{"id":4684,"date":"2021-11-08T16:04:05","date_gmt":"2021-11-08T14:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/?p=4684"},"modified":"2021-11-08T16:14:38","modified_gmt":"2021-11-08T14:14:38","slug":"metaverse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/metaverse\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s in a name? M\u03adta and the metaverse dystopia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

m\u03adta | Centre for Postcapitalist Civilisation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coincidences may be hilarious, or, from another point of view, revelatory. And one can never be certain it was by pure coincidence that Mark Zuckerberg decided to rebrand Facebook’s parent company as meta, giving his new venture a name almost identical to that of our m\u03adta \u2013 the Centre for Post-Capitalist Civilization. All the more so, since he has already named \u201cDiem\u201d his company’s cryptocurrency in the making…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But naming disputes are for corporate-minded copyright holders. On our part, we are only delighted to stress the contrast of values and intentions brought forward by this odd similarity of brands. For Mark Zuckerberg’s \u201cvision\u201d validates our core argument: that a post-capitalist dystopia is emerging all around us, a state of affairs that urgently needs to be challenged by our struggles for emancipatory alternatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meta’s rush to the \u201cmetaverse\u201d phantasmagoria depicts what the newly coined term \u201ctechnofeudalism\u201d stands for:\u00a0privatising, exploiting and radically enclosing the whole of our social interaction and lived experience \u2013 pushing the digital\/analogue divide to the point of a class apartheid with unheard of anthropological connotations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In that sense, we owe many thanks to Mark Zuckerberg for (unintentionally) highlighting the relevance of the post-capitalism debate. Hence, we suggest a preliminary reading\/viewing list for those inclined to follow m\u03adta’s endeavour in theory, politics and art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slavoj \u017di\u017eek and Yanis Varoufakis on techno-feudalism:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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