Klaus Schwab, founder and longtime manager of the planet economical Forum, is the author of the paper entitled: "Fourth Industrial Revolution", which outlines the direction of the world's economical and technological development. The fundamental meaning of this survey is that the planet will strive for an ever-increasing combination of digital and substance technologies (organic and inorganic) based on cognition of primarily biomedicine, neuroscience and the improvement of artificial intelligence (SI). It is clear from the imagination presented there that this will besides have a immense impact on the planet of work – on the professions that will be in the future, as well as the way in which work is organised and performed.
One of the changes that we experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic was the spread of the form of distant work, which has already, at least in part, been implemented permanently in many workplaces. This is the slow preparation of the planet of work – at least the part of it that does intellectual work – for a complete “move” to the digital world. The flagship task in this context is the Metaverse which has been extensively promoted by the planet economical Forum for many years.
What is Metaverse?
Metaverse (Metaverse, Metaverse) is simply a virtual planet concept that combines elements of expanded reality (augmented reality, an expanded reality is simply a strategy that connects the real planet with the computer generated), virtual reality (virtual reality, an image of artificial reality created utilizing information technology), social media, games and cryptocurrency, creating a coherent, interactive space for users. In Metaverse users can make avatars, research three-dimensional environments, participate in events, work, store and interact with others in virtual space (behind: Wikipedia).
According to the imagination of the 4th industrial revolution, in the future, workers would only be in specified a space, in digital offices, looking like real ones,
where they would sit at their desks, hold meetings and even spend free time together, in a virtual bar or on virtual “integrative” trips. So the worker would have no real contact with real people that he would most likely never see with his own eyes. The following evidence shows that this imagination is no longer just part of "science-fiction", but is consistently implemented.
As we read on the website Ministry of Digital Affairs in a Communication published on 04.10.2022."The Metaverse will shortly become a fresh branch of the economy – it will make millions of jobs in the world, including our country. Therefore, from the very beginning Poland will participate in the improvement of this technology. Industry, banks, clothing brands are already creating their products by observing and analyzing this trend. The metaverse is simply a large chance for Polish companies – those businesses that consciously and responsibly want to co-create this fresh virtual environment. “The dynamic improvement of Polish companies utilizing the world’s most modern technology solutions is simply a driver for our economy. The Polish government supports innovation and the improvement of fresh technologies. I am convinced that cooperation between global technology brands specified as Meta and innovative Polish companies specified as VR Heroes, with the support of public administration, is the best way to enter Poland as a pioneer in the usage of large-scale virtual reality."
However, from 5 April 2023 to 3 May 2023. The European Commission has consulted on the imagination of a fresh virtual universe (metaverse)"in which respect for digital rights and EU rules and values is the guiding principle. The aim is an open, interoperable and innovative virtual world, safe and trustworthy for both citizens and businesses."
European Commission and virtual worlds
In July 2023, the European Commission adopted a fresh strategy on Web 4.0 technology and virtual worlds to give direction to another technological transformation.
In the Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European economical and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions "EU initiative on Web 4.0 technologies and virtual worlds: a good starting position for the next technological transformation" (COM/2023/ 442 final) it is said that " Web 4.0 technology will initiate a breakthrough technological transformation that will lead to a planet where everything will be seamlessly connected. The European Council called on the European Union to play a leading function in the improvement of Web 4.0 2 . Virtual worlds are an crucial component in the transition to Web 4.0. ... Virtual worlds will be an crucial aspect of Europe's digital decade and will affect citizens' regular lives and jobs, the process of creating and sharing content, as well as the way companies operate, implement innovation, produce products and interact with customers."
Further: “Virtual worlds are a sustainable, business environment based on technologies specified as 3D and an advanced reality that allows physical and digital worlds to be combined in real time for many different purposes, including design, simulation, cooperation, learning, social gathering, transaction or entertainment. (...) Web 4.0 is the planned 4th generation of the planet Wide Web. Through the usage of advanced artificial intelligence and advanced intelligent environment, the net of Things, trusted transactions in the block chain, virtual worlds, and the possibilities offered by the reality of enhanced digital and actual objects and environments can full connect and communicate with each other, which provides users with a truly intuitive, immersive experience in which the physical planet is seamlessly connected to the digital world." The paper points to the basic opportunities, risks and opportunities for action related to this technology.
From 12 February 2024 to 18 March 2024, recruitment for the EU pilot task Space for the Universe – the virtual planet and the transition to Web 4.0 was ongoing. On the another hand, European Commission website on the EU Digitalism Strategy information on various conferences, meetings, projects related to supporting the construction of the Metaverse by the EU institutions.
