My Digital Manifesto, 2021

 I'm just shy of 4 full years since I published my first manifesto. I think I was fairly spot on with my predictions. A few things have modified some, such as the abbreviations. But in all, I'm not going to change my path much. So allow me to introduce this year's manifesto.

Camera based XR

This area is still going strong. The nomenclature is now eXtended Reality, rather than Augmented Reality, as I anticipated. We have OpenXR, which superseded OpenAR. The big names are still in the game, but Facebook has upped their ante considerably. Their Oculus 2 has been selling like hotcakes. I still see them as the ones that will bring XR to the masses. Especially once their AR glasses hit the market. WebXR should also fall under this category now.

Blockchain

As I write this, the insanity of the ERC-20 token, also know as an NFT, has taken the internet by storm. I believe its safe to say that the world has discovered blockchain. Now it's a matter of time for world governments to step in and tame the beast.

Assignment servers

This is an area that is struggling. If I thought anything would skyrocket, it would be this. But much of the concept was hinged on VR goggles being ubiquitous by now. So we'll see what happens.

Speaking of skyrocketing, SpaceX has suddenly become the darling of the public space sector. Only Elon Musk. Anything is possible from that insane man.

Haptics

Wearable haptics was not something I had considered seriously until just last year. Start watching for affordable haptics VERY soon. Vests and gloves are still in the realm of enterprise. But things like haptic straps from companies like Woojer are making people sit up and take notice. It's a simple device that pairs up to your device with Bluetooth. I own one. Very cool! And watches. Trust me on this. A wrist controller from Facebook that uses EMG is going to make some companies think twice.

Microsoft Mixed Reality

I'm including it again in this list because they finally upped their game, so to speak.  Their mixed reality finally IS mixed reality. They introduced something called Microsoft Mesh in Q1 of this year. it brings them closer to the concept of default and digital on any device. Other than that, MS has kept focus on enterprise as well.

Creation Engines

Unity and Unreal have held the world rapt attention. But on the edge there are other engines. Godot is muscling it way in from the open source arena. Blender as always is a great tool for creating individual in game items. There are so many flavors of tools, I'm sure you have your own favorites. Keep an eye on the at home 3D printer market. Facebook might be leading the VR charge, but at a price of personal privacy. And not everyone wants to pay it.

So there you have it for the next few years.

The Future of eXtended Reality and the Metarverse

I wanted to mention a little bit about my opinion on the current state of XR. As I see it, eXtended Reality is reaching critical mass. I know a lot of people have been saying this. But when someone like me can see where things are heading, you can place bets that this is a sure thing. Because I never speculate this far ahead without being seriously wrong in the end.

Consider the gaming industry as it stands currently. While companies are still offering single player titles, The majority of titles are MMOs. Zombies and war titles abound. And when you get tired of shooting and bombing the undead, you can always run them over with stolen vehicles. But when even that becomes tedious, you can now go to your favorite in-game casino and kick back and win some moola to buy more stuff to run more people over. Cool, huh?

Switching gears, no pun intended, now I ask you to consider the loosely termed "social" world games, such as Sansar, VRChat, and the like. You can kick back after a long day in the default world, and visit with your friends from around the globe and do anything from shopping to intimate cuddling. I don't need to explain much here.

Tying most of these experiences together is a VR headset for immersion. Anyone in the default world that bleeds pixels will own one (or more) by now. But a vast majority, myself included, are still waiting for prices to drop. Which is why companies like High Fidelity have had to change direction to stay afloat.

Augmented Reality has its own unique position as well, and which is one that will explode once Apple releases an AR head mounted device. Anyone that would know on that is Robert Scoble. He is part of a group of tech watchers that live and breathe AR. And if Mr. Scoble says that Apple will release an HMD, it's simply a question of when. I personally get frustrated that the entire industry is in a holding pattern to see what Apple does.

Another thing that has been taking place is the parallel development of blockchain tech. There are dozens and dozens of indie developers that have latched onto the potential of cutting the ties to the industry giants, and taking the metaverse to the next level. Cryptocurrencies are a wildcard right now, giving default world governments ulcers as they all try to figure out how the hell to milk them for taxes. That's all I'll say on that.

