Review of The End of Reality: How 4 Billionaires Are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars and Crypto (Public Affairs, 2023) by Jonathan Taplin
A clique of billionaires is destroying information spaces. Their agenda: They want to flatten the road for a vision of entrepreneurial freedom which stands in sharp contrast to democracy. They strive to drive us into technological environments in which they are kings and all the wealth is theirs. This, in short, is the message of Jonathan Taplin’s new book. And it’s not meant to be fiction.
“The End of Reality” is about technocracy as a libertarian ideology. It’s about a right-wing conspiracy to demolish democracy. And it’s about how technology is a major cause of inequality in wealth and income
Jonathan Taplin, age 76, has been a Rock’n Roll Tour Manager for Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and The Band. As a film producer, both for movies and TV, he has worked with Martin Scorsese (and others). As an academic, Taplin has been a professor and then Director of the Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication. As a writer and cultural critic, he is known for his book Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy (2017). Now, to continue the line, his new book The End of Reality: How 4 Billionaires Are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars and Crypto has just been released.
“The End of Reality” is about technocracy as a libertarian ideology. It’s about a right-wing conspiracy to demolish democracy. And it’s about how technology is a major cause of inequality in wealth and income. It’s about Elon Musk, Marc Zuckerberg, investor Peter Thiel, and Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. It’s about the metaverse, crypto, transhumanism, and plans to resettle mankind on Mars. Finally, “The End of Reality” is a great rant, full of anecdotes, quotations, and gossip. Together, all these pieces add up to a systemic picture of our contemporary condition.
Let’s focus on one major thread in this wild puzzle. “Culture leads politics,” Taplin proclaims. Not economic self-interest or detached strategic thinking, but stories and fantasies are the motivating forces that drive political engagement. Citizens who vote for right-wing parties that do not act in their economic interests at all are not proof of “voter ignorance.” Rather, they are an example of how value beliefs regarding matters like migration or sexual liberty are indeed at the core of people’s real interests.
Mordor is a technological civilization based on reason and science. Outside of Mordor, it’s all sort of mystical and environmental, and nothing works.” Even major business decisions seem to be based on fantasy and self-delusion.
This has been an established fact; at least since US psychologist Jonathan Haidt published his influential study The Righteous Mind. Taplin gives this insight another twist. In the role of an historian of ideas, he investigates how, for instance, the Italian avant-garde artist Marinetti and his “Futurism” paved the road for the fascist movement (while Marinetti’s writings, at the same time, have a strong resemblance to today’s right-wing libertarian ideas). Also, Taplin points out how fantasy fiction has shaped the thinking of the mentioned four tech billionaires. Take Peter Thiel’s telling commentary on Lord of the Rings: “Gandalf’s the crazy person who wants to start a war… Mordor is a technological civilization based on reason and science. Outside of Mordor, it’s all sort of mystical and environmental, and nothing works.” Even major business decisions seem to be based on fantasy and self-delusion. Taplin recounts at length how Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, motivated by nothing but megalomania and the quest for political power, has been a disaster for his whole enterprise. Also, the metaverse, crypto, transhumanism, and plans to resettle mankind on Mars, for Taplin, belong to the genre of fantasy since none of these plans seems likely to be successful.
All that said, it is important to make clear that, in the long run, there is a political plan and also a business agenda connected to fantasy. Concerning business, the story is rather simple. “Technology and inequality are inexorably linked,” states Taplin, thereby taking a stance against standard economic thinking, which presumes that technological progress is a rising tide that will shift all boats equally, especially middle-class incomes. The most telling example that Taplin presents is the recent enthusiasm for crypto currencies. Investment in crypto has been presented as a means by which ordinary people could acquire wealth. The simple truth is, though, that rising prices for cryptocurrencies have served more those who invested early and who therefore possess the majority of the cryptocurrencies. (It’s almost needless to say that it’s our tech billionaires who are among those winners.)
Facebook and Twitter would not be as formidable competitors to the traditional news media without the Safe Harbour agreement
But are technology and inequality really “inexorably” linked? Other stories that Taplin presents raise doubts around this strong claim that crypto wouldn’t be as powerful as it is if it had not been pre-empted by regulation from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Facebook and Twitter would not be as formidable competitors to the traditional news media without the Safe Harbour agreement, which frees social media from almost any legal liability concerning content published on these platforms. Another infamous piece of regulation was the implementation of the “newsworthiness standard,” which made it possible for Facebook to refrain from taking Trump’s bullsh*t posts offline. In all these cases, lobbyism by the four billionaires has played a major role. Regarding the newsworthiness standard, Taplin traces the origin of this agreement back to rumours about a meeting between Zuckerberg and Trump, arranged by Peter Thiel.
Concerning politics, the bond between fantasy and political agenda seems a bit tighter—at least if one sees fantasy in direct opposition to realism. Denying reality and installing some sort of fantasy in place of it, as Taplin points out, is a core element of the right wing or even fascist political movements. One key witness here, speaking clear words, is Steve Bannon: “The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with sh*t.” The strategy is not to fight this or that fact, but to make people doubt that something like that truth is even knowable. In other words, total disinformation.
The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with sh*t.
Polarization is one effect of disinformation campaigns. And social media plays a major role here. Taplin cites studies that indicate that political polarisation has risen exactly in the years 2004–2014, where Facebook has gained more and more influence. For Facebook, polarisation is part of the business model since anger increases influence.
This is how, in the end, the parts are connected. It’s all simple and mostly obvious, in a way. And still, The End of Reality does an amazing job in not only using Elon Musk, Marc Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, and Marc Andreessen as figures that allow to tell the story in a personalised way that is easy to grasp, but in showing how influential exactly these four men really are, both with their ideas and their money.
