Spatial News™ #029
This week we're looking at metaverse architects, architecture in virtual worlds, digital twins, metaverse governance, quantum games, token economics, legal wrappers & DAOS, and more!
Welcome to the 29th installment of Spatial News™, Spatialists! "Don’t kill if you can wound, don’t wound if you can subdue, don’t subdue, if you can pacify, and don’t raise a hand at all, until you’ve extended it.” -Wonder Woman (in Wonder Woman Vol. 3 #2) WW’s definitely not a pacifist.
Matrix, Matrix, Matrix:
(The m-word before the m-word)
BREAKING NEWS!
Tom’s got the scoop Lois Lane style (so I copied it verbatim).
“After publishing Snow Crash about 30 years ago, Neal Stephenson has just co-founded (with Peter Vessenes) a new venture called Lamina1. Basically, the company wants to build the base-level protocol as the very basis of an open metaverse. The press release describes it as ‘a new Layer-1 blockchain technology designed for the metaverse with Web3 principles in mind.’
I love the spirit of the venture. While companies postulate on what the metaverse 'could' or 'should' be, Lamina1 will build the foundations it needs to begin with. The team is stellar as well, bringing in Tony Parisi and Rony Abovitz [of Magic Leap fame] to build it out (among many others). It's a bold promise as well - the company wants to build a chain that will support the next generation of creatives.
I've recently been exploring whether blockchain technologies are a *necessity* for the upcoming metaverse. Lamina1 would give a resounding yes, as it s a contingent part of its (apparently carbon negative) chain. If it works well without intermediaries, then it would be a resounding endorsement of blockchain technologies. The company comes at a time when the technology is also being used by bad actors, so I am interested in seeing how it pokes above the fray.
What do you think of the new venture?”
Can it ‘poke above the fray’ indeed.
Take a look at Lamina1’s website.
What Can Metaverse Planners Learn from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities
In SN #027 we talked about “[going] beyond this universe in your imagination” and “not let[ting] the laws of physics impede your march” (see Fadi Chehimi’s ‘Omnireality’ strategy). We also spoke about how architecture in virtual worlds doesn’t need to follow the same laws as those in the physical world (or Second Life, for that matter). The author echoes my thoughts (or I echo hers).
“Without the constraints in the physical world, how do we draft the urban blueprints in the metaverse? I believe metaverse planners can find inspiration from Italo Calvino’s [novel] Invisible Cities, in which he revealed a poetic and mathematical approach to 'urban planning’ in the imaginary worlds.”
It’s a fascinating article, and I hope you Spatialist creators out there can draw inspiration from it.
Recently, I had a great talk with “metaverse architect” Chafik Zerrouki about just this very topic. I asked him to share his thoughts on the matter.
“Designing the metaverse means creating a virtual world where creativity has no limits! We can test new ideas and experiment outside the constraints of our current reality. This dystopian social media networking is beginning a new era of more ambitious architecture. We have the ability to create utopic environments and deeply immersive experiences within them.
Architects can act as a link between the physical and virtual worlds, bringing design, planning, and real-time operational data together.
However, I believe a distinction between ‘architects’ and ‘meta architects’ will emerge. In the physical world, traditional architecture provides shelter, supports our daily activities, and connects cities, however, in the virtual world, we can create pure emotional architecture.
The metaverse is a powerful tool that will be able to connect humans all over the world. However, in order to do so, we, as metaverse architects, must consider all stages of the experience we're trying to create, whether it's a small room, a building, or urban planning, and explore how the metaverse could elevate it.
From an artistic standpoint, The sky is the limit! And as the late Zaha Hadid used to say: ‘there are 360 degrees, so why stick to one?’ It's even more true in the metaverse...'“
Wait till you see what Chafik is working on… it’s like nothing out there.
Thanks for the insights, Chafik!
And because
(This artifact is a digital copy of an old school Wonder Woman bookmark. Fun factoid: Originally, a bookmark was a thin marking tool made of card or some other material that ancient humans put in between the pages of physical books to be able to return to what they had last read.)
here’s some
Summer Reading:
Defining Quantum Games
Here’s a preprint by Laura Piispanen and colleagues that explores “the concept of quantum games and define quantum games as any type of playable games that are related to or reference quantum physics through any of three proposed aspects.”
The Token Economy
is a paper by Andy Martin which summaries his recent Linkedin posts over the last couple of months on the token economy and discussing what business models need to consider in the token economy.
Legal Wrappers and DAOS
is a white paper written by two lawyers (sans the legalese) that researches what “legal wrappers exist that can facilitate the setup and running of various types of DAOs, protecting founders and members”. Thanks for sharing, Mauricio Magaldi.
Merging Emerging Tech News:
What are digital twins?
“A digital twin is a virtual representation of a real system – a building, the power grid, a city, even a human being – that mimics the characteristics of the system. A digital twin is more than just a computer model, however. It receives data from sensors in the real system to constantly parallel the system’s state.”
