Spatial News™ #024
This week we're all about metaverse, Web3, Blockchain, P2E (Play-to-Earn) gaming, XR for the travel industry, OpenXR, VR events and more!
Welcome to Spatial News™ where we Play-to-Inform! “Games shouldn't only be fun. They should teach or spark an interest in other things.” -Hideo Kojima, legendary video game auteur
2 Reasonable Takes on the Metaverse by some Major Playas
(Yeah, yeah, I said the ‘M’ word, sue me.)
For Niantic CEO John Hanke
“this fully-immersive future is ‘technology gone wrong’”. Why? Read on.
Snapchat’s Evan Spiegel
calls “Facebook’s ‘metaverse’ ambitions as ‘ambiguous and hypothetical’” and says that Snapchat is “committed to augmenting the real world rather than replacing it”.
Thanks to Tom Ffiske for sharing this one.
Why Blockchain?
Andy Martin of DAO Tokenomics fame (see SN #020) answers the question on everyone’s minds.
“So what is the problem fixed by web3?
"Web3 makes trade of anything for anything (basically in a data or digital form) much more liquid and enables owners of data to both share data and retain control & monetisation of that data
By
Digitising assets and value, where the user is in control, and by incentivising helpful community behaviour, including
(1). Collaborative (in a range of decentralisation) governance of that data (e.g. new transactions or trades of ownershiop [sic] for value)
(2). Using decentralised finance (DeFi) to create that liquidity in new markets and
(3). Decentralised decision and rule making (governance e.g., voting ) to link (small) investors and innovators (e.g., developers or infrastructure service prociders) [sic], buyers and sellers, borrowers and lenders, all together
To
Grow a new digital economy so that the members of the community receive a fair and transparent outcome to make them all better off by solving problems that can only be solved by bringing together data from multiple actors in the value chain.”
You know, for those new to the game…
(Random thought: I used to imagine a ‘blockchain’ as a plastic toy for toddlers training to be ninjas.)
Wilson J. Tang, CEO of YumeGo, argues, on the other hand, that
“There’s no Web1 or Web2 or Web3,
there’s only one Web and you can go anywhere only if you know where to go - it’s all a click away[…]”
“Maybe the real question should be what tools and technologies do we need to free people from the echo chambers of Web2, so they can find high quality knowledge and be rewarded financially for adding to the creative economy of our digital world.”
On point like a javelin.
All of this takes me back to SN #009 and #010 where Tiago Roberti Sampaio, my go-to to ask about Blockchain and ML/AI, argues that the next phase of the internet doesn’t need Blockchain. Take a look if you hadn’t read it already. If you have, a refresher doesn’t hurt either.
Still, as we continue on this current Web3/metaverse trajectory, according to the Observer Researcher Foundation (I don’t know either), it becomes one of the
Emerging Domains of Conflict in the 21st Century
Shared by Professor Sean McFate, author of The New Rules of War, I found number 3 of 5 “Continued friction with pervasive Supra-National Tech Governance structures” of special interest.
“Questions arise such as who owns and runs the digital twin of a city; is it collectively owned; are parts of it privately owned like parts of the physical space are; and who polices the digital twin of a city when there are many ‘worlds’ and service layers on top of it? […] If supra-national tech [such as Facebook, Google, Amazon, Uber, Airbnb, Apple, and others emerging in the metaverse space] is able to pull out from a country or service at their own discretion, sovereign states will need guaranteed securities for their citizens in these virtual spaces for the stability of their economies.
Separately from corporate supra-national tech governance structures, there are non-corporate governance structures that are emerging, thanks to distributed ledger technologies[…] This is an emerging area of technology governance conflict as DAOs do not need state registration to be created or approved. If sovereign states cannot manage to regulate and weave this technological infrastructure into the evolving contemporary society, it will continue to be a growing area of tension.”
