Social media users and the business world now have a general idea of what the metaverse is, thanks to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s year-long seeding of the term on investor calls and subsequent renaming of Facebook to Meta. Companies as varied as Disney, Bumble, Tencent, the Warner Music Group and others have followed Zuckerberg’s lead by using “metaverse” as a strategic talking point when discussing an internet based on virtual objects and avatars in the coming years. Read More

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Web3 is based on the premise that each internet user will have a unique internet identifier, like an email address, that can be natively linked to any piece of software and stored on a blockchain. As part of someone’s “decentralized identity,” a portion of a person’s online activity would then be “on chain,” meaning that it would be public and easily searchable via their individual crypto wallet. 

With such decentralized identity — a readable history unique to each person — one’s crypto wallet would function as a sort of profile, similar to Facebook or LinkedIn. But unlike web2 profiles, decentralized identities are backed by hard evidence: a permanent, timestamped record of a person’s accomplishments, contributions, interests, and activities to date.  Read More

Barbados’ plans to claim sovereignty over digital land remain inscrutable.

This morning, my colleague Andrew Thurman put out a piece for this website about the government of Barbados, and its plans to establish a so-called “metaverse embassy.”

The metaverse is a kind of multiplayer social space in virtual reality; think Second Life or Playstation Home – a place where virtual people live virtual lives, entirely on a screen. Proponents say it’s like a copy of the real world, only better, since users don’t have to abide by the laws of physics. For skeptics, it’s cringey at best and dystopian at worst: a comprehensive new framework for digital surveillance and intrusive advertising. Read More

Some people are excited to see realistic avatars that look like them. Others worry it might make body image issues even worse.

In Facebook’s vision of the metaverse, we will all interact in a mashup of the digital and physical worlds. Digital representations of ourselves will eat, talk, date, shop, and more. That’s the picture Mark Zuckerberg painted as he rebranded his company Meta a couple of weeks ago.

…If avatars really are on their way, then we’ll need to face some tough questions about how we present ourselves to others. How might these virtual versions of ourselves change the way we feel about our bodies, for better or worse? Read More

More than a year and a half into a global pandemic that forced workers around the world to abandon their offices and learn to collaborate online, Microsoft productivity experts have observed two trends: remote workers are far more efficient than most business leaders ever imagined, and they miss each other. They miss hallway moments, kitchen catch-ups and chance encounters. They miss the body language from across the conference room table that says things that can’t be said.

… Microsoft today has unveiled a solution to this problem that begins rolling out in 2022: Mesh for Microsoft Teams. The feature combines the mixed-reality capabilities of Microsoft Mesh, which allows people in different physical locations to join collaborative and shared holographic experiences, with the productivity tools of Microsoft Teams, where people can join virtual meetings, send chats, collaborate on shared documents and more. Read More

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