What happens when chatbots replace their neighbors and the virtual world becomes more attractive than the real thing?
With their new book, Society without People: The Social Implications of Metaverse and AIDr. Justin Nelson, Associate Professor of Sociology at Campbell University, and Dr. Christopher Peeper, Senior Lecturer at Sociology at Baylor University, ask questions needed at this pivotal time in history:
How do we maintain the dignity of human beings in the world, increasingly mediated by machines?
Society-free Society, published by De Gruyter, offers a drastic and accessible analysis of how emerging technologies, particularly generative AI and immersive virtual worlds, reconstruct the meaning of identity, community, and human connections. In their book, Nelson and Piper argue that these tools are not merely technical novelties, but powerful forces that reorganize our social fabric.
“All technical issues will eventually be resolved,” writes Pieper and Nelson. “Many problems take a lot of time.”
From the formation of virtual identity and algorithmic governance to the ethics of digital personality, the book explores how society is evolving under the influence of platforms, avatars and artificial agents. We present a provocative theory of gamism, the idea that game logic can become the dominant ideology of our digital future.
“This is not a dystopian warning,” details Nelson, an associate professor of sociology at Campbell University, “a call for understanding how our lives are changing and being thoughtful and ethically involved in those changes.”
“This book is about asking deeper questions. What kind of society do we build and who will participate?” Peeper says.
Another feature that sets the book apart is the sketches of three plausible future scenarios for each aspect of society the author investigated. These scenarios are identified as utopia (the best possible outcome), dystopia (the worst possible chance), and balanced (a combination of positive and negative impact). Nelson and Piper emphasized that while many books on the future contain predictions, they usually reach a single vision.
“We try to think about it from a range of probability rather than from an exact event or timeline,” Nelson added. “The goal is not to be right or wrong from a prediction perspective, but to thoroughly explain the entire scope of social impact that may occur if a particular scenario is realized. I feel this is a much more valuable social contribution than winning the Prophet Award.”
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