The above information indicates that decisions to implement this task have already been made, and what Klaus Schwab wrote about respective years ago in his work on the 4th industrial revolution becomes a real (?) reality.
This task is already being implemented by the European Commission, traditionally working closely with the planet economical Forum.
Moving humanity to a virtual world
It is impossible to discuss all the consequences of specified a "relocating" humanity to the virtual planet – many consequences we cannot even imagine for the time being – we will only point to a fewer selected aspects.
One of them is, of course, the full dependence of the planet of work on owners, managers or administrators digital platformwho will be able to decide whether to be or not to be full companies or individual employees.
In a situation where workers do not know each another physically and will only see their avatars, there is simply a question of building horizontal relationships between workers, which may be crucial in the context of, for example, the functioning of trade unions. Theoretically, employers may be curious in the fact that it is impossible for employees to make contact outside the company channels, strictly controlled by employers.
The deficiency of real links between employees may weaken their position in the company. In utmost form it can take the form of something like digital slavery.
The deficiency of real interpersonal ties can have wider effects in the intellectual and emotional spheres of people, brought into something like “data generators”. There is besides a question of adapting the human tense strategy to this way of functioning permanently. As Klaus Schwab wrote in the above mentioned position, the 4th industrial revolution can force us to redefine what we mean by human nature.
Other technologies are besides associated with the Metaverse, which will have a immense impact on the planet of work, in the context of its expanding dematerialisation.
Remote operations; control of drones or androids, performing physical work; the net of bodies and things enabling wellness diagnostics through a measuring apparatus in the form of smartwatches, home scanners and another apparatus, transmitting data to the respective centres; or yet a large subject of artificial intelligence and professions that are to vanish in the future – are just slogans showing that the planet can look completely different in a fewer decades.
Real reality as an alternative
Someone might ask the question – should we someway act against it, halt the improvement of these technologies, and if so – how? It seems that stopping these processes is no longer possible.
What we can do, however, is consciously build an alternate – real reality, a community of people consciously gathering in a material, physical world, performing physical professions – even after virtual work – able to exchange products, services, skills.
The basis for specified actions must be a deep knowing of the nature of the processes in which we are pushed from all sides. First of all, we request to realize that at the heart of our efforts to dematerialize our planet are certain philosophical or even spiritual beliefs of the creators of fresh technologies. Let us callback that the word avatar itself comes from Hinduism, and as we read on Wikipedia, Avatar (also Avatar) or descent, descent, incarnation, in Hinduism means the incarnation of a deity that descends from heaven to earth in the form of mortal—human, animal or hybrid. At the heart of the dematerialization of the modern planet lies the typical for many east philosophies the belief that the material planet is only fiction, delusion, illusion, and actual spiritual improvement is to trust on escape from matter. For those taking this claim, there is no fundamental difference between the physical planet and the virtual simulation of specified a world.
As you can see, and what may be a large surprise for many readers, we are touching a profoundly philosophical issue here, and 1 about which the dispute has been about for over 2 1000 years between the East and the West (idealism vs. realism). I am not going to settle this dispute here, I am simply pointing to its existence and the request for a loud discussion on this issue.
My own conviction is that even if spiritual improvement takes place through expanding release from materiality, the improvement of human consciousness takes place through the material planet and its processing.
Depriving people of contact with surviving substance will lead to the failure of individual identity and virtually breeding people without self-consciousness I, who are only and only data generators in the era of what Yuval Noah Harari called dataism. As many critics of the expanding power of large Tech point out, this could mean colonialism of a fresh kind – after land exploitation (feudism), then exploitation of work (capitalism), the era of "data exploitation" or people generating this data (technofeudism).
Man – like in the movie Matrix – will be brought to a biobot, connected to modern apparatus and generating artificial simulation of reality, without the right to freedom, to decision in the physical planet (like breeding animals in cages). For supporters of the thesis, that the planet is just a simulation, the right to live in the womb of actual nature can be a unnecessary and harmful desire (which primarily generates losses in the digital world).
For those who admit that materiality is simply a part of human nature and that man has a natural right to live in full accord with his nature, including material nature, as for example for Christians, for whom Christ's coming into the planet was an act of recognizing the value of substance as something as divine as the immortal soul – specified a gnostic or Hindu imagination of the planet is unacceptable.
I point out here this issue to make the honourable Readers aware that this is more than just about what the planet of work will look like in the 1950s.
There's a large conflict going on about how we're going to specify man and human nature in the 1950s.
Whether we will see in man an entity with a natural dignity, or just a cluster of digital technology and organic matter, with which stronger ones can do whatever they want. From this, it will depend to the top degree on the form of the planet of work in the 1950s – not on technology, but on our philosophical, religious, worldview beliefs about the nature of man.
