There’s a concept in robotics called the uncanny valley. Basically, as robots become more and more human-like, people want to be around them less and less, the robots become uncanny. This is why robots intended to socialize with humans often have cute cartoon faces instead of lifelike animatronic ones. The cartoon faces are different enough from humans to offer some benefits of socialization without falling into the uncanny valley of a lifelike robot.

I recently came across an article that posited an analogous thing is going on in our virtual spaces. Crackling voices disassociated from a head, fake or blurred out zoom backgrounds, emoji reactions, or a head floating on your computer screen all can be uncanny when it becomes your primary mode of interacting with others. Perhaps this uncanniness is why some of us (like myself) have found 2 years of remote work to be so fatiguing.

I may be a luddite, but this all makes me concerned about the future of Web 3.0 and the “metaverse”. New tools like VR and AR offer obvious advantages to bringing people together, but I worry that if it becomes a primary mode of interaction that the uncanny valley will continue to rear its head and we’ll be no further along than when we started.