The Future of Our World: Will EVERYthing Become Monetized?
There's little doubt that the world is changing, and it seems like blockchain technology is often at the forefront of making these changes possible.
As somewhat of an "old coot," I watch all this unfold with a certain fascination, while my primary observation about what I am seeing is that we are "assigning value" to more and more things that previously were perceived to "not have any value."
We talk about things like "The Attention Economy" as a part of the evolution of the Internet; we sit here on Hive and write about our lives... and it has a value, where once upon a time "Keeping a journal" was just a private thing with purely intellectual/therapeutic value.
So now we have NFTs, which involves creating a specific value around something... and assigning it to something that doesn't actually EXIST in physical form.
Then we have the Book of Face, redeclaring itself as "Meta," with the ambition of creating a virtual world so... real... that people will actually take up permanent residence inside it.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but isn't that simply "Second Life 2.0?" And doesn't that — in turn — sound pretty much exactly like "The Matrix?"
Let's face it, we watch this blockbuster movies about breaking out of the Matrix, but somehow those alien looking creatures somehow lured people IN, in the first place... Just sayin...
Of course, "intangible worth" isn't exactly a new idea. I have been a dealer in rare old postage stamps for almost 40 years, and I recognize the slightly surreal aspect involved in selling a tiny square of paper that's 150 years old — and someone actually LICKED it — for hundreds or even thousands of dollars... however, the "proof of value" does at least have a physical counterpart.
Although it's worth might be in question, it will at least still be there, even if the planet is in a massive solar storm, or is blasted by a massive EMP.
Living where we do — in what is an artists' and writers' colony at the end of the world, which also happens to be a bit of a "tourist trap" — we get some interesting visitors here, including a fair number of "digital nomads" who sometimes park themselves here for a while.
I got to meet quite a few of them, during the years when we had our local brick-and-mortar art gallery and gift shop... and one of the interesting things I witnessed was the way there was a change in people's perception of art. For more and more people, a piece of art was no longer "an object you OWN" but increasingly "an EXPERIENCE you had."
One particularly forward-looking digital artist who came through posited that the future of art would exist along the lines of people offering a "small voluntary donation" in appreciation of seeing a piece of art that really moved them. Sounds a bit like what we're doing on LeoFinance, Hive and other communities, doesn't it? Your content is worthwhile, have an upvote...
But getting back to the "main event" here, I watch this world turn increasingly from what we might call an "object oriented" society towards an "experience oriented" society. There's still an active economy, and there is still plenty of commerce, but it's increasingly centered around the subjective experiences we're having, rather than actual "things" that are made by someone and carted around as "stuff."
Meanwhile, as "stuff" perhaps gets de-emphasized, we become less and less able to "make a living" from actually making and creating commerce with physical objects... and so we increasingly monetize things like our time, our feelings, our experiences, our creativity.
It all makes me wonder what the end point might look like... will we end up somehow monetizing everything, to the point where every person on the planet — to a smaller or greater extent — becomes someone else's "Truman Show?"
Maybe it's not that far fetched... as I recall, there have been a couple of episodes in the dystopian Sci-Fi series "Black Mirror" that take on precisely that issue... and what becomes of those who fall outside the web of "social currency."
Which brings me to the next question: Will be simply allow ourselves to relax into this comfortable "alt world" and slowly (physically) atrophy in our little VR cocoons, or will people suddenly decide that this is not actually the lives they want... so they'll unplug and go plant a garden, instead?
I don't have any answers to that question, but I do know that during this past couple of years where various lockdowns and restrictions have increased our time in front of the screens, I find myself yearning more for planting that garden, and simply being somewhere where the technology can NOT reach me.
Thanks for reading, and have a great remainder of your weekend!
How about YOU? Are we slowly drifting towards being sucked into "the Matrix?" Will Facebook's "Meta" end up eating people's brains? What will happen to people's physical bodies in a virtuality-dominated world? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
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