#JaronLiner #SiliconValley #VR #VirtualReality #metaverse #technology #SocialMedia #NFT #art #ArtCrowd #Knightsbridge
“Silicon Valley has been anticipating Virtual Reality for more than 30yrs, thought most people mostly like actual reality. Me? I like both!”— Paul Ebeling
The concept of the metaverse is not new; the word was coined by Neal Stephenson in his Y 1992 SiFi novel Snow Crash, which was set in a near future in which the virtual world and the physical world are inextricably interconnected.
Silicon Valley’s tech billionaires areconvinced that an actual metaverse is just coming fast. In a recent interview Mark Zuckerberg described the metaverse as “the successor to the mobile internet,” and a kind of “embodied internet, where instead of just viewing content – you are in it.”
Side by side, as the metaverse visions have been heating up, there has been a breakout year for the crypto community.
The NFT (non-fungible token) has taken the Art Crowds imagination by storm this Winter. And crypto innovators like Knightsbridge have become an influential subculture. We see the new chapter in technological progress in roughly the same terms as Elon Musk and Mr. Zuckerberg: to escape reality.
Virtual Reality was popularized by computer scientist and tech contrarian Jaron Lanier in the 1980s when his company VPL Research, aka Virtual Programming Languages achieved such success that the toymaker Mattel licensed their “DataGlove” device – a kind of wired glove to create a Nintendo game controller. I joined in!
Virtual and Augmented reality of any kind has not really taken off yet, as few of even my most technophilic friends have hopped on the Oculus train.
Back in Y 2000 people would declare that VR was right on the cusp of taking over. That it would change everything, but disruptions do not happen fast, but they do happen.
The Big Q: Why should crypto matter to everyone?
The Big A: If crypto is to be truly revolutionary, then it will have to give an answer that formats digital life down to a human scale.
Stay tuned…
Have a prosperous week, Keep the Faith!