Thursday, May 16

Tag: metaverse

Media And Information Experts Explain – What Is The Metaverse?
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IN OTHER NEWS, VIDEO REELS

Media And Information Experts Explain – What Is The Metaverse?

The metaverse is a network of always-on virtual environments in which many people can interact with one another and digital objects while operating virtual representations – or avatars – of themselves. Think of a combination of immersive virtual reality, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game and the web. The metaverse is a concept from science fiction that many people in the technology industry envision as the successor to today’s internet. It’s only a vision at this point, but technology companies like Facebook are aiming to make it the setting for many online activities, including work, play, studying and shopping. Facebook is so sold on the concept that it is renaming itself Meta to highlight its push to dominate the metaverse. Metaverse is a portmanteau of meta, meaning ...
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A Killer App For The Metaverse? Fill It With AI Avatars Of Ourselves – So We Don’t Need To Go There
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AI, TECHNOLOGY, VIDEO REELS

A Killer App For The Metaverse? Fill It With AI Avatars Of Ourselves – So We Don’t Need To Go There

Big numbers coming. Microsoft’s US$75 billion (£55 billion) acquisition of Activision Blizzard has landed – true to Call of Duty vernacular – “like a bomb” on the US$200 billion revenue video games industry. It heavily arms the Xbox giant for its vision of the metaverse, in which gaming is the marketing adrenaline of this much-touted online future that is to be experienced immersively through virtual reality (VR) headsets or augmented-reality (AR) glasses. The stock market knocked US$10 billion off Playstation maker Sony’s valuation on the news. The metaverse was also a big noise at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month, branded “tech’s hottest trend” by Variety magazine. Product launches included Samsung’s new VR world My House, offering virtual home makeovers; a...
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What Is Proof-Of-Stake? A Computer Scientist Explains A New Way To Make Cryptocurrencies, NFTs And Metaverse Transactions
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CRYPTOMARKET, TECHNOLOGY, VIDEO REELS

What Is Proof-Of-Stake? A Computer Scientist Explains A New Way To Make Cryptocurrencies, NFTs And Metaverse Transactions

Proof-of-stake is a mechanism for achieving consensus on a blockchain. Blockchain is a technology that records transactions that can’t be deleted or altered. It’s a decentralized database, or ledger, that is under no one person or organization’s control. Since no one controls the database, consensus mechanisms, such as proof-of-stake, are needed to coordinate the operation of blockchain-based systems. While Bitcoin popularized the technology, blockchain is now a part of many different systems, enabling interesting applications such as decentralized finance platforms and non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. The first widely commercialized blockchain consensus mechanism was proof-of-work, which enables users to reach consensus by solving complex mathematical problems. For solving these problems...
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Working In The Metaverse: What Virtual Office Life Could Look Like
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BUSINESS, TECHNOLOGY

Working In The Metaverse: What Virtual Office Life Could Look Like

In the context of work, the digital divide has become less about access to devices and connectivity and more about skills and mindset. Many experienced professionals have never learned more than the rudimentary basics of email, web search and Microsoft Office. Instead, they lean hard on nearby colleagues or the IT helpdesk when things go wrong. By contrast, young people have already demonstrated a competitive edge in the virtual workplace. They come equipped with a more intuitive grasp of digital technology and the initiative to troubleshoot problems via YouTube tutorials, social media and subreddits. As a generation, they’re also bigger gamers. As more and more work takes place in virtual reality (VR) – and one does not have to share the somewhat eccentric vision of the metaverse Mark Z...
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Six Benefits That The Metaverse Offers To Colleges And Universities
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EDUCATION, IN OTHER NEWS

Six Benefits That The Metaverse Offers To Colleges And Universities

Even though it’s unclear what exactly the metaverse is and whether it even exists, colleges and universities have jumped onto the metaverse bandwagon. They have augmented in-person and remote video learning with features such as gamified interactive virtual worlds, virtual reality and mixed reality. In one of the largest efforts thus far, 10 U.S. colleges and universities have teamed up with U.S. technology company Meta and Irish virtual reality platform Engage to create 3D digital versions of their campuses, known as a metaversity. Students will engage in learning wearing immersive virtual reality headsets. In my recent research, I have examined the metaverse and how it affects organizations and societies. I see six benefits that the metaverse offers to colleges. 1. Makes educational ...
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The Metaverse Already Has A Long History But It Isn’t Here Yet
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IN OTHER NEWS

