Mr. Roger's puppeteer warns that the Metaverse is coming for our children

Blazing Reader,

Remember Susan Linn? She was the puppeteer for Audrey Duck on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood....

Today, she's a child psychologist — still focused on nurturing children's emotions and imagination, while writing books warning parents about the dangers of screen time.

In an interview on The Sport of Life podcast, she shares a story of being on a panel with a high school teacher talking about video games.

"You know," said the teacher, "I live in New York City and my daughter has never built a tree house until she built one with Minecraft."

To which Linn couldn't help replying, "Well, she still hasn't built a tree house."

Despite acknowledging some positives to Minecraft's world-building platform, Linn laments, "I mean the idea that we don't differentiate between what happens on a screen and what happens in real life... that's bizarre and troubling."

She then drops a warning:

"And one thing that is... happening now, that we all have to be braced for, is the metaverse. Which is going to be more compelling than the screens are now and more lifelike. But it's not real-life, and it is controlled by corporations."

Linn's words almost sound like they are describing Metaverse Inc. — the virtual reality company I depict in my near-future novel, All the Humans Are Sleeping:

“The greatest obstacle to making the Metaverse commercially viable was consumers’ reluctance to allow cybernetic ports to be inserted into their brain and spine. The nuclear holocaust, however, turned everybody into willing volunteers. Metaverse Inc. stocks soared after the bombs finished falling.”

“The appeal of the Metaverse was somewhat innocent — the love of a child for fantasy, creativity and imagination.”

“The Metaverse soon realized that speed and frequent change were principal factors in keeping human brains engrossed in its virtual landscape. Dopamine hits were easily earned and quickly evaporated. Real life is often slow and redundant.”

"He was sure the Metaverse was not what humans needed. That it had become a drug that they neither had the willpower, nor the wisdom, nor the freedom to part with."

The slow and reflective pace of Mister Rogers' Neigbourhood was a rebuttal to the hyper-stimulating cartoons and action films kids were exposed to in the 70s and 80s. Likewise, All the Humans Are Sleeping is a rebuttal to the incomparably more intense digital entertainment children face today.

Ken McCarthy, founder of Brasscheck TV, calls All the Humans Are Sleeping a "remarkable book, all the more so because it was conceived before... Zuckerberg went Metaverse crazy.... the dystopian world Manley has summoned up is chillingly plausible. Forewarned is forearmed.”

Forewarn your friends and family by purchasing ebooks, paperback or audiobook copies at AllTheHumansAreSleeping.com (or send them there to get the first 24 chapters for free).

—John C.A. Manley

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona, All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of philosophical fiction that are "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life." Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber.