Humanoids + Metaverse = Metanoids?

Max Thake
2 min readJan 23, 2022

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More questions than answers.

Tesla announced plans for a humanoid robot called Optimus, which will be able to do "dangerous, repetitive and boring", such as providing manufacturing assistance.

Meanwhile, the metaverse allows people to control avatars in the digital world and see, feel and hear what they do. Smell and taste are coming.

What if put them together?

Will it be possible to control a humanoid in the real world, remotely from anywhere via the metaverse?

Will it be possible to do anything, go anywhere, without human limitations, from our own homes?

The metaverse is currently advanced, but not quite there yet. But the metaverse in 25 or 50 years? There is little doubt that it will eventually be indistinguishable from real life.

Humanoids are currently limited by all kinds of things. Regulation is an obvious one. But in 50 years? 100?

Where would this leave us on the cyborg spectrum?

If the experience in the metaverse is indistinguishable from reality, and humanoids are able to all things a human can and more, would we be able to live out meningful existences as nothing more than brains in jars? Does that have any implications on immortality? At what point is the entity no longer human?

Lots of questions. Few answers. What do you think?

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Max Thake

Building the Web3 machine economy — and writing about it too. | peaq co-founder | https://linktr.ee/maxthake