A Brave New Internet: Hacking the Narrative of Mark Zuckerberg’s 2021 Introduction of the Metaverse

Auteurs-es

  • Sjoerd-Jeroen Moenandar University of Groningen
  • Silvana Beerends-Pavlovic Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences
  • Bas van den Berg van den Berg The Hague University of Applied Sciences
  • Gemma Coughlan Hanze University of Applied Sciences

Mots-clés :

techlash, meta, narrative analysis, future literacy, metaverse, Zuckerberg

Résumé

We are entering an era of ‘techlash’: increasing unease with the hold of large technology companies over our lives, driven by fatalistic feelings of loss of agency. Neither attempts by these companies to address such concerns, such as appointing ethical committees and ombudsmen, nor grassroot initiatives aimed at user empowerment, seem effective in addressing this. This context remains unacknowledged in Mark Zuckerberg’s introduction of the Metaverse on 28 October 2021. We will show, however, that it is still implicitly addressed through its narrative. A far-reaching transformation of the way in which we use the internet is presented as desirable and unescapable, employing an epic narrative mode which values constancy of the individual and their mastery over their surroundings. However, this future is shaped by Zuckerberg and his company: promising agency for all, it is remarkable how little agency is given to the user. We juxtapose this smooth future vision with a counternarrative using the same narrative building stones, but told in a narrative mode distributing agency more equally. Thus, we engage in strategic analysis, exploring how to resist narratives such as the Metaverse’s. We call this method hacking the narrative.

Bibliographies de l'auteur-e

Sjoerd-Jeroen Moenandar, University of Groningen

Sjoerd-Jeroen Moenandar (corresponding author), Minorities & Multilingualism, Faculty of Arts, University of Groningen, PO Box 72, 9700 AS, E-Mail: s.j.moenandar@rug.nl.

Silvana Beerends-Pavlovic, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences

Silvana Beerends-Pavlovic, Faculty of Digital Media and Creative Industries, Creative Business and Communication, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Rheinspoorplein 1, 1091GC Amsterdam, E-Mail: s.pavlovic@hva.nl

Bas van den Berg van den Berg, The Hague University of Applied Sciences

Bas van den Berg, Faculty of Business, Finance and Marketing, Center of Expertise Mission Zero, The Hague University of Applied Sciences, Johanna Westerdijkplein 75, 2521EN, The Hague; and Wageningen School of Social Sciences, Education and Learning Sciences, Wageningen University, Hollandseweg 1, 6706KN Wageningen, E-Mail: b.vandenberg@hhs.nl.

Gemma Coughlan, Hanze University of Applied Sciences

Gemma Coughlan, International Business School, Hanze University of Applied Sciences, PO Box 70030, 9704AA Groningen; and Minorities & Multilingualism, Faculty of Arts, University of Groningen, PO Box 72, 9700 AS, E-Mail: g.k.coughlan@rug.nl

Références

Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1986. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Bibri, Simon Elias, Allam, Zaheer and Krogstie, John. 2022. The Metaverse as a virtual form of data‑driven smart urbanism: platformization and its underlying processes, institutional dimensions, and disruptive impacts. Computational Urban Science 24(2). 1-22.

Blank, Geert and Reisdorf, Bianca C. 2012. The Participatory Web: A user perspective on Web 2.0. Information Communication and Society 15(4). 537-554/

Bolter, J. David and Grusin, Richard A. 1999. Remediation. Understanding new media. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Botsman, Rachel. 2018. Dawn of the Techlash. The Guardian, 11 February. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/11/dawn- of - the- techlash (accessed 2 October 2022).

Confessore, Nicholas. 2018. Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. The scandal and the fallout so far. The New York Times, 11 October, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-scandal-fallout.html.

Cornish, Flora. 2020. Towards a dialogical methodology for single case studies. Culture and Psychology 26(1). 139-152.

Fernandez, Peter. 2022. Facebook, Meta, the metaverse and libraries. Library High Tech News 39(4). 1-5.

Forgetting Nature. 2021. About. https://www.forgettingnature.com/about (accessed 2 October 2022).

Greimas, Algirdas J. 1991. De betekenis als verhaal. Semiotische opstellen [Meaning as story. Semiotic essays]. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Greimas, Algirdas J. & Joseph Courtés. 1982. Semiotics and language: An analytical dictionary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Harrison, Roy. 2021. Forgetting nature. What is environmental amnesia? Youtube, 17 March. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEKrTa_z-zk&ab_channel=RossHarrison (accessed 2 October 2022).

Jordan, Tim. 2016. A Genealogy of Hacking. Convergence. The International Journal of Research into New Technologies 23(5). 528-544.

Korthals Altes, Liesbeth. 2014. Ethos and narrative interpretation: The negotiation of values in fiction. Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press.

Kraus, Sascha, Kanbach, Dominik K., Krysta, Peter M., Steinhoff, Maurice M. and Tomini, Nino. Facebook and the creation of the metaverse: radical business model innovation or incremental transformation? International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research 28(9). 52-77

Lapowsky, Issie. 2018. Facebook exposed 87 million users to Cambridge Analytica. Wired 4 April. https://wired.com/story/facebook-exposed-87-million-users-to-cambridge-analytica (accessed 2 October 2022).

Lively, Genevieve. 2022. AI Futures Literacy. IEEE Technology and Society Magazine 41(2). 90-93.