And one more item to complete this exercise, is Artificial Intelligence. The Amazon Echo and the Google Assistant are neck and neck in voice interfaces. Microsoft, like High Fidelity, have seen the battle, and have taken Cortana in another direction around it, and are putting her in business boardrooms.  The "Holy Grail" will be AGI, if you will indulge me. It's so close now, there aren't many big thinkers that dismiss it out of hand. I'm going to gingerly sidestep "sentience". That's for the theologians to determine.

I think you can see where I'm going here. We're living in an eXtended Reality universe already. It's been seeping into our lives for years. One bit of innocent tech at a time. When Neal Stephenson wrote about The Street, he wasn't too far off from whats in existence today. There's just a heck of a lot more teleporters. People hate walking.

Virtual Reality, Blockchain, and the Brave New Future

I've been rather starry-eyed for the last few months. I've been swept up in the potential of blockchain, and how it will change our way of life on the internet. I've daydreamed about how all our digital purchases in world will eventually be neatly pigeonholed for use in numerous games and social worlds. And the possibility of being able to cross over those items to worlds that never had such items previously. Heady stuff, to say the least!

The looming potential for all this hyperbole is a proposed Ethereum token ERC-1155. The standard was introduced by enjincoin.io. I won't go into the fine details of it, but it basically lets you make a digital purchase of several items under one transaction, rather than several items with several transactions. You should do some further research if you're unfamiliar with the concept.

So being the virtual world enthusiast I am, I let my mind wander to the ownership of digital land again.  Wouldn't it be cool to actually own that decentralized sim, rather than the ugly physical reality of leasing it from the parent company controlling the servers? So Then I started looking into blockchain controlled VR. The prominent one in my sights is decentraland.org. I needed to get Mana tokens in order to buy the plots. Sadly, I fell thru the cracks on that, because I couldn't afford the token price.

But today, I got a big awakening. I read this article on the Bloomberg site. The price of the token was miniscule compared to the valuation of the digital plots quoted in the article! Then it hit me: humanity is porting the haves and have-nots into the internet. This Genesis City in Decentraland has already been carved up by the default world investors with default world money. These guys bought hundreds, even thousands of tokens, and have the equivalent in blockchain land holdings. I quote the article here: "Today, resellers can reliably get as much as $30,000 for a Genesis City plot." I encourage you to read the article in its entirety.

Those of us in Second Life that have whined about tier cost being high should count our blessings. While we have been at the mercy of Linden Lab and their pricing structure, they have at least allowed common folks like us to run simple businesses and a few of us to make a living. Affordably. Blockchain simply gives the ability to the wealthy to enter virtual worlds to earn hundreds of thousands of fiat currency that they would never have bothered to do before because there was no previous value for them to do so!

Have I soured on the concepts of blockchain? Not really. It still holds potential for everyone willing to invest. And the important word here is invest. But the mom and pop stores on Second Life are about to find themselves with the possibility of a Walmart for a neighbor across the digital street selling digital trinkets that the Asian coders will crank out for a few Enjin Coins. Because that's going to be the only place you can buy them at for a fair price.

NY Times Rebuttal

I just read an article from the New York Times about another "AI is gonna destroy humanity" concept. Ho-hum.

I'm kind of getting tired of people crying "wolf!", and hollering "the sky is falling!". The only reason I'm taking issue with this one is the concept that the author, Kai-Fu Lee, makes in his second to last paragraph:

"So if most countries will not be able to tax ultra-profitable A.I. companies to subsidize their workers, what options will they have? I foresee only one: Unless they wish to plunge their people into poverty, they will be forced to negotiate with whichever country supplies most of their A.I. software — China or the United States — to essentially become that country’s economic dependent, taking in welfare subsidies in exchange for letting the “parent” nation’s A.I. companies continue to profit from the dependent country’s users...."

Seriously?

Why does the rest of the world still think that we are some monstrously rich nation-state that can just pay for the rest of the world? Granted, AI is eating our lunch right now. But come on, people, let's use some common sense. There are hundreds of thousands of people in America that are just as displaced from AI and machines taking their jobs. Do you hear them hollering that India needs to pay their way? Well, some actually are, but most of us know better. And frankly, Mr. Lee, you should too.

