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The Reality Metaverse

Virtual and augmented reality technologies increasingly blur the lines between the physical and digital realms.

The Reality Metaverse

Facebook rebranded last month as Meta. It was an opportune moment for the beleaguered company to do something to change its public profile, but the mission behind Meta to transform the internet to a virtual reality space has long been Facebook’s North Star. Indeed, some companies are already living in Mark Zuckerberg’s version of the “infinite office.”

The “metaverse” is the virtual 3D world made possible by the internet plus specialized glasses and other gear designed to communicate the touch and feel of physical space within a virtual world. Basically, the world created and explored by video games is now moving into the office space.  

Virtual Reality’s “Killer App” 

Futurist Charlie Fink described this “meta” milestone in Charlie Fink’s Metaverse. Business is just now catching on to the immense market potential of virtual and augmented realities, but Fink predicted a “killer app” would open the floodgates. If Facebook can successfully replicate its immensely popular AI-enabled platform in 3D virtual space, causing its nearly three billion users to make the transition, that pretty much fits the bill. 

Image of: Charlie Fink’s Metaverse
Book Summary

Charlie Fink’s Metaverse

With the nascent explosion of virtual reality and augmented reality, your world is getting bigger.

Charlie Fink Cool Blue Media
Read Summary

“XR” covers all the different mixes of “reality” spaces, including fully immersive virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), where users see a digital overlay atop the physical world one views, perhaps through specialized glasses or via smartphone, and mixed reality (MR), which combines these approaches. 

Presence and agency in a photorealistic simulated world is the holy grail of immersion.

Charlie Fink

Facebook (now Meta) CEO Mark Zuckerberg fully embraces this quest. He acquired virtual reality (VR) company Oculus in 2014 and has been building out his vision of what virtual space could mean for social encounters and for business ever since, writes Bloomberg Businessweek journalists Bryant Urstadt and Sarah Frier in “Welcome to Zuckerworld.

Image of: Welcome to Zuckerworld
Article Summary

Welcome to Zuckerworld

Mark Zuckerberg wants to connect seven billion people via virtual reality.

Bryant Urstadt and Sarah Frier Bloomberg Businessweek
Read Summary

He sees 3D virtual space as the successor to mobile, the next logical iteration of the web – what he calls “the embodied internet.” People can gather together to socialize, work, play or make things in a fully immersive world. He foresees a virtual space made richer than the digital worlds most people experience now because of the advances in video technologies and the mapping of 3D space via sensors using 5G wireless networks.

Raconteur writes in its “Future of Work” report that adding virtual reality to office spaces will make them much more dynamic and engaging. Imagine interacting with colleagues and shared projects as avatars within holographic space no matter where your team members are physically located.

Working remotely can feel isolating, but by teleporting the office space to someone’s house, for example, via a 3D holographic feed, the remote worker can hear and see everything that is happening.

Spatial co-founder Jinha Lee

As Urstadt and Frier point out, the dream is not quite yet the reality. One obstacle to the full success of virtual includes the danger of motion sickness with too much use, but it’s an obstacle Zuckerberg and others in the field are overcoming with each new technological iteration. A bigger obstacle may be how much people actually want to experience virtual presence. Nonetheless, experts predict by 2030 23.5 million jobs will take place in virtual or augmented space. 

Image of: Future of Work
Report Summary

Future of Work

A rising millennial workforce and new technologies will shape the future of work around the world.

Raconteur Raconteur
Read Summary

The “Phygital” Space

As the physical and digital world merges into the “phygital,” marketing consultant Wided Batat notes in Digital Luxury that every surface becomes a potential point of purchase with augmented technology. While it’s harder to replicate the experience of luxury in the virtual world, customers expect to be able to access their favorite brands seamlessly through multiple channels. However, compelling storytelling will still be fundamental to the customer journey.

Image of: Digital Luxury
Book Summary

Digital Luxury

Luxury brands are bringing that special something to the digital space.

Wided Batat SAGE Publications
Read Summary

While retailers can capture customer attention via virtual and augmented spaces – Japanese designer Kenzo drew customers to his pop-up store with a virtual aquarium – what will differentiate brands is how they creatively deploy the technology within their customer stories and integrate the virtual, physical and customer service experience.

Image of: Reengineering Retail
Book Summary

Reengineering Retail

Shaped by technology, the future of retail will blend digital ease and sense-stimulating reality.

Doug Stephens Figure 1 Publishing
Read Summary

Author Doug Stephens in Reengineering Retail imagines enhanced physical and enhanced digital spaces as well, and the augmented space in between. He notes IKEA already uses augmented reality to help customers visualize what their furniture will look like in their homes. Internet of Things–enabled Augmented Paper allows Montblanc pen owners to have the experience of writing longhand with the option to use the pen to wirelessly transfer and digitize what they write. Or imagine being able to browse the virtual space of a celebrity’s closet and then purchase what you like.

