folklorist and mother ~ living on unceded and occupied Coast Salish lands ~
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ALT Authors Davis McKenzie, Paige Raibmon, Elsie Paul, and Harmony Johnson stand outside the Museum of Anthropology at UBC
ALT Darcy Cullen, founder of RavenSpace; authors Davis McKenzie, Elsie Paul (Elder of the Tla'amin Nation), Paige Raibmon, and Harmony Johnson; and Sarah McKee of ACLS
ALT Anthropology is good for understanding the metaverse, the emerging domain of digital culture that includes virtual worlds, online games, & social media. In the wake of COVID, there has been heightened interest in the metaverse's potential, particularly after Facebook renamed itself Meta in Oct 2021. Yet current understandings of the metaverse are deeply muddled, warped by rhetorics of promotion ranging from entrepreneurial zeal to rampant hucksterism. In response, anthropology can defamiliarize ways of thinking that might otherwise take on the status of common sense. I show that the metaverse is mischaracterized when its optional aspects are repackaged as obligatory. 4 such mischaracterizations are particularly damaging: that the metaverse must use virtual reality (VR, which I rename “sensory immersion,” or SI), that it must be interoperable, that it must be massive, & that it must employ crypto. By clearing this conceptual underbrush, we can move beyond both hype & ant-hype to...
ALT Tla'amin elder Elsie Paul smokes salmon over a open fire.
ALT Signpost with four signs pointing in different directions is silhouetted against a sky with sunset colours of pink, orange, and blue. Text: "Discussion panel: Spotlight on Alumni Careers: Educational Studies Alumni in Higher Education Pathways Beyond the Professoriate" with date and time as tweeted, and UBC Educational Studies logo.
