The metaverse will be a digital graveyard

The tiny island nation of Tuvalu recently announced that it would be the first country to fully replicate itself as a virtual reproduction in the metaverse.

Tuvalu, comprising of nine small islands in the Pacific situated between Australia and Hawaii, fears that its demise is inevitable due to human-induced climate change, and wanted to preserve “the most precious assets of its people … and move them to the cloud”.

This fatalism was perhaps part publicity stunt but also part resignation, as the Pacific nation tries to grapple with the looming climate disasters that will hit islands like theirs hardest.

But the idea that it should capture a digital version of itself, a virtual ghost in the shell, belies our flawed attitude towards technology as a saviour and the narrative that new technological worlds will inevitably replace our vibrant physical one.

The metaverse promises to be (it is not yet properly built) a fully immersive, universal virtual world powered by virtual reality and mixed reality technologies. Mark Zuckerberg popularised the term in 2021, when he announced that his company would change its name to Meta and pivot its future towards building metaverse technologies.

Since then, pundits who claimed metaverse expertise emerged seemingly overnight, clamouring to get a piece of the pie of this shiny “new” phenomenon.

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