Top 22 Technology Trends 2022 — from unfoldlabs.com; with thanks to Pedro Ramon Lopez Garcia for his posting out on LinkedIn
Also see:
Web 3.0 vs Metaverse: What’s the difference? — from homo-digitalis.net by Fabian Schmidt
Excerpt:
So what is Web 3.0?
On Twitter, a user asked if someone could explain the term in baby talk. I thought one answer was good:
This is a sufficient simplification to gain an initial understanding. Yet a bit more information is still important.
Let’s get one thing straight right away. As with all things in the making, there is not yet a clear-cut definition of Web 3.0. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the classic web, thinks of the semantic web as the next big step.
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Since 2020/2021, there is another idea of Web3, and it is inspired by a new form of technology: Blockchains. At its core is a new wave of decentralization.
Besides decentralization, other key topics related to Web 3.0 include Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO), Non-fungible-tokens (NFT), and Decentralized Finance (DeFi).
The metaverse is a digital world that is meant to feel as real as possible and can represent all concerns of human existence. From leisure to work.
Fabian Schmidt, Homo Digitalis, 2021
Bill Gates: Most Work Meetings Will Happen In The Metaverse In 3 Years — from vrscout.com by Kyle Melnick
Excerpt:
“Within the next two or three years, I predict most virtual meetings will move from 2D camera image grids—which I call the Hollywood Squares model, although I know that probably dates me—to the metaverse, a 3D space with digital avatars,” said Gates in the post. “Both Facebook and Microsoft recently unveiled their visions for this, which gave most people their first view of what it will look like”.
Adidas to enter the metaverse with first NFT products — from dezeen.com by Rima Sabina Aouf
Excerpt:
Adidas has announced its next collection will be a mix of digital and physical items, and will be sold as NFTs produced with collaborators such as Bored Ape Yacht Club.
Titled Into the Metaverse, the collection will comprise virtual wearables that buyers can use in online platforms, but also the physical clothing to match.
It is Adidas’ first collection of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens – essentially, digital collectibles with proven authenticity. NFTs act as a blockchain-based certificate of ownership, allowing pieces to be authenticated, bought and collected.
How Coinbase thinks about the Metaverse — from blog.coinbase.com by Brian Armstrong & Alex Reeve
Excerpt:
Primitive Metaverse platforms are selling virtual land for millions of dollars. Billions more are being invested in Metaverse startups. And Mark Zuckerberg recently renamed his entire company to reflect a focus on building the Metaverse.
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Recently, our team put together an internal presentation about the Metaverse, who’s working on it, and how crypto will help make it real. I thought the presentation was well done, so I’m sharing most of the slides here.
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Like Matt[hew Ball], we define the Metaverse as:
The future of the internet: A massively-scaled, persistent, interactive, and interoperable real-time platform comprised of interconnected virtual worlds where people can socialize, work, transact, play, and create.
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The Metaverse is the distant evolution of Web3. In its most complete form, it will be a series of decentralized, interconnected virtual worlds with a fully functioning economy where people can do just about anything they can do in the physical world.
The next age of the internet could suck power away from Big Tech while living on the same backbone as cryptocurrencies. Here’s what to know about Web3. — from businessinsider.com by Katie Canales
Excerpts (emphasis DSC):
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One aspect of the metaverse is that users will hopefully be able to go virtually from platform to platform with one single account — just like we will in Web3.
And NFTs, one-of-a-kind tokens representing your ownership of a virtual good, could be more easily bought and sold with cryptocurrencies within a space like Web3.
From DSC:
How might “Web3” translate into the future of lifelong learning? Here’s one vision/possibility:
Each person would have a learner profile/account that could seamlessly log into multiple education/training providers’ platforms and services. The results of that learning could be stored in one’s cloud-based learner profile. This type of next-generation learning platform would still need subject matter experts, instructional designers, programmers, and other team members. But the focus would be on building skills — skills that an artificial intelligence-backed interface would demonstrate are currently being requested by the modern workplace. This constantly-being-updated list of skills could then link to the learning-related experiences and resources that people could choose from in order to develop those skills.
The following vision/graphic also comes to my mind:
BLOCKCHAIN INNOVATION CHALLENGE — from the American Council on Education (ACE)
About the Challenge
The challenge sought technology-enabled solutions that reoriented the education and employment ecosystem around the individuals that they aim to serve. It invited teams to articulate a vision and design pilots that addressed an ecosystem-first designed approach driving interoperability, social mobility, and learner control expanding on these essential themes:
The four winners of the Blockchain Innovation Challenge were…
The VRJAM metaverse platform is coming to transform the world of live entertainment
VRJAM, the UK’s leading creator of live music experiences in virtual reality, today teased the launch of the VRJAM platform, a revolutionary new metaverse events platform and NFT creation solution.
