A Brief History of the Metaverse: VIRTUALLY EVERYONE

In the 2010s, VR roared back into life with Oculus, Vive, WebGL and Hololens. Minecraft, Roblox and Fortnite gave millions a deep drink of the potential of the Metaverse. Facebook – renamed Meta – bet the house on the Metaverse. Where is the Metaverse headed? We hear insights from forty years of experts.

Watch “3 Dreams of Black”, the amazing interactive music video, created in WebGL. (Requires Google Chrome.)

Read “Nonny de la Peña and the power of Immersive Storytelling”

Is Meta Horizons a success? Many recent reports indicate otherwise.

Here’s Tony’s closing poem, “The Mirror”.

Episode 6.15 Palmer Luckey Goes to War

At the age of 19, Palmer Luckey founded Oculus, bringing a comatose VR industry back to life. Will he to do the same for defense with his new startup, Anduril – and has he solved Australia’s submarine problem? A wide-ranging interview covering everything from the search for the ‘ultimate’ gaming display to the future of warfare.

Rebooting the Arsenal of Democracy” is Anduril’s own statement about what they’re about.

And an article about the XL-AUV project Anduril is doing with the ADF.

Palmer Luckey is speaking in Sydney on the 18th of August, 2022 – book your tickets here.

Episode 5.04 – Series 5 Predictions: Has social media turned us all into conspiracy theorists?

The Capitol Insurrection, #wallstreetbets and Facebook’s brief war with Australia demonstrate the power of social media to change how we believe – and behave.

At the end of this decade, could social media drive us all into our own private worlds of fantasy, conspiracy, and fakery?

Episode 3.08 The History of the Future with Blake Harris

Virtual Reality roared back to life this decade due to the efforts of  visionary teenager Palmer Luckey. Luckey built Oculus, sold to Facebook for $3 billion – then got fired.

Blake Harris’ wonderful book The History of The Future: Oculus, Facebook and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality served as the foundation for this episode – a true life story of triumph and tragedy. It’s a rip roaring good read.  Grab a copy here.

Episode 2.08 The Last Days of Reality (Part Two)

Back in July 2016, Pokémon Go opened the doors to the brave new world of augmented reality – an overnight success fifty years in the making. With companies like Magic Leap and Facebook working hard to create augmented reality ‘spectacles’, the next billion seconds will see us put our smartphones down — instead placing the screen over our eyes. We’ll like what we see in our new, “improved” reality – but who’s creating and controlling that reality? That’s a question confronting all of us at the dawn of “The Last Days of Reality”.

Here’s a taste:

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Or listen to the whole episode here:


(May not work outside of Australia and New Zealand)

Here’s all of the media and links mentioned in the episode:

First, video of Pokémon Go players in Ryde – as the situation was tipping out of control:

The article from the Sydney Morning Herald about Niantic removing the ‘Pokestops’ from Ryde in a game update – pleasing the local residents.

Here’s some early footage of the ‘Sword of Damocles’ – the very first augmented reality system:

Sega’s VirtuaVR system – which I helped design:

Which led to the Magic Leap One AR spectacles – being released in September 2018. Here’s an video about that:

Mark Zuckerberg’s 2017 keynote at Facebook’s F8 Developer Conference, where he talks about how important augmented reality is to the future of Facebook:

Here’s that 2014 article from The Guardian about that infamous experiment where Facebook manipulated the emotions of 689,000 of its users – without telling them.

Finally, here’s HYPER-REALITY. You really want to watch all six minutes. It’s gold.

HYPER-REALITY from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

 

Episode 2.07: The Last Days of Reality (Part One)

 

Why is it so hard to tear ourselves away from Facebook’s feed? What is it feeding us that makes it so addictive?

The power of artificial intelligence combined with the eternal surveillance of the smartphone made a monster out of Zuck’s social network – but has it divided us more than it united us? How are people using this social network to spread fake news? How is fake news being weaponised to change the way we vote?  

All of these questions – and much more – are answered in our special two-part episode, “The Last Days of Reality”.

Part one tells the tale of how we ended up where we are – addicted to Facebook and in the thrall of shadowy firms like Cambridge Analytica. Here’s a taste:

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(ANZ listeners only)

And because this isn’t fake news, here’s the links to the stories referenced in the episode:

Buzzfeed reports on Macedonian content farms
 
https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/how-macedonia-became-a-global-hub-for-pro-trump-misinfo

Facebook exploits ‘insecure’ to sell ads, Darren Davidson, The Australian 1 May 2017
 
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/digital/facebook-targets-insecure-young-people-to-sell-ads/news-story/a89949ad016eee7d7a61c3c30c909fa6
 
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paularmstrongtech/2017/05/01/facebook-is-helping-brands-target-teens-who-feel-worthless/

Facebook’s formula for winning with AI
 
https://www.fastcompany.com/3060570/facebooks-formula-for-winning-at-ai

Experiment shows how to talk women into lower maths scores
 
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/314/5798/435
 
May 2017 Observer exposé on links between Cambridge Analytica and Brexit
 
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy

Cambridge Analytica becomes Emerdata

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/02/cambridge_analytica_shutdown/

Jimmy Wales founds WikiTRIBUNE

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/jimmy-wales-wikitribune

And, finally, a link to WikiTRIBUNE

https://www.wikitribune.com/

1.10: Original Sin (We Shouldn’t Have Made the Internet Free) with Robert Tercek

The decision to make the World Wide Web a free-to-all source of news had consequences no one expected, leading us down a path of advertising, analytics, targeting and profile auctions that leave us increasingly exposed to big data systems that know us better and better.

Here’s a video that presents an accurate picture of how all that works in practice – and be warned, it’s all a bit scary:

Robert Tercek has watched all of this develop – and, in his early days at MTV, helped it happen. Should we repent our ways? Can we? Here’s a clip:

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Listen on PodcastOne.com.au

Episode 1.02: Apps, Data and a Connected World with Andy Polaine

Dr. Andy Polaine helps companies design “living services”, the sorts of things that all of us interact with every day on our screens, through our smartphone apps, and behind the scenes. Should we trust those services? Andy offers some suggestions on how we can take a look ‘under the bonnet’ of the connected world.

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Listen on PodcastOne.com.au