Imagine a future where Amazon ceases to be a digital catalog and instead becomes an expansive virtual world that you can step into.

Doug Stephens

Magic Leap is at the cutting edge of immersive virtual experiences. Tech journalist Kevin Kelly describes in “Hyper Vision” the company’s view of virtual reality by analogy: At its inception the promise of the internet was the ability to create and share information, but now the promise of virtual reality is to create and share experiences.

Image of: Hyper Vision
Article Summary

Hyper Vision

Virtual reality start-up Magic Leap is making wearable viewing technology a reality, for both work and play.

Kevin Kelly Wired
Read Summary

Virtual Learning & Development

For learning, fundamentals will still apply in terms of structuring material in the chunks that make for easier retention, and so will strategic thinking about reskilling your workforce and integrating a continuous L&D mind-set, but learning in an immersive space makes new skills easier to pick up says organizational consultant Koreen Olbrish Pagano in Immersive Learning. Virtual reality systems will make learning to drive less risky, for instance, and immerse students in a visceral experience of history.

Image of: Immersive Learning
Book Summary

Immersive Learning

Leverage the fun of gaming to teach serious workplace skills: An introduction to learning in virtual environments.

Koreen Olbrish Pagano ASTD Publications
Read Summary

Author Robin Petterd writing for Sprouts Lab agrees, and shows how adopting a “digital mind-set” when designing L&D programs unleashes new possibilities. Designers need to rethink the possibilities taking into account the convergence of artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT) and virtual reality (VR). 

Image of: Developing a Digital Mindset for L&D
Article Summary

Developing a Digital Mindset for L&D

A veteran digital learning designer offers keys to thinking digitally.

Robin Petterd Sprout Labs
Read Summary

The challenge of immersive-design implementation is to create an environment where learners feel safe practicing, see the value in the experience and embrace the experience as an opportunity to improve their performance.

Koreen Olbrish Pagano

Adding in a layer of “gamification,” simulating in some ways a video game, also increases engagement in the virtual learning space and contributes to building better learning habits, say authors Naomi Baily and Iulia Istrate in their discussion of “Online Education Platforms.”

Image of: Online Education Platforms
Podcast Summary

Online Education Platforms

The finer tactics for effective talent acquisition are ever evolving, so recruiter training must evolve along with it.

Naomi Baily and Iulia Istrate Iulia Istrate
Read Summary

They recommend a combination of nudges and friendly competition to keep employees engaged in training programs. Chatbots along the way provide a way to “nudge” employees in the moment and integrate well with a continuous learning culture.

Working Within Virtual Systems

The ultimate virtual space is the digital twin, an exact replica of a whole system, whether mechanical or biological, according to MIT Sloan Management Review in its article “Digital Twins are Reinventing Innovation.” Tesla uses this technology to remotely diagnose troubles customers may have with their engines by running tests on their digital twin. Engineers consult the digital twin of Notre Dame Cathedral as they rebuild it following the devastating 2019 fire.

Image of: Digital Twins Are Reinventing Innovation
Article Summary

Digital Twins Are Reinventing Innovation

Digital replicas of the real world are playgrounds for innovators.

Mark Purdy, Ray Eitel-Porter, Robert Krüger and Thijs Deblaere MIT Sloan Management Review
Read Summary

City planners use digital twin models of cities to test different combinations of traffic patterns and services deployment to inform construction plans.

A digital twin with all the complexity and detail of a physical city provides a larger and more valuable platform for experiments that has ever been created.

MIT Sloan Management Review

Digital twins of bodies help doctors and researchers evaluate the effects of proposed treatments without risking a patient’s actual health. In the not-too-distant future, these models combined with robotics may enable surgeons to remotely conduct operations.

Author Jo Marchant writes in “How VR Could Break America’s Opioid Addiction” about how medical professionals are also turning to virtual reality to help patients manage their real-world pain. The US military found immersion in its VR program SnowWorld reduces the pain of wound-care for burn victims by up to 50%.

Image of: How VR Could Break America’s Opioid Addiction
Article Summary

How VR Could Break America’s Opioid Addiction

The pain may not be virtual, but the prescription certainly is.

Jo Marchant Mosaic
Read Summary

Virtual reality systems have been “just around the corner” for a long time, but true innovation is already changing business and industry. With the commitment of Facebook (Meta) and other companies to heavily invest in the space, along with the build-out of 5G wireless networks, this next iteration of the internet might finally be ready to take off.

Read more about this exciting field:

Image of: X Reality
Channel

X Reality

X Reality, or cross reality, refers to virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR), augmented reality (AR) and others. These “new realities” use hardware…

Open Channel
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