To bring the VRJAM metaverse platform to life, VRJAM has partnered with market leading NFT software developer Enjin.io to launch a rich virtual reality world that offers a host of new solutions for artists to render and monetize their music and live shows in amazing new ways using NFT’s, blockchain and immersive technology.
The VRJAM platform promises to open up completely new ways for both fans and artist to experience live music events and represents the next step in the evolution of live music.
Ownership of this virtual world will be shared by a guild of globally recognised artists and record labels who will cooperate to create value and define new possibilities for music inside the metaverse.
VRJAM’s metaverse platform offers solutions for true live performance using technology that is years ahead of other similar platforms. It provides unsurpassed user experience and offers fans, artists and labels an array of unique features:
At the heart of the VRJAM metaverse platform is a blockchain based trading and finance system, VRJAM Coin. This revolutionary new cryptocurrency will create ways for both artists and fans to earn money inside the metaverse and promises to create entirely new business models for artists, venues and labels at a time when their traditional ways of making money have been turned upside down by the Covid 19 pandemic.
The VRJAM cryptocurrency is backed by investment from 5 of the world’s leading blockchain specialist investment and venture capital firms, demonstrating the exciting potential of VRJAM’s tech.
The VRJAM platform is scheduled to go live in early 2022, follow on social media to stay up to date.
From DSC:
Hmmmmm….might this type of thing spill over into the worlds of teaching and learning? More direct-to-consumer (learner) types of offerings? Will this open up the doors for new methods of earning a living or for those interested in building a teaching & learning-based brand?
Alternatively, will this impact what actors, actresses, and comedians will be able to do?
Addendum on 12/2/21:
From the Paul Weiss Law Firm — back from 2019: A whitepaper re: cryptocurrency
Excerpt:
The development and growth of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology has implications for many industries, including finance, media, and healthcare. In a series of papers, we will discuss the variety of ways in which cryptocurrencies and blockchains are being used in different fields. This paper, the first in our series of three papers, discusses cryptocurrencies, including how they operate in conjunction with the blockchain and how Bitcoin, the first major cryptocurrency, compares to traditional, fiat currencies.
From DSC:
How might the development of cryptocurrencies integrate in with a next-gen learning platform? Would teams and/or individuals get paid via a cryptocurrency? Hmmm…more learning to do.
It’s interesting to note what Bitcoin (BTC-USD) was trading at in 2017, 2018, and 2019 versus today:
Today:
Here’s what some of the other cryptocurrencies were trading at today:
Excerpt from “Use of digital technologies in judicial reform and access to justice cooperation — from HiiL (The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law)
All aboard: Bitcoin’s rise inspires even big banks to staff up on crypto talent — from linkedin.com by George Anders
Excerpt:
That’s according to a new analysis by LinkedIn’s Economic Graph team, which finds that major financial services firms will add more than three times as many staff steeped in digital-asset experience this year than in 2015. That pace jumped 40% in the first half of 2021 alone, compared with the same period last year.
“The opportunities in digital assets are plentiful,” BNY Mellon’s Roman Regelman, the bank’s CEO of asset servicing and head of digital, told LinkedIn News. “We can now attract talent in a very different way.”
Also relevant, see:
The Metaverse is Taking Over the Physical World — from interestingengineering.com by Rupendra Brahambhatt; with thanks to Dan Lejerskar for this resource
The virtual world is expanding with real world avatars and digital economy.
Excerpt:
The advent of AR, blockchain, and VR devices in the last few years has sparked the development of the metaverse. Moreover, the unprecedented growth of highly advanced technologies in the gaming industry, which offer immersive gameplay experiences, not only provides us a glimpse of how the metaverse would look like but also indicates that we are closer than ever to experience a virtual world of our own.
What is the metaverse?
Source: Kelvin Han/Unsplash
A metaverse is a group of persistent, shared 3D virtual environments where you (in the form of your digital avatar) can visit places, shop for products, subscribe to services, work with your colleagues, play games, and even customize the scenes around you to meet your personal tastes and requirements, and the digital assets you own. So essentially, a metaverse is a virtual world or worlds, that would allow you to go inside the digital world — to be in rather than on the digital space.
From DSC:
Again I wonder….on the legal side of things…how will this impact what lawyers, judges, legislators, general counsels, and more need to know? Along these lines see:
To do this well, legal department heads and the lawyers and professionals in the department will have to learn, and practice, some new skills: embracing technology, project management, change management, and adaptability.
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The first, and likely most obvious, skill an attorney needs in a rapidly evolving business environment is a firm grasp on existing and emerging technology. There are two important categories of technology to consider—the first is legal technology and the second is broader technology trends.
