Paul Rogash almost seemed guilty about it, like a SkyNet engineer who knew how this was going to turn out. “It’s actually scary to me, to be honest,” he admitted on a Zoom call from his home in Bali.

The metaverse has him worried. Actually, it’s the humans.

Rogash has long observed society forgetting how much it collectively missed communal experiences during nearly two years of COVID-19 sequestration. Even in his Pacific paradise.

Tables full of friends. Not talking, not interacting. Instead, they satiate the rat plunger urges propagated by their artificial intelligence endowed phone apps. They indulged the feed. They scroll.