So true. thanks for posting. Ironically, there is some new technology, which might at first appear to be potentially even more immersive, intrusive, addictive, dehumanising, and dystopian than ever. But it actually has the potential to be the opposite, enabling and encouraging once again sustained eye-to-eye first person interactions, in both the real and virtual worlds.

Specifically, non-profit AR social media.

The must-have personal communication device of the future is likely to be AR wearables, for many reasons.

Like it or not, this will come, one way or another.

That type of tech enables people to maintain focus on the people they might be physically socialising with, whilst at the same time maintaining focus on their online networked friends, all together as one big happy or not so happy group, regardless of location. No longer any need to switch gaze between those in our physical world, and those in our cyber world. All can communicate together with no apparent break in attention.

Whether or not that technology turns out to be dystopian, is all down to whether or not the network and associated algos it is connected to it is profit driven.

If it is profit driven, we should expect all of the problems of current profit driven social media to be massively amplified, thus near perfect dystopia.

If it is not profit driven, then we should expect all of those problems to be reversed, thus near perfect opposite of dystopia.

If we want it to be non-profit, then we need to drive it, ensuring it is implemented as non profit first, before the final monopoly does, because after that, there will be no option to change.

The project I am working on, VRENAR is non-profit, for that reason.

I keep banging on about this in forums like this in an effort to draw folks attention to that very simple fact, because there seems very little other opportunity to educate folks on the difference, a non profit project has zero funds for promotion, or anything else, so must attract much needed support and funds to the project. The project really needs some champions other than just me.

If people want it to happen, it really needs support, otherwise, we should all look forward to dystopia.