Of metaverse, literature and the changing face of modern storytelling
In this illustration photo taken in Los Angeles on October 28, 2021, a person watches on a smartphone Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveil the META logo.
Already, critics note that computer games like Fortnite and Roblox are increasingly having metaverse-like elements.
In metaverse, instead of imaginary characters described using words, there will be avatars who are icons or figures representing a person in a video game or internet forum.
“In those days I had two sets of realities; one was the ugly world in which I lived my trapped life and the other, more powerful one, was the world of books I read… It was clear I was using literature as a form of escape; I was using it as a shield against a life of grime and social deprivation... when I went to join the paper, Drum was a curious institution... it was the symbol of the new African cut adrift from the tribal reserve – urbanised, eager, fast-talking and brash... Drum had... an exciting bunch of young writers who considered it... a mark of great honour to get into trouble with the authorities as often as possible while in pursuit of fact and photograph,” so writes Lewis Nkosi in Home and Exile and Other Stories.
The literary reality and way of storytelling that Nkosi experienced through the literature of his days was through the books he read and at Drum magazine, it was storytelling using “fact and photograph”. However, this kind of storytelling is about to evolve dramatically from what Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO announced on October 28, 2021, when he hailed a new world he called metaverse.
