This week, we highlight a few analyses of the metaverse’s impact across industries. First, virtual reality promises to revolutionize professional training. Second, with unprecedented data collection in real-time, the metaverse will represent both an unprecedented opportunity and an unprecedented challenge – opportunity because platforms will benefit from unparalleled feedback loops, challenging because of the privacy implications. Beneath these broad trends, important players are doubling down on the metaverse. Nokia recently announced that they believe, as a company, that the metaverse will make smartphones obsolete by the end of the decade; Interpol recently unveiled the first metaverse tailored to law enforcement; and Meta and Microsoft are partnering to bring the office suite to the internet of tomorrow. Ultimately, the fate of these massive players–and the success or failure of the metaverse experiments–will shape the future of the sector as a whole.
October 24, 2022
Metaverse Highlights: Week of October 24, 2022
- It is fairly evident to most people, through their own experience, that actually doing something is one of the most effective ways of learning.
- When it comes to training, the relationship between consequentiality and active learning is important. If you want someone to learn how to perform a task that has potentially catastrophic results if done wrong, you want them to be good at it from the start.
- This is where VR is making a big impact. Students can explore a realistic environment, practice, and learn in a space where it is safe to make mistakes. To add to that, immersive learning has been shown to be just as effective as real-life training simulations.
- The recent influx of NFT-based products and investments in the metaverse has allowed many global regions to explore the limits of Web3 technology, with these cities beginning to integrate their infrastructure in the digital space.
- APAC and NAM are leading the wave of early adopters, having invested the most resources for bringing the metaverse into the public eye.
- A city that looks to the future, Dubai is emerging as a Web3 powerhouse in EMEA. It is leading the way for digital integration, with over 1,000 companies experimenting with blockchain technologies to encourage a shift away from the country's reliance on oil.
- While Meta focuses on creating virtual reality environments, companies like Microsoft and Nvidia are developing metaverse environments for collaborating and working on digital projects.
- At the same time, those who believe the future of the internet is decentralized and built on blockchain are experimenting with non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to enable ownership of digital assets and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) designed to bring digital democracy to the virtual worlds we inhabit.
- With the metaverse concept predicted to add $5 trillion to the value of the global economy by 2030, there’s everything to play for, and 2023 is likely to be a key year for defining the direction it will take.
- Metaverse media company Marvion, a wholly owned subsidiary of Bonanza Goldfields Corp. is pleased to unveil HKU CampusLand – a joint initiative with Marvel Digital AI (MDAI) and the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science of HKU.
- As the first metaverse campus with artificial intelligence among Hong Kong’s higher education institutions HKU CampusLand was developed on the Roblox platform and officially launched on 17 Oct 2022.
- As part of this initiative, students from the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science are able to interact with other students as well as faculty members. These students are also expected to take lessons and even collaborate on projects in the “edu-verse” environment.
The Spokesman Review, Nokia’s Vision of the Future
- It’s hard to imagine a world untethered from your cellphone. Unless you work for Nokia.
- The telecommunications giant sees the metaverse becoming an all-consuming technology at the end of this decade, replacing smartphones as the primary form of communication.
- “Our belief is that this device will be overtaken by a metaverse experience in the second half of the decade,” said its chief strategy and technology officer Nishant Batra, as he clutched his phone during a recent visit to North Texas.
- To a large extent, it will be up to the Finland-based company’s 1,700 employees working in the Cypress Waters development in Coppell, Texas, to turn that ambitious goal into a reality.
- Unless regulated, the metaverse could become the most dangerous tool of persuasion ever created. To understand why, it is important to introduce a basic engineering concept called feedback control. It comes from a technical discipline called control theory, which is the method used by engineers to control the behaviors of a system.
- As you may have guessed, when considering the danger of the metaverse, the system being controlled is you — the human in the loop. When you put on a headset and sink into the metaverse, you’re immersing yourself in an environment that has the potential to act upon you more than you act upon it.
- The International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) has announced the launch of its fully operational metaverse, initially designed for activities such as immersive training courses for forensic investigations.
- Unveiled at the 90th Interpol General Assembly in New Delhi, the INTERPOL Metaverse is described as the “first-ever Metaverse specifically designed for law enforcement worldwide.”
- Among other things, the platform will also help law enforcement across the globe to interact with each other via avatars, according to the announcement.
- As virtual worlds evolve, concerns are being raised about potential metaverse crimes, including crimes against children, data theft, counterfeiting, ransomware, sexual assault, and harassment.
The Daily Beast, The Metaverse is Inevitable—But Not How Mark Zuckerberg Expects
- Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, is in… rough shape. Nearly a year after its much ballyhooed rebrand, the company’s stock plummeted an eye watering 57 percent.
- At a shareholders’ meeting in May, Zuckerberg made the surprising announcement that—despite sinking billions of dollars into the metaverse—the platform “isn’t really going to be a meaningful contributor to the business until at a minimum much later in this decade.” He added that profits aren’t expected to really take off until the 2030s at the earliest.
- It doesn’t help that, after getting bullied online because his avatar on Horizon Worlds, Meta’s de facto metaverse platform, looked like it was legless character from a PS1 game, he decided to roll out the red carpet and hype the announcement that the avatars now do indeed have legs actually.
- The company formerly known as Facebook is hooking up with Microsoft to integrate the Office 365 suite into its Quest VR headset.
- “As in-person work ramps up, we want everyone to have the ability to feel like they’re present,” said Zuckerberg of the company’s shift to a metaverse workplace.
- The companies will seek to integrate key Microsoft apps with Meta’s VR and metaverse technology. From 3D renditions of Microsoft Office 365 apps to immersive Teams meetings, Microsoft is also looking at bringing virtual reality (VR) to creative projects.
Gulf Business, Metaverse Holdings Selects Dubai, Abu Dhabi as First Cities
- UAE-based Metaverse Holdings has chosen Dubai and Abu Dhabi as the first cities to be released as part of its global metaverse rollout. Their virtual environment will match authentic real-life events and locations, with a Beta version expected to go live in the fourth quarter of 2022 and become available globally shortly thereafter.
- Users globally will be able to experience both cities’ attractions and landmarks alongside real-world utilities from the comfort of their homes – merging the physical and digital worlds.
- The new platform is introducing a comprehensive real-world utility-based metaverse with full multi-device interoperability and is meant to stream swiftly, in contrast to current virtual reality applications that build small-scale, digital fantasy worlds.