by Faithe J Day

As we move away from the early aughts, more documentaries, films, and television series are being created that reflect on a period that feels like yesterday. Focusing on the inventions and innovators of the time, the early 2000s have been immortalized as the internet era. And, while we have had numerous retrospectives on social media and technology focused on companies like Apple and the mystery and magnetism of founders like Steve Jobs, recently, we are learning about some of the other unicorns in the industry. Especially as more start-ups and technology companies deal with the loss of their founders (either through death or dethroning), more of these narratives tell the story of the people behind our favorite products.

For the past few months, I have gone down the rabbit hole of this particular genre. After watching the Steve Jobs content, I moved on to Apple TV+’s “We Crashed,” followed by “Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber” on Showtime. And perhaps my subconscious was taking comfort in watching Joseph Gordon-Levitt, but I was drawn to cleanse my media palette with a rewatching of the film Inception. Consequently, I could not help but notice the similarities between the film and this content focused on the role of innovation and innovators in founding some of the most well-known technology companies of this time.

Premiering in 2010, this Christopher Nolan film (and the Hans Zimmer soundtrack) was one of my favorites. However, watching Inception more than a decade after its premiere, I was immediately drawn into the philosophical commentary undergirding the plot. Even more, I was reminded of the many ways that Inception includes several metaphors for many of the social and security concerns that are being discussed regarding the development of the metaverse. Specifically, the concept of extraction and inception speaks to the rise of data mining within social media and the relationship between building and selling dreams through the technology of virtual worlds.

“Mr. Sandman, Bring Me a Dream”: Data Extraction and “Inception” Philosophy

For those who haven’t seen the film, the main plot point of Inception is that a team of individuals is hired by a businessman for a corporate espionage scheme. In the vein of typical heist films, like Oceans Eleven, the team is given an impossibly dangerous task that is only taken on due to the desperation and daring of the protagonist (played by Leonardo DiCaprio). Specifically, in the semi-fictional Inception world, there are individuals capable of entering the dream world of others to manipulate those dreams. In this case, the team is tasked with entering the dream realm of their benefactor’s competitor to influence his decision-making.

Hence, the film focuses on two activities: inception and extraction. Inception can be defined as implanting an idea into someone’s mind during a dream, while extraction removes information from someone’s mind that might be hidden or kept secret in their conscious state. And, while the team is quite skilled at the extraction process, due to the instability of the subconscious mind, inception is portrayed as a much more difficult task. However, considering inception and extraction as a metaphor, we can see how both concepts are quite common in our marketing and data-driven world.

Within the film, the only way to guard against inception is training in “subconscious security.” Similar to what some call “dream work,” subconscious security is being able to interpret your dreams by grounding yourself in reality even when you are dreaming. This grounding work is especially useful during a nightmare or any dream you would prefer to exit before its end. Subconscious security is also reminiscent of cybersecurity, as the dreamer is taught how to guard the private data stored in their subconscious mind from bad actors. However, even with subconscious security in the dream world or cybersecurity in the digital world, the reality is that it is quite easy for those with skills, training and resources to get behind the fortress of the mind.

In fact, the foundation of modern-day marketing and advertising is based on psychoanalysis and being able to anticipate or manufacture the dreams and fantasies of an audience. Using neuroscience and recommendation systems, it is easier than ever for companies to influence consumers and unknowingly implant ideas into the subconscious mind. Therefore, digital marketing combines inception and extraction. Companies gather information about you from your online habits and then use that information to influence or nudge your decision-making through persuasion and emotional manipulation.

And while we see this in small ways within social media platforms, there is even more potential for the influence of these methods in spaces where the relationship between reality and imagination is blurred. How can we guard our minds against outside influence when social media companies often know more about us than we know about ourselves? This knowledge is also being used to construct virtual environments that reflect our wildest dreams, satisfy our desires, and create new desires based on data mining.

“Building Castles in the Sky”: From “The Matrix” to the Metaverse

Inaddition to the relationship between data mining and the construction of virtual worlds, movies like Inception bring up several philosophical concerns. In the past, I have discussed the popularity of the Blackwell series of books that focus on the philosophy undergirding some of the most popular media texts of our times. And similar to the analyses of films like The Matrix, Blackwell also published a book on Inception.