The Metaverse Already Has A Long History But It Isn’t Here Yet

Nattie’s metaverse romance began with anonymous texting. At first “C” would admit only to living in a nearby town. Nattie eventually learned “Clem” was a man with a solitary office job like hers. For Nattie “lived, as it were, in two worlds” – the world of office tedium and an online world where “she did not lack social intercourse.” Texting drew them closer: “annoyances became lighter because she told him, and he sympathized.” Nattie soon realized “she had woven a sort of romance about him who was a friend ‘so near and yet so far’.” Their blossoming relationship almost failed when Clem’s co-worker visited Nattie’s office pretending to be Clem, but the deceit was exposed in time for their “romance of dots and dashes” to succeed. With that last sentence I gave away the ending to “Wired Lo...
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Is It Really Such A Crazy Idea? – Real Estate In The Metaverse Is Booming
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TECHNOLOGY

Is It Really Such A Crazy Idea? – Real Estate In The Metaverse Is Booming

The idea of spending thousands or even millions of dollars to buy fictitious “land” in a virtual world sounds, to be frank, absurd. But in recent months, we’ve seen significant investments in virtual land within the metaverse. PwC is among the latest to dive in, having purchased real estate in The Sandbox, a virtual gaming world, for an undisclosed amount. If other reported sales are anything to go by, it would have been a handsome sum. One person recently bought a plot of land in the Snoopverse – a virtual world rapper Snoop Dogg is developing within The Sandbox – for US$450,000 (around £332,500). Meanwhile, the Metaverse Group, a real estate company focused on the metaverse economy, reportedly bought a piece of land in Decentraland, another virtual platform, for US$2.43 million. Let’...
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Problems Must Be Overcome Before College Can Take Place In The Metaverse
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EDUCATION, TECHNOLOGY

Problems Must Be Overcome Before College Can Take Place In The Metaverse

Higher education in the United States is in trouble. Spiraling tuition costs and a student debt crisis threaten to make college unaffordable to all but the wealthy. In an attempt to cut spending and control tuition hikes, American universities are relying more and more on temporary instructors who are underpaid, teach a heavy course load and often lack job security and health insurance. Many schools are also increasing class sizes and moving courses online in order to lower costs. And students are not happy: Online learning is less popular than in-person instruction, and dissatisfaction has only increased during the pandemic. On top of these problems, universities in the U.S. and other parts of the world are challenged by apprenticeship and boot-camp initiatives that question the relati...
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Why You’ll Be On A Blockchain When You’re Virtual-World Hopping – The Metaverse Is Money And Crypto Is King
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IN OTHER NEWS, TECHNOLOGY, VIDEO REELS

Why You’ll Be On A Blockchain When You’re Virtual-World Hopping – The Metaverse Is Money And Crypto Is King

You may think the metaverse will be a bunch of interconnected virtual spaces – the world wide web but accessed through virtual reality. This is largely correct, but there is also a fundamental but slightly more cryptic side to the metaverse that will set it apart from today’s internet: the blockchain. In the beginning, Web 1.0 was the information superhighway of connected computers and servers that you could search, explore and inhabit, usually through a centralized company’s platform – for example, AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft and Google. Around the turn of the millennium, Web 2.0 came to be characterized by social networking sites, blogging and the monetization of user data for advertising by the centralized gatekeepers to “free” social media platforms, including Facebook, SnapChat, Twitter an...
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For Terrorists And Extremists The Metaverse Offers A Future Full Of Potential
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TECHNOLOGY

For Terrorists And Extremists The Metaverse Offers A Future Full Of Potential

The metaverse is coming. Like all technological innovation, it brings new opportunities and new risks. The metaverse is an immersive virtual reality version of the internet where people can interact with digital objects and digital representations of themselves and others, and can move more or less freely from one virtual environment to another. It can also involve augmented reality, a blending of virtual and physical realities, both by representing people and objects from the physical world in the virtual and conversely by bringing the virtual into people’s perceptions of physical spaces. By donning virtual reality headsets or augmented reality glasses, people will be able to socialize, worship and work in environments where the boundaries between environments and between the digital an...
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