The image above looks like concept art for a new dystopian sci-fi film. A billionaire superman with a rictus grin, striding straight past human drones, tethered to machines and blinded to reality by blinking plastic masks. Golden light shines down on the man as he strides past his subjects, cast in gloom, toward a stage where he will accept their adulation. Later that night, he will pore across his vast network and read their praise, heaped upon him in superlatives, as he drives what remains of humanity forward to his singular vision.
Except it's not from a sci-fi movie — it's from Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona, and the man is Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg. The picture trips all of our "horrible cyberpunk future" alarms, carefully put in place by everything from The Matrix to Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent. The former uses evil squid-bodied robots, the latter privileged human elites, but both works see humanity too distracted and preoccupied — by a full-scale replica of late-90s reality, or just sports on TV — to even be aware of the actions of those in charge. Zuckerberg's picture acts this out: MWC attendees plugged into Samsung's Gear VR headset literally can't see the Facebook boss as he breezes past them.
What's perhaps scarier is that Mark Zuckerberg chose to share that image himself, figuring it to be a good look. It appeared on his own Facebook page yesterday, quickly giving rise to a number of comedy copies as people spotted its inherent creepiness, and combined it with movies, dinosaurs, and that iconic Apple ad set in a similar-looking dystopian future. Mark Zuckerberg might have stolen the show at Samsung's MWC conference, but in this unfortunate picture at least, it looks more like he's planning to steal our brains.
Check out more from Mobile World Congress, including the debut of Samsung's S7 and S7 Edge:
Comments
Scary future. I still want my free Samsung VR
By milkywayer on 02.22.16 3:32am
This is one creepy photo. But regardless of anything else the creepiest thing about this photo is still Zuckerberg.
By fakejobs on 02.22.16 8:58am
The real Jobs actually admired Zuckerberg.
By vahbmas on 02.22.16 10:09am
He admired a lot of people; including the Google guys, which he wanted to go thermonuclear on.
By fakejobs on 02.22.16 10:17am
Samsung VR is weak because it is smartphone in the helmet/"glasses". Valve or Oculus/Facebook would be order of magnitude better in VR.
By UsernameAndPassword on 02.22.16 1:04pm
And an order of magnitude more expensive. And less portable.
By The_Falcoholic on 02.22.16 2:24pm
They each have their place. I have an Oculus DK2, a GearVR and I just bought a Google Cardboard headset (Viewmaster $15).
I use whichever suits the task. Last night I visited relatives and let them check out some Google Cardboard Camera pictures I took of a family gathering a while back. I used that cheap $15 headset to show them. Everyone loved it.
By Pingles on 02.22.16 3:15pm
My god, this is something. Bravo for whoever took the picture.
By Mumblefluff on 02.22.16 4:30am
I have a feeling this picture might be in our history books.. Or..VR devices in schools.. See what I did here..
By Mumblefluff on 02.22.16 4:34am
Lol people are looking waaay into this. It was a fun picture, as nobody knew he was actually on his way to stage.
By Tswfootball on 02.22.16 5:01am
Agreed. Sadly it’s an era of 24×7×365 news cycles where blogs and sites and channels have to keep churning out ‘news’ and ‘analyses’ every minute on the minute.
By vahbmas on 02.22.16 10:10am
He already stole our brains. VR is a ransom note.
By DanielREarle on 02.22.16 5:33am
By Onexy on 02.22.16 6:23am
Scowl man is unimpressed with your VR bullshit
By tipoo on 02.22.16 8:35am
By fakejobs on 02.22.16 10:10am
By athem on 02.22.16 7:29am
Best
By Doge Man on 02.22.16 5:12pm
Wow, what a turn off
By mrDavid on 02.22.16 7:39am
That picture doesn’t make you horny, baby?
By WellThatsYourOpinion on 02.22.16 3:53pm
I see the opposite:
People are doing their own thing while ignoring (being ignorant of?) the less-than-wonderful surroundings.
I despise social media and the ‘likes’ and so on, but the internet gives nearly every user the ability to mentally be AWAY from where they are physically located. A practice we already do by day-dreaming thought experiments but aided by the powerful visuals we can access.
The next great new media, in my view? Drones everywhere that can sample sight, sound, smells, weather and feed that information to VR devices. This will be used by everyone from scientists to the sex trade.
So, no, I don’t see Zuck and the drones, I see a whole bunch of people creating their own reality.
By neutral_sites_ghost on 02.22.16 8:04am
Rather than actually doing something to improve their surroundings (maybe something as simple as walking away). Also they aren’t "creating their own reality", they are accepting an artificial reality they are being fed. If you can think of a more infantilising thing I’d love to know what it is.
By Jezzer_UK on 02.22.16 9:01am
In the future our world will probably only be more over populated and polluted, fighting it would mean killing of the old and weak and giving up on eating meat or fresh food. It’s the reality no one wants to accept.
By Luuk van Riel on 02.22.16 9:15am
Or, we could evolve and stop doing that.
By TCrimson05t on 02.22.16 10:51am
That way of thinking is the reason why we are in a crowded and polluted world.
By Rivr on 02.22.16 12:58pm
I agree, but we as a civilization need to change our ways to do that. And at the rate we are going that is not gonna happen. Ignorance is still to widespread and adaption of self driving cars, insects as food and other stuff is still in the far future
By Luuk van Riel on 02.22.16 3:48pm