A
The book makes a strong case that Zuckerberg, Thiel, Musk and the oft-forgotten fourth of horseman of the technocratic apocalypse Andreesen would condemn all Americans to live as human debit cards making micropayments in their virtual realities, both an actual one, the Metaverse, and a virtual one, ironically, that of real life itself as they've reconfigured it..
The book can feel a bit thin and repetitive at points, and it misses some opportunities, such as Andreeson being pressed on a podcast to describe exactly what the Metaverse is and being unable to really do so. (My take: It's an amusement park with no rides, food or fun, where you can talk briefly with strangers, most underage, about the lack of rides, food and fun.) I also wanted to know more about how they would compel people to join the Metaverse, such as whether FB will give VR goggles to certain schools the way Google gave out Chromebooks and Microsoft gives poor countries Office in order to create lock-in.
It's very strong, though, in showing how all four, especially the arguably neofascist Thiel, would turn America into an autocracy run by Trump if it would make them a dime--and they are counting on making way more than that. That said, it also shows that they are all profoundly incompetent despite their wealth. Zuck can't stop the slow MySpacing of FB as a result of it becoming an echo chamber of bigotry and rightwing revanchism. Musk is blowing up Twitter in a way that will take down Tesla too while his rockets have a terrible habit of simply blowing up. Thiel's Palantir couldn't find an apple on an apple tree. And Andreesen seems to excel at throwing good money at bad ideas, then throwing more good money at them. Their only real skill at this point it seems is sucking money out of the U.S. military for their hare-brained schemes, such as creating a colony Mars instead of fixing the dying Earth.
That this book is so up-to-date is remarkable when so much is changing so fast. For instance, today the wonderful newsletter Patent Drop reported that Facebook "is seeking to patent a method for tracking user engagement with content in an artificial reality space. This tech monitors user movement through a virtual reality environment, then displays additional media throughout the space depending on where you are. Along with placing ads where you move your avatar, this system also tracks engagement with those ads, checking metrics like 'minutes of experience,' interaction with the content such as shares or likes, body movement and face gestures during the experience. If you interact with an ad for a certain amount of time, have a certain reaction, or even just move past it slowly enough, this system will pick up on those nuances and feed you similar ads. It’s just like how targeted ads work on its main social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, except more intense." In other words, exactly what Taplin is predicting.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the early look.
Quillysgirl