This Week in the Metaverse for October 17, 2022

0 00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:38,000 Script: October 17, 2022 1 00:00:39,000 --> 00:01:07,000 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 October 17th, time to see who’s doing what in the Matrix. 2 00:01:08,000 --> 00:01:36,000 We promise. If we ever hear anything good about Meta and Horizon Worlds, we will report it to you. But as it is, internal documents show the whole thing is really struggling with users. The plan was to hit half a million users by the end of this year. Right now, the number’s under 200,000, well below a revised goal of 280,000. What’s the problem? Users try out Horizon Worlds then don’t come back because there aren’t that many people there. And the people who are there sexually harass you. And users also think the legless avatars are creepy. To address the leg thing, CEO Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated what the avatars with legs are going to look like. But that demo was an animation made with motion capture. So no telling when you’ll be able to dance across the metaverse or kick a field goal. Probably limits the desire to buy virtual shoes too. To be fair, it’s not just Meta. Less than 10% of the worlds in the metaverse get more than 50 visitors and most of them don’t get any. No one to play pickleball with. Analysts say part of the problem is that it’s still a pretty high price tag to get into the metaverse. 3 00:01:37,000 --> 00:02:05,000 Okay, so let’s look at another mega company and what they’re planning to do around all this emerging technology. Disney. I’ll probably get sued just for saying the word without paying a few thousand dollars. Not so much a metaverse play, but what they are thinking about is being able to interact with your favorite characters at Disney World using AR…I guess you could chase Tinkerbell all over the park and swat at her. You might also be able to buy NFTs from your favorite movies or even insert yourself in the movie and have a first-person experience. For instance, you could enter the movie “Buzz Lightyear” and tell the characters how much the movie failed. It’s all being pursued under the umbrella of Web3 and there are two big things going on to support it. Disney wants to hire a Principal Counsel to provide legal advice for NFT projects. And there’s an Accelerator Program out of Disney's venture capital branch. That seeks to partner with innovative startups who’ll get time, funding, and guidance from Disney. And mouse ears. 4 00:02:06,000 --> 00:02:34,000 Never mind falling prices and the crypto winter everyone’s talking about, people are still buying crypto like crazy, even though apparently most don’t understand it at all. 57% of people said that they were aware of crypto, which makes it the second most well-known type of investment after stocks. More than baseball cards. But 60% said they don’t understand it. 42% plan to increase their crypto investments over the next six months even though they don’t understand it. Not only do they not understand it, 42% say it’s risky. But they buy into it mostly for the possibility for long-term steady growth, short-term fast growth, to diversify, to use for online transactions, to escape government control (although it probably will be government controlled), and to hedge against the collapse of regular money. My coin jug will become worthless. As of the 2022 summer season, 18% of Americans had invested in crypto, a growth of 125% from summer of 2020. 5 00:02:35,000 --> 00:03:03,000 CNN is out of Web3. At least one experiment in it. The decision was made to “say goodbye” to the project with no specific reason given. The project was called Vault, and it was created last year and offered buyers NFTs commemorating major news events. You did get your “the queen is dead” NFT didn’t you? It was going to be a six-week experiment but lasted longer than that. Buyers were not happy with the news, but CNN promised they would be compensated in some way, maybe a night out drinking with Don Lemon? Some of the NFTs even came with display cases so you could show your NFTs off physically inside your home. Anyway, bottom line is your chance to own a piece of history is now history. 6 00:03:04,000 --> 00:03:32,000 Microsoft announced a new team called Industrial Metaverse Core. It’s going to try to make immersive software interfaces for using industrial control systems that power electrical plants, industrial robotics, and transportation networks, among other things. We just want it to play solitaire. It’s being built using Bonsai, a low-code AI development platform Microsoft bought in 2018. The company who brought us Clippy envisages an industrial work-focused virtual world will monitor machines or factory environments. For instance, aircraft mechanics can check jet engines in a simulated software environment, using AR or VR headsets. Also, when it’s ready, industrial engineers can use it to merge AI with industrial equipment and processes, and you won’t need software developers to do that. What about those of us who aren’t brainiac engineers? Microsoft is thinking about the way we work too, saying metaverse-style avatars will coming to Microsoft Teams. 7 00:03:33,000 --> 00:04:01,000 Most things that wind up becoming real start out as Hollywood science fiction, like when Michael Jackson married Elvis’ daughter. So it’s no surprise that a lot of what we think the metaverse is going to be is being illustrated in more movies and TV shows. The latest one is called The Peripheral, which comes to Prime Video this week. No, I’m not being paid to promote the show, I don’t get paid for anything. The series is based on a novel by William Gibson, who actually coined the term “cyberspace.” The book was published back in 2014 with nutty new ideas like immersive VR and the ability to feel like you’ve been transported to another place or body. It depicts the lifestyle of some poor people in the future who live in a small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains. To pay medical bills, these siblings help rich people beat game levels. One is recruited to beta test a sim that goes wrong and makes her realize she’s a pawn in a multi-timeline. If that’s too hard to follow, we also recommend the book The Hungry Caterpillar. 8 00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:30,000 That’s all we have for you this week. Subscribe to the show and you’ll know everything, which will make you a huge hit at parties, and we’ll be back next week. 9 00:04:31,000 --> 00:04:33,000 In this short episode you’ll learn: 10 00:04:34,000 --> 00:04:36,000 The shocking statistics of how many people are going into the metaverse 11 00:04:37,000 --> 00:04:39,000 Disney’s Web3 plans which could put you inside their movies 12 00:04:40,000 --> 00:04:42,000 Why people are still buying crypto like crazy even though they don’t understand it 13 00:04:43,000 --> 00:04:45,000 The NFT project CNN is giving up on 14 00:04:46,000 --> 00:04:48,000 Microsoft’s plans for industrial virtual environments 15 00:04:49,000 --> 00:04:51,000 The new TV series that offers up one scary depiction of the metaverse 16 00:04:52,000 --> 00:05:00,000 https://thisweekinthemetaverse.podbean.com/e/this-week-in-the-metaverse-for-october-10-2022/