This book, titled “Inception and Philosophy: Because It’s Never Just a Dream,” focuses on numerous topics, such as responses to the film from critics and scholars. With over a dozen chapters, I was most drawn to the analyses of the relationship between dreaming and reality as it relates to rationality, spirituality, and the creation of other worlds. In the background and summary of the text, these concepts are explored with the following questions:

“Can we know what is real? Can you be held morally responsible for what you do in dreams? What is the nature of dreams, and what do they tell us about the boundaries of “self” and “other”? From Plato to Aristotle and from Descartes to Hume, Inception and Philosophy draws from important philosophical minds to shed new light on the movie’s captivating themes, including the one that everyone talks about: did the top fall down (and does it even matter)?”

In this sense, Inception offers a different take on the relationship between reality and representation, as dreams are created and experienced by the dreamer. But, depending on your beliefs, our entire world is the creative imagining of some supernatural being or unseen force. And this question of creation and nature, or what is a dream and what is reality, becomes even more complicated when it comes to the study of virtual worlds.

Within the film, there is a moment in which the team is introduced to a community of individuals that purposely spend hours of their day in a state of sedation to access the dream world. Like a metaphor for dissociation or maladaptive daydreaming, the dream world they have created in their minds has usurped reality for these dreamers. Flipping the stereotypical dynamic between virtual and reality, these dreamers willingly spend more time dreaming than living. And, when we think about the role of technology in our own society, virtual environments can also be described as their own dream worlds, i.e., a means of either escaping from reality or a move towards making the real world less appealing than the virtual world.

Similar to the discussions of The Matrix and Inception philosophy, scholars have also been developing what is known as Metaverse philosophy. While watching a TedxTalk from educator and entrepreneur Jamiel Sheikh, I was drawn to how he moved past the way that we usually talk about the metaverse, i.e., NFTs, block-chain, etc and more towards the inherent value of the space. Specifically, Sheikh pushes that the benefit of the metaverse is its creative potential and the purchase and providence of artwork.

The talk then ends with an argument that reality is a shared belief system similar to the construction of language, religion, or other technologies. Hence, the philosophy of the metaverse questions the nature of reality by asserting that the same principles of the “real” world, such as a love of storytelling, belonging, and community building, are just as real in the virtual worlds being built online.

“Sweet Dreams or a Beautiful Nightmare”: Virtual Worlds as a Playground for Dream Architects

This final point also speaks to a years-long societal concern about the time consumers spend playing video games or engaging in other forms of virtual world-building, like creating online communities. The question for many is: What will happen if, and when, the time spent in these virtual worlds surpasses the time we spend in reality? Additionally, what does the investment in virtual worlds say about our society?

Is it a sign that technology and digital environments have become more interesting than the outside world or that the current demise of the world as we know it due to environmental and economic concerns makes this an opportune moment to sell consumers on building a life outside of reality?

And, while the data mining and digital labor that goes into creating these worlds are disconcerting, there is also potential in developing emerging forms of creative expression and interactivity. One of my favorite topics within the movie Inception is the concept of the dream architect. Within the film, the architect is the person who is tasked with creating the dream world through their own imagination and knowledge of urban planning and architectural design.

Specifically, there is a scene within Inception where dreaming is described as the simultaneous creation and perception of a virtual world. As individual dreamers, we are building a world and adding to it, giving credence to why some people repeatedly return to the same places in their dreams.

This particular description was also very reminiscent of the uses of augmented reality, in which a user has a wearable device that shows the real world overlaid with virtual elements. By adding these extra elements to the world, we can see how once again, anyone can use their imagination and ingenuity to truly see the world they want, especially with devices like AR glasses and mobile applications.

Like a dream within a dream, the metaverse exists as a dream world separate from or intertwined with our daily reality. Hence this dream world can be described as a playground for these new dream architects. A space where the dreamer is the protagonist, the playwright, and the production team in their own mind. Like the “prod-users” Henry Jenkins named in the Web2 world, Web3 offers users a new level of creative engagement in which they can visually realize phenomena previously only possible in the dream state.

But, creatives have not become the dream architects of these spaces. As much as we can push the metaverse as a space full of potential for individual users and content creators, the reality is that big tech is at the forefront of the space. Like the space race and the move towards conquering so many other new worlds, the more our interaction with virtual worlds is mediated by corporate entities, the less I believe that the decentralization and data ownership that these new spaces purport will be realized.

Like the concepts explored in Inception, every new technology and tool is adopted by those with the education and resources. In contrast, those without those resources become more vulnerable to being stolen from or left behind in the new digital divide. This is why we should also be questioning whose dreams are being realized in the art and architecture produced in these new worlds and how those dreams can become the nightmares for the most marginalized among us.