In the age of information, meta-reference is the soul of wit. It’s not a funny picture in and of itself, but because of all the uses of that same picture before it, and the self-aware extra layer that the latest caption lays on top ofit.
Memes, for instance, are especially given to meta-reference – their meaning, and their humour, derive from their creators’ and viewers’ shared awareness of the template’s foregoing iterations. Just as every academic takes a secret delight in the arcane jargon of their discipline’s meta-theory, so does each participant in discourse relish the performance of self-awareness that we call meta – everyone wants to be in on the joke. Relatedly, in colloquial English, meta has become an adjective, which essentially means extremely self-aware, self-reflective, or self-referential– as in the phrase, "that’s so meta". This shows up in academic discourse, when it gets tacked on to the front of various terms and concepts – metalanguage, metaethics, and so on – when theorists of a given discipline theorise about the parameters of the discipline or concept itself. And by extension from that, it now refers to a conceptual layer of something that is beyond or transcendent of the thing itself, and is hence denotes self-awareness or self-reflection. One can see how these spatially relational meanings pertain to the recently coined "metaverse" – it refers to a reality existing alongside, upon or beyond the confines of the supposedly primary reality that preexists it, a transcendence of what came before.īut this qualitative aspect of "transcendence" – the connotative aura which makes Meta such a ponderous choice of brand name – did not always attach to the word, and in fact may have glommed onto it only by virtue of an historical accident.īecause of the exalted status of metaphysics (both the book and concept) among the concerns of later Western philosophy, the prefix meta- came to be associated with transcending, comprehending and encompassing. In general, meta- can also denote a change of place or state, as in metamorphosis. A metaphor, for instance, is literally an act of carrying (phora) something beyond (meta). It derives from the Greek μετά, which encompasses a wide array of meanings, such as "with", "after", "alongside", "on top of" and "beyond". (Meta is not the first company to appropriate a preposition I can no longer think of the German über without thinking of taking a ride somewhere.) One may wonder whether this consideration factored into Meta’s rebranding process – that the origin of the concept with which they’ve made themselves synonymous is so distinctly tinged with sci-fi ominousness, and the spectre of worldwide corporatocracy.īut the prefix itself, meta-, was originally an innocent preposition. Reality is dominated by malevolent mega-corporations who have privatised every sector of human life, and the Metaverse is fraught with danger, intrigue and corruption. The term metaverse was coined by Neil Stephenson in his 1992 novel Snow Crash, a speculative epic whose action takes place in two parallel worlds – primary, physical "Reality", and the online, virtual "Metaverse" existing alongside it. The unseen 'slow violence' that affects millions.Social cryptomnesia: How societies steal ideas.Generational amnesia: The memory loss that harms the planet.Indeed, much ink (or rather, many a pixel) has recently been spilled over precisely this question – what is a metaverse? And is it a good thing?īut let's explore these questions by asking a more fundamental, and lexical one (a meta-question, if you will): what does the expression meta mean, and what does it symbolise? And what does that have to do with Facebook's new name and vision? Worlds such as this already exist, with games like Minecraft, Roblox and Second Life, which to varying degrees merit the name of "metaverse", depending on whom you ask and how it’s being defined. Meta’s metaverse will apparently entail augmented, virtual and mixed reality technologies, to effectuate an immersive online experience – an " embodied internet", where users are not just scrolling, posting and commenting, but interacting in a fully-realised computer-generated world. In the wake of Facebook's recent rebranding, we've been hearing a lot about the word meta.įreed from its usual role in English as a prefix in words like "metaphor", "metastasise" and "metamorphosis", it now stands alone as a proper noun, the new name of a social media monolith with the self-declared purpose of ushering its users into the "metaverse".
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