This Week in the Metaverse for November 28, 2022

0 00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:50,000 Script: November 28, 2022 1 00:00:51,000 --> 00:01:31,000 Hi, it’s Mike Stiles and this is This Week in the Metaverse, your weekly newscast that keeps you up to date on everything that isn’t real, and yet is. It’s November 28th. Let’s find out what happened metaverse-wise this week. 2 00:01:32,000 --> 00:02:12,000 Want to work at Apple? If you got a job there you could impress your friends and hear the question, “Hey can you get me a discount?” at least 12 times a day. Exploitative friends are fun! But if you do want to work at Apple, Saptak Bardhan reports in Entrepreneur India they appear to be looking for people with metaverse knowledge and skills. A lot of their current job listings have to do with AR and VR like framework engineers and audio engineers. They also need engineers to develop their VR headset, which, if rumors about Apple are true, and aren’t they always, will have high def displays, be powered by an M2 Chip, and utilize more than 10 cameras. With all the negative talk about Meta, why is Apple going down this road? Because they’re brilliant at sniffing out where big money is. A Technavio report says the market size of metaverse initiatives in entertainment will grow to hit $28.92 billion by 2026. Consumers are spending more on virtual concerts and events, and gaming is only getting better. And whenever Apple hears the term “spending more,” they get really, really excited. 3 00:02:13,000 --> 00:02:53,000 Mina Alaghband and Lareina Yee at McKinsey.com are keeping their eyes on what role women are playing and will play in the development of the metaverse. And so far the answer seems to be, not much of leadership role, that’s for sure. They looked at some early indicators on women in the metaverse and what it revealed was, surprise, surprise, gender inequality. And ideally, the metaverse is supposed to be better about things like that than the real world so between that and women avatars getting sexually harassed, we aren’t off to a great start. Here are the indicators. One: More women than men are spending significant time in the metaverse, and that includes gaming, fitness, education, live events, and shopping. Two: Women are spearheading and implementing more metaverse initiatives. A survey of female executives shows 60% of them have implemented more than two metaverse-related initiatives in their organizations. That’s more than males do. Three: Female leaders are scarce in the emerging metaverse economy. So they’re bringing the initiatives then getting locked out of leadership roles. And four: In organizations shaping metaverse standards, 90% of leadership roles are held by men. Which ironically, is a bad standard to set. 4 00:02:54,000 --> 00:03:34,000 Just because people use technology doesn’t mean they think it can’t get out of hand. And Martyn Landi at Yahoo News reports the latest such person is the producer of that 3D Abba reunion concert called Abba Voyage. You know Abba, right? Dancing Queen, Fernando, Mama Mia but not sung by Meryl Streep like it was in the movies? Svana Gisla says that show was held in a purpose-built destination in East London and featured 3D images of Abba’s younger selves, and it was meant to be an emotional group experience. They didn’t stream it or make it available to people sitting alone with headsets. In fact, she thinks the metaverse scares her and will damage human connections. She thinks group experiences are more natural for us because “we’re pack animals” and it’s only recently technology has been encouraging us to be lone wolves. She says, “I don’t see any improvement in getting our younger generations to dive deeper into the loneliness of being inside a screen all day. It's a lonely existence to live with technology. It's made to separate people and connect them one-to-one with a device.” She even banned photos and videos at the Abba show to force the audience to be “present.” She said, “Things do happen if you don’t post them on Instagram. They still happened.” Okay, but when I dance around wildly to “Honey Honey,” I still like for no one else to be around. 5 00:03:35,000 --> 00:04:15,000 Congratulations New York, you just became the first state to outright ban certain kinds of crypto mining and in so doing, you have saved the environment. Cheyenne DeVon reports for CNBC the law temporarily freezes air permits to companies that have turned some of the state’s oldest fossil fuel plants into crypto mining hubs. Individual crypto miners are not affected. The problem is mining mining that uses “proof-of-work” authentication and thus, gobs and gobs of energy. And shocking news for you big electric car fans, it takes burning coal and natural gas to make electricity, whether that’s used for crypto mining or your new Hyundai Ioniq. How did NY become such a hot mining center? China cracked down on bitcoin mining in 2021, so upstate New York became a popular place for crypto mining thanks to the cheap energy from Niagara Falls and closed power plants. But climate activists were not pleased so here we are. Nationally, the White House says U.S. crypto mining produced 25 to 50 million metric tons of carbon pollution, which is the same as driving 20 to 40 million gas-powered cars for a year. There are no bans on gas powered cars in NY, just crypto mining. This is sorta metaverse news since Mark Zuckerberg bought in early and huge, pretty much staked his company’s future on it, changed the name of the company to reflect the shift in emphasis. Well, it hasn’t gone well for Mark and Meta. And now there are reports that Zuck may even quit the company. Owotunse Adebayo reports that pressure is coming at him from almost every angle. And if we’re to believe some leaked info from inside the company, he’s ready to say goodbye to Facebook/Meta next year. But it’s reportedly his decision, nobody’s seems to be forcing him out, no matter how silly his Horizon Worlds avatar looks. And it doesn’t mean the company is changing directions. The metaverse work will reportedly continue whether Mark stays or goes, with all the financial losses that might entail. And yes, Zuckerberg still thinks it’s all going to pay off, and in a big way. Someday. Still, the same anonymous inside sources say investors are supremely ticked off at announced plans to divert even more funds from the company’s budget into the metaverse project. How are we going to handle our identities when we go into the metaverse? How will you know I’m me and I’ll know you’re you or at least whatever version of you that you’re pretending to be? Can someone steal my metaverse identity? All this still has to be worked out, but Daniel Saito, CEO and cofounder of StrongNode, has some ideas about a global identity system he recently published. That means your identity will be recognized on all platforms and by all services, and somebody can keep track of all the different identities you create. Option 1: A single global identity, which would be the easiest. One centralized system managing all metaverse identities, period. Option 2: Multiple identities. That’s where you can be as many people as you want, but that has to be managed on a platform-by-platform basis. Option 3: A decentralized identity system which wouldn’t be controlled by any centralized authority, but keeping all the different nodes required for that synced up is super hard. In fact I’m confused as to who I am right now.That’s all we have for you this week. Subscribe to the show if you didn’t hate it, rate or review it, and we’ll be back next week. 6 00:04:16,000 --> 00:04:20,000 In this short episode you’ll learn: 7 00:04:21,000 --> 00:04:25,000 What kind of metaverse talent Apple is looking for, and why 8 00:04:26,000 --> 00:04:30,000 If women are getting a good seat at the table in metaverse leadership 9 00:04:31,000 --> 00:04:35,000 Why the producer of Abba’s 3D show thinks technology is making us lonely 10 00:04:36,000 --> 00:04:40,000 About legislation in New York that outright bans certain crypto mining 11 00:04:41,000 --> 00:04:45,000 Whether or not Mark Zuckerberg is really going to quit Meta 12 00:04:46,000 --> 00:05:00,000 Some ways we might handle our identities in all these metaverses