In the article’s comment section one “Phill Ochard” makes an interesting comment about the concept:
“As always, we must both test conceptual advances (such as the digital twin) and be wary of them, because it is only a classic simulation with sensors[…] for the last twenty years, no progress has been made in the real world because the model is very late in terms of knowledge of societies[… T]he missing link is clearly the lack of understanding of the societies in the world (it is not a question here of uncertainty about the probabilities of a war or a social movement, but of a crass ignorance of what a society, a culture, social groups are).”
First, I wouldn’t say that there is a ‘crass ignorance’ about society, culture, and social groups. The fields of sociology, social psychology, and anthropology have made this topics their concern since the 19th century. Granted, there is no shortage of narrow, incomplete, and competing theories and paradigms in these disciplines, but as a longtime searcher of seeds in those fields I would say that one of the main reasons is that the subject matter is more complex than quantum physics (and, no, this isn’t my typical Puerto Rican exaggeration).
At root, I think what “Phill Ochard” is getting at is that a more holistic, interdisciplinary approach is necessary to get digital twin developers and designers closer to creating a twin than to a Bizarro.
(Superman and his ‘twin’ Bizarro as depicted in Warner Bros.’ Superman: The Animated Series)
Then we can see this:
(The Wonder Twins activating their powers in Super Friends)
Keep on reading below to find out how digital twins could benefit a city like Helsinki.
Looking Glass Factory Getting Millions From “The Company”
“In-Q-Tel — the CIA’s venture capital arm — and the military are investing heavily in the metaverse [holographic display technology, augmented reality, and virtual reality display systems, in this case]. There are growing concerns they’re wasting taxpayer money.”
Is it a surprise that the US intelligence and military are investing in this area (or wasting taxpayer money, for that matter)?
How DARPA, The Secretive Agency That Invented The Internet, Is Working To Reinvent It (This article was written in 2017 and focuses on emerging technologies that include fog computing, edge computing, distributed computing, AI and IoT, but you get the point.)
“‘DCOMP [DARPA’s Dispersed Computing program] is a radical departure from conventional network architectures,’ [says Jonathan Smith DCOMP’s program manager…] What DCOMP envisions is “the opportunistic use of network-embedded computing resources,” he says. Rather than thinking of the devices on the networks as nothing more than nodes that pass information from source to destination, DCOMP sees them also as distributed computing resources that can be dynamically reallocated in real time, depending on the changing needs of the current mission set. Imagine every cell phone, smart thermostat, fitness tracker, and game console in your house contributing their spare cycles to help process the video you’re trying to upload, or educate the machine learning algorithm that runs your AI personal assistant. When a dispersed computing network wants to borrow your phone, in other words, it’s going to be doing a lot more than sending a text.”
Wait, what more will our devices-cum-dispersed-computing-network be doing besides sending our texts…?
Who will govern the metaverse?
The WEF (World Economic Forum) asks.
“Metaverse governance is a multifaceted challenge – which is unsurprising given the nascent technology. The products that the metaverse will be built on will produce difficult trade-offs between interoperability, privacy, safety and security which are going to be hard to neatly manage.
Furthermore, what has worked in the real world may not apply easily to the metaverse, while new models will require careful experimentation before they can be relied on at scale. Ultimately, there are more questions than answers right now about how to govern the metaverse.”
So who will govern the metaverse? It’s supposed to be ‘we the people’ (you know, decentralized and all that), but if the pipes (the infrastructure) don’t belong to ‘the people’ then is that more of a pipe dream?
Here’s my guess who will govern the m-verse. 👇🏾
(The Legion of Doom as portrayed in Harley Quinn)
Just a guess.
Hey, June is here!
Spatial News™ from Finland
AWE Nite Northern XR: Focus on Finland
June 21st is AWE Nite Northern XR: Focus on Finland in Helsinki! It’ll take place from 18:00-20:00 EEST (Helsinki time) at Arcade5 (on the Maria01 campus). We’ll have pizza and drinks and XR demos as well!
Plus, in true Finnish fashion, the first 80 attendees to AWE Nite Northern XR: Focus on Finland will receive a FREE commemorative bucket celebrating the 2-year anniversary of AWE Nite in Helsinki! (That’s right, a bucket!)
You don’t want to miss this. Follow the link to RSVP!
Helsinki’s pioneering city digital twin
“Helsinki, Finland, has one of the world’s longest-running digital twin programs. Over the last three decades, it has pushed the envelope with the early adoption of computer-aided design (CAD), 3D city mapping, and, later, full-scale digital twins[… T]he city is using digital twins to reduce carbon, improve city services, and promote innovative development.”
Heltwinki!
Read more about this awesome project.
Here’s a timeline of Helsinki’s digital twin evolution.
Thanks for joining us, Justice League!
Joh of Spatial8, dishing out vigilante justice for clicks and giggles
P.S. Don’t forget to take our Future Technologies Usage Survey 2022 for a chance to get some random NFTs!