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3 Early projects for the Metaverse
The metaverse as loosely defined and brought to the fore by Mark Zuckerberg in 2021 as “A virtual world where people can socialize, work, and play” raised more eyebrows and questions than it answered, we simply don’t have the there there we usually get with other technological innovations (ie. Lightbulbs, online stores, the wheel ). As an avid SciFi fan/futurologist and software developer & hope I can at least provide a couple of what I think are early examples or experiments and some context to make sense of them.
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Covid is/was a particularly relevant event to the metaverse and virtual worlds, physical menus turned digital and virtual calls ( aka zoom calls ) became the norm, remote working also gained acceptance, virtual global investments and banking in the form of cryptocurrencies flourished and all these changes happened practically overnight, unprompted and without a big speech from a tech leader, I think it would be fitting to have a virtual memorial…
I started working on a virtual covid memorial last year ( early 2021 ) when I believed we were at the end of it, but here we are early 2022 with no end in sight; funding, competing projects and tooling ( which we’ll cover last) have made me question and stop working on it, but here’s my preliminary concept:
The memorial is accesible through a regular website (a downloadable/VR version could also be made available), making memorials is something of an art which I don’t claim to be an expert and while the metaverse seems to be inherently social I think something of this gravity should be experienced alone ( it was also easier to prototype ), my first version required you to walk for long stretches of a dim barren virtual plain in 3D flanked by house…
