Hello, World! Welcome to Hacking the Metaverse.
My name is Joe Litobarski.
WHAT IS THIS?
This is what used to be called a blog. I guess it’s a “newsletter” now. You can either read it here or, if you prefer, get it delivered to your email inbox (particularly if my website theme makes your eyeballs bleed).
WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?
Hacking the Metaverse is an email newsletter about democracy in cyberspace. It’s about the many ways digital technologies – such as social media, deep learning, and (more speculatively) synthetic media and extended reality – intersect with politics. It’s about trust in information and “post-truth”, hyperreality, privacy and data, competing visions of the future, and how humans construct shared consensual hallucinations. It’s about imagination, creativity, and enchantment online, and how thinking about the ways we can construct, de-construct, and re-construct realities in cyberspace might help us negotiate different realities offline.
I’m a fierce supporter of deliberative democracy and collective intelligence (and being more open in recognising the limitations of individual intelligence). As such, I can’t do this alone. I need your help (yes, you). I hope you will comment (either here or from your own corner of cyberspace) and help me learn and explore these technologies and ideas with you.
WHO AM I?
For my day job, I am the editor-in-chief of Debating Europe. I currently live in Maastricht, in the southern Netherlands, with my wife and two daughters.
My work focuses on European online deliberation; connecting citizens with experts and policymakers via digital tools and facilitated virtual group discussions, as well as planning and moderating online panels and workshops.
I have over 15 years of experience as a facilitator; earning a BA (Hons) in Conflict Resolution from the University of Bradford in 2006, then training in facilitative mediation with the Peace and Reconciliation Group (PRG) in Derry / Londonderry in 2005-6, then with Portsmouth Mediation Service in 2007.
I began blogging about European politics in 2008. In May 2011, I crowdsourced questions on The Guardian and (together with German political scientist Ronny Patz) put one to EU Commissioner Cecilia Malmström during a Justice and Home Affairs Council press conference.
Based on that experience, I started working with the think tank Friends of Europe, editing their citizen engagement project Debating Europe, an online discussion platform focusing on European politics that crowdsources questions and comments from citizens and puts them to European policymakers and experts.
On behalf of Debating Europe, I’ve interviewed thousands of politicians and experts from across Europe over the past decade, including prime ministers, presidents, government ministers, European commissioners, MEPs, and national MPs.
I regularly moderate panel discussions, focus groups, and online debates.
CREDITS
– My website uses an adapted version of the Bootstra.386 theme by Chris McKenzie (converted to WordPress by Sal Ferrarello).
– My website is powered by the wonderful, crazy engine that is WordPress.
– Thanks to the amazing Oryx for his pixel art.