Meta

I plan to continue to use the word meta in its traditional (since 1988!) sense. I will not cede this word to Mark Zuckerberg.

[No, thanks.]

I presume the blue loop is meant to suggest infinity. I prefer to think of it as pair of handcuffs. Lemme out, Mark! Or maybe it’s head hitting itself against a mirror. Again, lemme out, &c. Elaine sees a Möbius strip. (Go back two sentences.)

I thought the following image was someone’s joke, but it’s credited to Facebook. Look! Mark is choosing an avatar. And I think of the Bhagavad-Gita: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

[Poverty of imagination, with everything at its disposal. This is progress?]

I doubt that Mark Zuckerberg has read Steven Millhauser’s 1996 novel Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer, which might serve as a cautionary tale about the difficulty of replacing one world with another. Talk about handcuffs and mirrors.

[The Zuckerberg presentation is here. But I’m done thinking about the (so-called) metaverse.]