For a short time in the early twenty first century Second Life, and other “virtual worlds” became a matter of general interest. Pundits saw them as the beginning of the 3D web. In the last eighteen months this kind of idea has come round again as Mark Zuckerberg has insisted that people should no longer see Facebook as a social media company, but instead seee the newly rebranded Meta as a company dedicated to bringing the metaverse to life.

From 2004 Owen Kelly spent eight years researching inside Second Life and during this time he worked with staff and students at Arcada to create a large island there called Rosario where groups of students worked. From this he developed a series of ideas about the way that so-called virtual reality actually works.

In this episode he expands on a lecture he first presented at the Max Planck Society in Hamburg in November, 2018 to inquire into what Meta actually has in mind for us.

You will find a reading list and a set of useful links for this audio essay on the page for this podcast at miaaw.net.