, snort it, smoke it –…
Aletho News
- DID THE CIA SET UP NSA LEAKER REALITY WINNER? February 5, 2023
- Joint open letter to Charity Commission February 4, 2023
- ‘Beyond Dystopia’: Is a Mad Scientist Set to Become Chief Scientist at the WHO? February 4, 2023
- Drink it, snort it, smoke it – the vaccine juggernaut rumbles on February 4, 2023
- We Must Save Health from the Medical Bureaucracy February 4, 2023
- Facebook and Instagram delete Project Veritas video confronting YouTube executive over censorship February 4, 2023
- Report: Israel commits 3,532 violations in West Bank, Jerusalem in January February 4, 2023
- US announces first transfer of seized Russian assets to Kiev February 4, 2023
- Poland’s Pipedream, Redux February 4, 2023
- LAWSUIT AGAINST DR. PETER MCCULLOUGH DISMISSED February 4, 2023
- Ex-Pentagon Analyst Doubts China Would Risk Sending Surveillance Balloon Over US February 4, 2023
- Content production company for RT’s sister channel ceases operations, citing crackdown on media freedom February 3, 2023
- Is the UK Health Security Agency Careless, Trolling or Knows Something We Don’t? February 3, 2023
- Pfizer: sales before child safety February 3, 2023
- Merck’s Taxpayer-Subsidized COVID Pill Linked to New Virus Mutations, Study Finds February 3, 2023
- Why was British ISIS member ‘Jihadi George’ tried in a US court? February 3, 2023
- The Alarming Trend in Core Mortality Since the Vaccine Rollout February 3, 2023
- Douma locals, medical personnel deny veracity of 2018 ‘chemical weapons attack’ February 3, 2023
OffGuardian
- REVIEW: The Psychology of Totalitarianism February 4, 2023
- Unconditional Surrender February 4, 2023
- The Patrushev Oversight February 3, 2023
Richie Allen
- Shell Reports Record Profit Of $40 Bn February 2, 2023
- British Gas Debt Collectors Break In To Homes Of Most Vulnerable February 2, 2023
- Florida Governor Cuts Funding For University Diversity Programs February 1, 2023
- 16 Year-Old Runner Quits World Championships To Save Planet February 1, 2023
Consent Factory
- How to Memory-Hole a PSYOP January 30, 2023
If Americans Knew
- Israeli forces kill Palestinian father of newborn with a bullet to the chest February 4, 2023
- Hundreds of news reports on ‘Russian interference’ based on hoax February 1, 2023
- Author Martin Sandler says Mossad may have assassinated JFK January 31, 2023
Not A Lot Of People Know That
- Reuters Are Challenged Over Partisan Reporting On Climate February 4, 2023
- How Did Those UKCP Sea Level Projections Work Out? February 3, 2023
- BP to cut back on green shift amid booming demand for fossil fuels February 2, 2023
- The teen turning down championships for the planet February 2, 2023
No Tricks Zone
Reclaim The Net
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
More Links
Contact:
atheonews (at) gmail.comDisclaimer
This site is provided as a research and reference tool. Although we make every reasonable effort to ensure that the information and data provided at this site are useful, accurate, and current, we cannot guarantee that the information and data provided here will be error-free. By using this site, you assume all responsibility for and risk arising from your use of and reliance upon the contents of this site.
This site and the information available through it do not, and are not intended to constitute legal advice. Should you require legal advice, you should consult your own attorney.
Nothing within this site or linked to by this site constitutes investment advice or medical advice.
Materials accessible from or added to this site by third parties, such as comments posted, are strictly the responsibility of the third party who added such materials or made them accessible and we neither endorse nor undertake to control, monitor, edit or assume responsibility for any such third-party material.
The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.
The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
Fair Use
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more info go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
DMCA Contact
This is information for anyone that wishes to challenge our “fair use” of copyrighted material.
If you are a legal copyright holder or a designated agent for such and you believe that content residing on or accessible through our website infringes a copyright and falls outside the boundaries of “Fair Use”, please send a notice of infringement by contacting atheonews@gmail.com.
We will respond and take necessary action immediately.
If notice is given of an alleged copyright violation we will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material(s) in question.
All 3rd party material posted on this website is copyright the respective owners / authors. Aletho News makes no claim of copyright on such material.
Leave a Reply