Liveley, Genevieve, Slocombe, Will and Spiers, Emily. Futures literacy through narrative. Futures 125. 1-9.

Mac Síthigh, Daithí. The road to responsibilities: new attitudes towards Internet intermediaries. Information & Communications Technology Law 29(1). 1-21.

Marková, Ivana, Zadeh, Sophie and Coram, Thomas. 2020. Introduction to the special issue on generalisation from dialogical single case studies. Culture and Psychology 26(1). 3-24.

Meta. 2021. The Metaverse and How We’ll build it together – Connect 2021. Youtube, 28 October. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uvufun6xer8&ab_channel=Meta (accessed 2 October 2022).

Mitroff, Ian I. and Storesund, Rune. 2020. Techlash. The Future of the Socially Responsible Tech Organization. Cham: Springer.

Moenandar, Sjoerd-Jeroen. 2013. Depraved Borderlands: Encounters with Muslims in Dutch Literature and the Public Debate. Hamburg: Peter Lang.

Moenandar, Sjoerd-Jeroen. 2017a. Narratives of Resistance and Resistance to Narrative. The Tragic Picaro as an Alternative Model for Life Stories. Global Media Journal/Australian Edition 11(1).

Moenandar, Sjoerd-Jeroen. 2017b. Introduction. In Sjoerd-Jeroen Moenandar and Lynn Wood (eds.), Stories of becoming: The use of storytelling in education, counselling and research, vii–xxviii. Nijmegen: Campus Orleon.

Moenandar, Sjoerd-Jeroen and Huisman, Krina. 2017. Towards a narrative student career counselling. In Sjoerd-Jeroen Moenandar and Lynn Wood (eds.), Stories of becoming: The use of storytelling in education, counselling and research, 127–156. Nijmegen: Campus Orleon.

Moenandar, Sjoerd-Jeroen, Duarte, Joana and Lucaci, Miruna. “Or even Frisian, yes. No, no”. 2022. The negotiation of space for a minority language in narratives by pre-service teachers. Frontiers of Narrative Studies 8(2). Forthcoming.

Murray, Michael & Anneke Sools. 2015. Narrative research in clinical and health psychology. In Paul Rohleder & Anthonia C. Lyons (eds.), Qualitative research in clinical and health psychology, 133–154. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

O’Reilly, Tim and Battelle, John. 2009. Web squared: Web 2.0 five years on. http://dgroups.org/file2.axd/45127812-6239-4448-8bb6-508dc1b1e204/web2009_websquared-whitepaper.pdf (accessed 2 October 2022).

Ricoeur, Paul. 1984. Time and Narrative. Vol. 1. Trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Ricoeur, Paul. 1992. Oneself as Another. Trans. Kathleen McLaughlin(Translator)David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Riva, Giuseppi and Wiederhold, Brenda K. 2022. What the metaverse is (really) and why we need to know about it. Cuberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 25(6). 355-359.

Robichaud, Daniel. 2003. Narrative institutions we organize by: The case of a municipal administration. In Barbara Czarniawska-Joerges & Pasquale Gagliardi (eds.), Narratives we organize by, 37–54. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing.

Sommer, Roy. 2017. Beware the Siren Servers: How Techlash Novels Like Dave Eggers's The Circle and Jarett Kobek's I Hate the Internet Make the Need for Change Feel Real. Storyworlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies 9(1-2). 51-70.

Strathern, Marilyn. 1992. Foreword: the mirror of technology. In Roger Silverstone and Eric Hirsch (eds.), Consuming technologies. Media and information in domestic spaces, vii-xiii. London: Routledge.

Su, Norman Makoto, Lazar, Amanda, and Irani, Lilly. ritical Affects: TechWork Emotions Amidst the Techlash. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 5. 179:1-27.

Van Dijck, José. 2019. Governing digital societies: Private platforms, public values. Computer law & security review 36. 1-4.

Van Dijck, José. 2021. Governing trust in European platform societies: Introduction to the special issue. European Journal of Communication 36(4). 323-333.

Herman, Luc and Vervaeck, Bart. 2019. Handbook of narrative analysis. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Viljoen, Salomé. 2021. The promise and limits of lawfulness: Inequality, law, and the techlash. Journal of social computing 2(3). 284-296.

Weibel, Peter. 1996. The world as interface. Toward the construction of context-controlled events-worlds. In Timothy Druckrey (ed.), Electronic culture. Technology and visual representation, 354-365. New York: Aperture, 354-365.

Weiss-Blatt, Nirit. 2021. The techlash and tech crisis communication. Bingley: Emerald Publishing.

Winslade, J., & Monk, G. 1999. Narrative counselling in schools. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.

Wooldridge, Adrian. 2013. The coming tech-lash. The Economist, 18 November 2013. https://www.economist.com/news/2013/11/18/the-coming-tech-lash (accessed 2 October 2022).

Zuckerberg, Mark. 2017. Building a global community. Facebook, 16 February. https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/building-global-community/10103508221158471/ (accessed 2 October 2022).

Téléchargements

Publié-e

2023-05-24

Comment citer

Moenandar, S.-J., Beerends-Pavlovic, S., van den Berg, B. van den B., & Coughlan, G. (2023). A Brave New Internet: Hacking the Narrative of Mark Zuckerberg’s 2021 Introduction of the Metaverse. Narrative Works, 11, 125–148. Consulté à l’adresse https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/NW/article/view/33454