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Reality Media 9: The Moon Landing for the Metaverse
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Reality Media 9: The Moon Landing for the Metaverse

Rajesh Kasturirangan
Mar 1
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‘Qualia’ is the term of art in philosophy and consciousness studies for the ‘what it’s like to experience something.’ The way a rose looks and smells are essential to how we experience a rose. The rose qualia is different from the tulip qualia, though they are more similar to one another than either is to the cat qualia.

So what is the qualia of the metaverse? What does it feel like to be in one? What should it feel like to be in one?

We have speculative fictional accounts from Snowcrash or Ready Player One or the Matrix, but I am convinced we don’t need to lean on fiction any more. In fact, we can point to a full spectrum metaverse experience this past week: the war in Ukraine. If we keep thinking the Metaverse is a technology platform, we will miss the woods for the trees, for it’s the experience that counts, not the particular tech on which it’s grounded. Consider the following list of metaverse features:

Immersion: here you go

Twitter avatar for @RALee85Rob Lee @RALee85
Footage apparently of the Russian Mi-35M attack helicopter that was shot down on February 26.
t.me/milinfolive/77…

February 28th 2022

12 Retweets36 Likes

Augmented Reality: here you go

Twitter avatar for @ckoettlChristoph Koettl @ckoettl
Satellite images show large unit of Russian troops near #Kyiv. Hundreds of vehicles, around 40 miles NW of the capital. #Ukraine 🛰️📷@Maxar
nytimes.com/live/2022/02/2…
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February 27th 2022

1,062 Retweets2,183 Likes

Realtime maps of the fighting: here you go

And in the annals of unintended consequences, you don’t want to give away troop movements because they left their phones in their pockets.

Twitter avatar for @KyivIndependentThe Kyiv Independent @KyivIndependent
⚡️Google Maps disables Google Maps’ live traffic overlay and Live Busyness, a feature that displays how popular a location may be at a given time. Google reportedly made the change in an effort to help keep Ukrainians safe.

February 28th 2022

7,220 Retweets62,953 Likes

The automation of work: here you go

Twitter avatar for @hiddenmarkovBogdan Kulynych 🇺🇦 @hiddenmarkov
New (to me) dimension of crowdwork platforms: Russian military uses Premise microtasking platform to aim and calibrate fire during their invasion of Ukraine. Example tasks are to locate ports, medical facilities, bridges, explosion craters. Paying ¢0.25 to $3.25 a task.
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February 25th 2022

2,174 Retweets4,649 Likes

Fake news that looks like real news, here you go

Twitter avatar for @IAPonomarenkoIllia Ponomarenko @IAPonomarenko
BREAKING: It’s official - 🇺🇦 Snake Island sailors are alive, Navy confirms. They were taken prisoner by Russia.

February 28th 2022

5,164 Retweets25,904 Likes

Cryptocurrency speculation, here you go

Twitter avatar for @alexstamosAlex Stamos @alexstamos
Legitimate cryptocurrency companies need to be planning right now for what happens if Russia gets kicked off of SWIFT and turns to BTC and other, less monitored coins to prop up their economy and sell oil.

February 26th 2022

694 Retweets3,902 Likes

The Neo of the Ukrainian Matrix: here you go

Twitter avatar for @mrsorokaaOleksiy Sorokin @mrsorokaa
President, his Chief of Staff, the Prime Minister, head of the Servant of the People are all in Kyiv. We will win! 🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦

February 25th 2022

17,750 Retweets124,814 Likes

Snark: here you go

Twitter avatar for @jathansadowskiJathan Sadowski @jathansadowski
Instead of selling war bonds, Ukraine has a golden opportunity to mint NFTs of unique and important moments in the conflict. Selling these NFTs will fund defense while generating community. WW3 will be Web3 native. The winner will embrace the power of decentralized networks.

February 26th 2022

458 Retweets6,487 Likes

All of these sources are coming together because of a major world event. The energy unleashed by that event is:

  1. precipitating investments of time, energy and money by millions of big and small actors; which in turn is

  2. leading to a densely interconnected network of individuals and institutions who are creating a collective reality on the fly.

It as if Elon Musk had said, I’ll hand over $100 billion of my fortune to anyone who wants to create a worldwide metaverse with first person shooter games, real time location tracking and mapping, massive money flows, a select group of elite players and hundreds of millions of extras, and Putin had raised his hand and said: I got this.

The ongoing war is the hand-crafted prototype that will be broken down into chunks and repurposed for everyday experiences.

The Ukraine war is like the moon landing for the Metaverse: the massive (if unplanned) investment out which arise many smaller outcomes.

What’s missing in this picture is the second by second surveillance of every single object and action that’s essential to a full blown Metaverse. For that, you will have to travel from Kyiv to Washington.

Twitter avatar for @nytimestechNYTimes Tech @nytimestech
We shopped at the most Amazon-ified Whole Foods in the nation. 
Here Comes the Full Amazonification of Whole FoodsA newly revamped store in Washington shows how thoroughly Amazon has woven itself into the grocery shopping experience.nyti.ms

February 28th 2022

1 Retweet1 Like

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