The Art & Science of Metawar: How to Coexist With AI-Driven Reality Distortion, Disinformation, & Addiction in the Metaverse - Softcover

Schwartau, Winn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0996401946 ISBN 13: 9780996401944

Publisher: Winn Schwartau LLC, 2024

Synopsis

This book is about coexistence.

Metawar is the art and sc ience of creating immersive and believable experiences to influence, alter, and define one’s sense of reality. It is the battle for control over one’s belief systems, identity, and sense of reality outside one’s conscious awareness.

Great storytelling constructs an immersive, believable experience. Whether it’s radio, TV, movies, a story told around a campfire, or the infoglut of social media, the result of the orchestrated narrative is the same. Belief.Creating a reality or a belief follows these eight Steps:

• Storytelling (A compelling narrative) is fundamental to human communications and ideally creates an...
• Immersive Experience (using Voice, word, multi-media, etc.) brings the audience inside the story. It relies upon...
• Reality Distortion (Focused attention) to make the narrative convincing by the use of...
• TMI/Disinformation (Overload, confusion) to form mental images through which the story is told. Using...
• Manipulation (Emotional persuasion and influence) alters participants’ worldviews and belief systems.
• Reward (Perceived to have value) systems target the human mind with digital opioids developing an...
• Addiction (Digital, behavioral, emotional, algorithmic) to the narrative. The storyteller can then induce behaviors and...
• Compliance (Takes intended actions) to the narrative. The storyteller can then induce behaviors and...

BELIEF
(And That’s How We Drink the Kool-Aid)

Humans and technology struggle to coexist. This constant battle is reflected by six fundamental disconnects between carbon- and silicon-based systems. Some might call them human weaknesses when compared to technology.

• Information Overload (TMI) is cognitive DOS/DDoS. It causes confusion, anxiety, sleep, attention deficits, memory problems, and poor decision-making, and is the leading root cause of disinformation, BS, and loss of trust.
• Stress/Anxiety is everywhere. It causes distraction, massive time-wasting, fear of loss of power & connectivity, social acceptance, self-identity, mental health issues, technophobia, online crime, and, of course, FOMO.
• Behavioral Algorithms run much of our lives without our conscious participation. AI makes ceding control of decision-making easier than ever. The algorithms drive cognitive influence, bias exploitation, and sow distrust, but they do save time and are too easy not to use. If you believe them.
• Abuse of PIB (Personally Identifiable Behavior) will make AdTech (or complicit or evil actors) trillions at our collective expense of giving up everything that makes us us.
• Digital Addiction is effectively a government-sanctioned side-effect that delivers sensory-induced dopamine, drives emotional compulsion, and entrenches behavioral compliance.
• Time moves about a million times slower for humans than tech. Tech is always on, and it never requires sleep. We are susceptible to chronotype manipulation, and faster OODA loops always win.

The Art & Science of Metawar describes some uncomfortable truths.

The only way to avoid an existential crisis in which human individualism and identity die, is to tame human primal instincts. Because humans are built to coexist with nature and not with technology, we must adapt and strengthen our mental immune systems to defend against attacks on our cognitive systems.

Those who control the technology control the narrative.

The Art & Science of Metawar offers us hope.

Edition details

• Publisher: Winn Schwartau LLC
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0996401946
• ISBN 13: 9780996401944
• Binding: Paperback
• Illustrator: Melton Kayley
• Number of pages: 330
• Editor: Schwartau Ashley, Cobb Stephen, Levinsky Johanne