Two quick-ish points:
1) I wouldn’t call a DAO, a “non-corporate governance structure”, since it is a company (see SN #017 on ‘what is a DAO?’) with a quorum voting structure (see Keir Finlow-Bates’s YT video DAOs and Voting to learn more).
2) I would agree, though, that an increased friction between DAOs and more traditional governance structures is to be expected and may even be the raison d'être of some (many? almost all?) DAOs.
Okay, let’s Switch gears like Mario Kart.
The lessons I learned organizing a physical event about VR
Anthony Vitillo aka Skarredghost writes one of the best blogs in all of the XR infosphere. Here is a long and detailed article outlining the lessons he learned in the process of co-organizing the On|Metaverse event, which featured world-class speakers and exhibitors. Plus, he highlights the differences between working on a virtual (digital or VR) event and a physical one. I think it’s a must-read for any first (or even second) timers wanting to organize an event.
One point that I would like to add or emphasize: please budget responsibly. Don't get or do something that you don't have the funds for banking on the hope that you’ll get the funds for it in the future. Because guess what? You might not be able to get those funds, and then the screwbadour (‘screwed up’ + troubadour) just might wax lyrical about how you conquered the event circuit one year but folded operations like a bad hand the next.
Oh, and another thing that might be helpful, if there is a company behind the event then it shouldn’t be treated like an expensive hobby. It’s serious business (legally-binding and such) so treat it accordingly.
Got fouled, shot a free throw, scored, missed the second one, rebounded the ball… slam dunk! 3 points!
(Not that anybody gives two crapshoots, but my all-time favorite b-ball team is the ‘Bad Boy’ Detroit Pistons from the late 1980’s. Make of that what you will.)
Spatial News™ from Finland:
Foveated Rendering with the OpenXR Toolkit and Varjo Aero
Varjo’s OpenXR Toolkit's latest release includes eye-tracking support and implements foveated rendering (the process used to boost the resolution of where the viewer is looking while reducing it on the peripheral of their vision) for Varjo Aero to boost performance for Microsoft Flight Simulator. (Funny how flight simulators continue to be an area for pushing XR forward.) Learn more in this technical deep dive blog post.
How the travel industry can benefit from XR
Read MeKiwi’s blog to find out more. It is one of the best XR companies in Finland and, I’d say, the Nordic/Baltic region. They know what they’re talking about. In regards to virtual tourism, they’ve developed several XR projects including the Digimuurame.fi multimedia website for the municipality of Muurame, here in Finland.
“[It] allows users to visit the Muurame Church, listen to the choir in an augmented reality, or even go on an adventure with a canoe and mountain bike in Muurame’s nature via 360° video experience.”
An image of the experience
EGDF & Neogames Finland released Play To Earn discussion paper
“Play-to-earn (P2E) is predicted by some to be the long awaited disruption of game business after free-to-play (F2P) and pay-to-play (premium). For that reason Neogames Finland has compiled in co-operation with EGDF [European Game Developers Federation] a discussion paper about Play To EARN. This paper aims to provide a general overview of this sometimes overhyped phenomena and explore key challenges this emerging games industry sector is likely to face before becoming established.”
Follow the link to download the paper.
Over this past weekend
I went Deep Web diving and managed to fish out a tritina by an anonymous screwbadour dedicated 'to the Blockchain community’. It’s called “When a Finger Flicks Webs”.
The young ape gave no flips, oh, a finger
to draw in a Banana Coin, his change.
Downed pints of Hubris to the dregs like webs.Leaned in. “Hey, fren, coins come like flies to webs,”
”Buuurp!‘Scuse me” Pushed away with a finger.
”All the coins are in their arms. S’time for change.”“Those spiders...” Slurped suds. “Coins need hands to change.
Ape Arachnid,” hand out. “I design webs.”
’IRLegion’ hat tipped by his finger.When a finger flicks webs, spiders come - what ‘change’?
Thanks for playing with us, Spatialists! We’ll be back in 2 and 2.
Joh of Spatial8, reading Erving Goffman’s Strategic Interaction
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