Mind control: the metaverse could be the ultimate tool of persuasion

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If we've learned anything about technology over the past few decades, it's that we don't prepare for downsides until the problems are so serious that we can't ignore them. The poster child is social media, which was hailed as utopian when it first arrived but is now widely seen as a destructive and destabilizing force in society. It took more than a decade to come to fruition, but these days a large majority of Americans believe that social media has a primarily negative effect on our world.

Reasons given include spreading misinformation, hate, harassment, polarization and partisanship. Of course, nothing in the technology itself creates these problems. It is the business models behind social media that have driven platforms to arbitrate the flow of information in society, filtering and amplifying content in ways that distort the way we think. It's a form of mind control, and it's about to get worse. I'm talking about the metaverse.

If left unregulated, the Metaverse could become the most dangerous tool of persuasion ever created. I do not make this warning lightly. I've been a technologist in this field for over 30 years, starting as a researcher at Stanford, NASA, and the US Air Force, and then founding a number of early space companies. I sincerely believe that the metaverse can be a positive force for humanity, but if we wait for the problems to get serious like with social media, it will be too late to undo the damage.

To raise awareness of the issues, I have written many articles about the dangers of the metaverse and the need to protect human rights, but I have not explained from a technical point of view why immersive technologies are so much more dangerous than traditional social technologies. media. To do this, I'd like to introduce you to a basic engineering concept called feedback control.

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It comes from a technical discipline called control theory, which is the method used by engineers to control the behaviors of a system. Think about the thermostat in your home. You set a temperature goal and if your home falls below that goal, the heater turns on. If your house gets too hot, it shuts down. When working properly, the thermostat keeps your home close to the goal you set for yourself. This is feedback control.

Of course, engineers like to make things more complex than necessary, so the simple concept above is usually represented in a standard format called cont...