Snow Crash, a techno-dystopian science-fiction novel by Neal Stevenson, that has somewhat turned into the Bible for Silicon Valley tech bros did predict the growth of metaverse all the way back in 1992. Despite the author stating that he was just trying to create something, the prophetic predictions, as well as the worldbuilding of the books, have been revered for a long time. Several tech entrepreneurs and futurists- which involve Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos have put their stock in this novel’s written word.
Will Metaverse Turn Into Snow Crash’s Dystopia?
Currently, Snow Crash’s fictional depictions of a Metaverse which was oversaturated with the neon glow of commercial advertising do ring pretty true. Especially considering most of the designers of Web3 and marketers have started gearing up to process advertising in the emerging Metaverse.
Just the previous week saw Realm- an NFT platform, announcing a partnership with Alkimi, a decentralized advertising exchange. Realm went on to state that it intended to use the platform of Alkimi to incentivize its players to earn more from advertisements.
Matthew Larby, the co-founder of Realm, recently stated that the only way to avoid a techno-marketing dystopia like Snow Crash would be transparency. Advertising, as one can understand, has always been a major fundamental part of most exciting social applications. And yet the deal is bad for both- the person who creates it, as well as the person who tries to justify the cost behind it.
One needs to remember that just like it was depicted in Snow Crash, the Metaverse isn’t strictly designed as a game. Rather, it has been designed as an alternate to this reality. A place where humans would be spending increasing amounts of time. Here, advertising is pretty obvious.
