 I'm here at the research symposium with my friend, Jack, talking about the metaverse. Okay, Jack. Let's break this down. I feel like this is a really hot button conversation right now. Tell us why you chose to do a deep dive on the metaverse. Yeah. I chose to research the metaverse. So I've run multiple social media accounts throughout my life with tens of thousands of followers. So I've produced content that has reached millions of people and I've used these platforms extensively. So to say the least, I'm very interested in social media platforms and in my applications to the Humanities Institute, I talked about technology's effects on time and human experience. So I referenced the American author, Rebecca Solnit and her research on temporality and how technology is really affecting the way we perceive time. So I decided that when I got into the Humanities Institute, I would write about the metaverse because of the novel nature of this topic since this announcement of meta becoming Facebook or Facebook becoming meta was released in October of 2021. Yeah. Absolutely. It's so interesting. Yeah. Can you break down some of your findings from your project for us? Sure. So my project focuses on the meta rebranding. So Facebook becoming meta platforms pioneered by Mark Zuckerberg and the platform becoming more metaverse focused. So what that means is the metaverse is essentially a or will be a virtual reality and augmented reality model of the Internet. So you're not on the Internet, you're in the Internet. It's this embodied experience. So what I do is I trace the rise of big tech companies and social media platforms to the rise of neoliberalism in America around the 1970s up to today. So I look at in the past decade, the rise of surveillance capitalism, which uses human experiences and interactions on these platforms for hidden commercial practices and what that means for for us. So I look primarily at the implications that social media platforms have on our lives. So implications like this feeling that time is running out a blurring of labor and leisure time on these platforms, a new construction of the social and the individual, and then an ideology of inevitability and ubiquity. And then I finish off talking about platform discourse and the power and importance of platforms not only in the US, but globally. Wow. I feel like it is so true when you're on social media or time is just erased. So I can totally relate to that. Yeah, most people can. Yes. Let's talk about faculty. How is faculty involved in helping you with this research? Is there one faculty member that was really instrumental in this project? Yes. Anne-Marie Ittins has been kind of mentoring me throughout this project and advising me, helping me out with fleshing out my ideas and helping me out finding sources. And I've also been kind of advised by other members within the Humanities Institute and the director who urged me to research temporality and technology, Nells Pearson. Sure. So the research symposium is a great place to talk about all of your hard work. How has the day been going so far? It's been going pretty well. I've had some people stop by, some students, professors, friends to ask me about my research and let me talk about my ideas. Sure. And what's next? What's the next stage of this wonderful project? That's a great question. I'm nearing the end of the writing portion of it. It's a pretty expansive project, so I'm thinking that in the near future I can expand on a lot of these ideas because there's a lot in here and maybe create a larger project or even a book with it. Absolutely. Jack, thank you so much. Thank you. Your hard work is so impressive. Thanks for chatting with us.