Massive taxation will NOT solve where the money will come from for a universal basic income. What WILL solve this dilemma is all the stinking data that EVERY individual human on this planet generates. Even the smallest backwoods company taps into that data for streamlining their operations. What needs to happen is tieing that data into a blockchain that places a monetary value to it for the individual that generates that data. Then the individual gets a portion of the payment that the backwoods company paid to XYZ megacorp that audits and compiles the data stream.

Until this happens, the mega corporations are gonna fight taxation tooth and nail. You think there is a problem with offshore holdings now? You ain't seen nothin' yet.

My Digital Manifesto, 2017

There is no small amount of hype concerning Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Artificial Intelligence lately. The three seemingly separate disciplines have been coalescing into an overall technology that encompases some important hardware and software developments. Many of us have longed for the day when we can pop in a set of contact lenses to interact with our tech. While that development is still on the drawing board, we have been waiting patiently for some kind of affordable head mounted device. I believe before we reach that point, the hype will settle down around to what has already been accomplished. Here is my timeline for the next four years. Your predictions might vary slightly.

     1.   Camera based AR
Facebook has committed to creating an augmented experience through the everyday smartphone. There have been numerous companies in the recent past that have had the same general vision, such as Metaio, which was purchased by Apple a few years back, and Niantic, the creators of Pokemon Go. Everyone has a phone with a camera, and the best way to make people comfortable with the concept of Augmented Reality is to get it to the masses. There is no better company to do that than Facebook. Period.

    2.   WebVR
I’ve been playing in virtual worlds since the creation of VRML back in the 1980s. With the addition of a web browser plug-in, you could surf to any site that ran VRML code. It was mesmerizing, and much of what was learned has been applied to gaming over the years. As VRML waned, there was a brief comeback in the form of updated web standards called X3D, and X3Dom. But it always remained a niche technology. Recently there is a renewed interest in porting VR to the web. WebVR will only help to align the different disciplines under a common banner.

    3.   Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies
I can’t emphasise with enough strength how important blockchain tech will usher in true interoperability in the next few years. Most of the world is finally waking up to the concept of Bitcoin now. While Bitcoin is the dominant face of the cryptocurrency market, the real strength is blockchain. I will be so bold to say that most gaming currencies today will be slowly converted to an underlying blockchain system in order to stay relevant. If you are an investor, however, you really need to pay attention to blockchain development.

    4.   Assignment Servers
This is a concept created by an insane little man by the name of Philip Rosedale. His newest current venture, High Fidelity, uses it. To quote their FAQ: “The Assignment Server is a High Fidelity service that allows people to share their computers with each other to act as servers or as scripted interactive content. Devices register with the assignment server as being available for work, and the assignment server delegates them to domain servers that want to use them. Units of a cryptocurrency, will be exchanged by users of the assignment server, to compensate each other for their use of each other’s devices. The assignment server can analyze the bandwidth, latency, and Network Address Translation capabilities of the contributed devices to best assign them to jobs. So, for example, an iPhone connected over home WiFi might become a scripted animal wandering around the world, while a well-connected home PC on an adequately permissive router might be used as a voxel server.”

In a nutshell, this is a form of peer to peer networking. I won’t go into all the explanations of the other terms used in this paragraph. I encourage you to visit the High Fidelity site for yourself to learn more.

   5. Microsoft Mixed Reality
Can you say “One ring to rule them all”? The recent Microsoft Build conference has revealed that they get the idea that everyone wants a piece of the pie. And MS says “yeah, you can haz pie”. Hardware is forking all over the place right now, thanks to Asia’s aggressive tech developers. And one thing that Microsoft understands well is that hardware is secondary to the goal of the experience. You can’t have an app work on an android device, and not on iPhone without two different versions of it. I use them as an example, but envision the myriad of devices already collecting dust in your game room right now. Microsoft wants to change that. And they’re doing it in small steps so they don’t scare anyone into screaming “monopoly”. Keep your eyes on the changes coming to Windows in the near future. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.