Some thoughts on the increasing amount of time spent “online”:

and to Permutation City by Greg Egan

a tale about “The story of a man with a vision - immortality : for those who can afford it is found in cyberspace. Permutation city is the tale of a man with a vision - how to create immortality - and how that vision becomes something way beyond his control.”

What needs to happen for society to spend the majority of time experiencing things digitally?

Who are the people looking to live digitally? In Egan’s Permutation City it’s a resort for the rich that promises a digital afterlife, yet the current form of avatars, digital spaces, games, streaming platforms seems to be taking on many who turned to it when the world was offering less.

Is it possible then, to have a fulfilling and sustainable digital life? Very likely so, as whole communities and relationships have formed online. But given the choice and a clean slate, it seems to be clear that reality is better since as the pandemic slowly resolves (depending on who you ask it might even be over now), the reaction among many is to go back out and see it and reconnect. But as governments and societies deteriorate the necessity of having a digital life that meets/validates/preys upon social needs could guarantee whoever takes this position as victor of global attention.

An interesting paper I remember reading as -

The Benefits of Forced Experimentation: Striking Evidence from the London Underground Network (link)

from the abstract:

We show that a strike on the underground, which forced many commuters to experiment with new routes, brought lasting changes in behavior. This effect is stronger for commuters who live in areas where the underground map is more distorted, which points to the importance of informational imperfections. Information resulting from the strike improved network-efficiency. Search costs alone are unlikely to explain the suboptimal behavior.

It’s possible that this is the crucial moment where poeple will now optimize to increase their digital presence as “informational imperfections” through news outlets and media become increasingly more pervasive. Facebook seems to think so. With escapism increasing and social mobility decreasing in the form of the “Great Resignation” - where the highly-trained and educated workforce with already a great number of opportunities optimize even more their mobility, wealth, etc., where else do people turn for an easy shot of happiness in these times?

A chilling thought, but increased metaverse development and attention towards it might actually signal an active disinterest into investing in reality, since as long as reality is interesting, the metaverse becomes less so.