https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ak_6LI8vAE • METAVERSE … People have always hoped for prophets who would free them from the unpleasant sides of life and lead them out of everyday slavery into a carefree paradise. In addition to religious doctrines of salvation, political prophets have become popular in the recent past. However, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Putin, Obama, Trump or Biden have not kept their promises. Now, once again, the economy comes into play with a promise of salvation. They create a metaverse for us, a parallel universe in which everything runs much more pleasantly, colorfully and smoothly than in our current life. Why they should be able to do this remains a mystery at the moment. We can already acquire plots of land and objects with the help of Non-Fungible Tokens - NFT in order to be well prepared when we move soon to the Metaverse. In the seminar we will try to find out on a practical and theoretical level how we imagine our self-designed metaverse, what rules apply there and what possibilities exist, what it looks like in practice and how we want to see ourselves represented there. We don't wait for corporations to tell us how to use technology, but use our design skills to decide for ourselves how we imagine a future.

A double life is characteristic of us humans, on the one hand through our physical existence and presence in a specific space at a certain time, and on the other hand in our ability to develop imaginary ideas that accompany us independently of time and space. Anyone who wants to influence the lives of other people can either try to change the concrete living conditions or invent imaginary worlds that keep people trapped in their thoughts and feelings. The development of virtual worlds, which, depending on the level of development of technical possibilities, can also be perceived as a form of social coexistence. Various corporations are currently striving to develop technologies and services that are intended to offer new possibilities for developing, sharing and »inhabiting« virtual worlds. Therefore, the question arises as to who is allowed to participate in the concrete development of these worlds and to what extent, or do we only get the choice to use one of the given environments and the associated structures. Are these developements by individual corporations just further attempts to subjugate and exploit people? How could a joint development of such worlds look like? In what form do we want to be present in such environments? What advantages do we actually see in the development of a metaverse? Do the disadvantages resulting from such a technological development bear an acceptable relation to the potential advantages? Were the mighty Amounts that are currently being invested in these developments shouldn't they be better spent in other areas? – http://www.hanzer.at/metaverse.html

The following is used for grading: Attendance and active participation in class. Submission of a concrete concept for a personal metaverse.

Recommended reading:

Andreas Dripke, Marc Ruberg, Detlef Schmuck: Metaverse: Was es ist. Wie es funktioniert. Wann es kommt. 2021 • Michael Seemann: Die Macht der Plattformen: Politik in Zeiten der Internetgiganten. 2021 • Jaron Lanier: Anbruch einer neuen Zeit. Wie Virtual Reality unser Leben und unsere Gesellschaft verändert. 2017 • Jaron Lanier: Wem gehört die Zukunft?: »Du bist nicht der Kunde der Internetkonzerne. Du bist ihr Produkt.« 2014 • Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans: Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence. 2018 • Adrian Daub: Was das Valley denken nennt. Über die Ideologie der Techbranche. 2020 • Thomas Ramge, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger:Machtmaschinen: Warm Datenmonopole unsere Zukunft gefährden und wie wir sie brechen. 2020 • Frank Schirrmacher: Technologischer Totalitarismus: Eine Debatte. 2015 • Shoshana Zuboff: Das Zeitalter des Überwachungs-kapitalismus. 2018 • laus Viertbauer, Reinhart Kögerler:Neuroenhancement. Die philosophische Debatte. 2019