"Gradually, a certain sense has been percolating in Silicon Valley that might be described as a “strange shrinking of the Utopian consciousness,” to quote the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno. Just a few years ago, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt could still profess a belief that the right approach to technology could “fix all the world’s problems.” Mark Zuckerberg could still argue somewhat credibly for the potential of “connectedness” to fight climate change, pandemics, and terrorism, and the media could still enthuse about “Facebook Revolutions.” By now, confidence in those dreams has eroded. After all the disappointed hopes, deluges of fake news and hate speech, whistleblower revelations (including those from Christopher Wylie and Frances Haugen), and various antitrust lawsuits, it’s clearer than ever that tech firms have not found the answers to society’s problems, if they were ever looking for them in the first place. In fact, their surveillance-capitalist practices have frequently meant that they themselves are a problem. In this sense, the metaverse might be seen as a logical progression: if you can’t solve problems in the real world, why not create a new one without any? Perhaps it’s not actually the users who are fleeing to the metaverse, but the tech companies themselves.”