Forever 21 Joins The Metaverse With ‘Roblox’ Shopping World
The metaverse company Virtual Brand Group is partnering with popular fashion company Forever 21 to create a unique experience that will let you operate your own Forever 21 store inside of Roblox. In Forever 21 Shop City,you’ll be encouraged to bring the vogue by designing your own fashion business through an unprecedented amount of customization options available through Roblox’s “Tycoon” mode.
Your first task is finding a “physical” location for your new venture! Ideally, you’ll want to find a spot in Forever 21 Shop City with a great view or a heavy amount of foot traffic. If at any point you feel like mixing things up, you can swap locations at any time.
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Now that your Forever 21 store is built, it’s time to get creative. You’ll need to curate an inventory of eye-catching Forever 21 accessories and clothing to stock your shelves and cloth your display mannequins. You’ll also have to hire a team of non-player characters (NPCs) to work your store.
Like all business owners in the real world, sometimes your job will require you to do a little of everything. Be prepared to hit the store floor and help customers with questions or jump behind the cash register when things get busy. You may also find yourself decorating storefront windows and even pulling inventory from the back to fill shelves.
As if that weren’t cool enough, Forever 21 will be releasing new collections simultaneously in both real-world physical and the metaverse. Those same items will be available as virtual merchandise in Forever 21 Shop City that gamers can buy for their Roblox avatar.
See the full story here: https://www.virtualrealitypulse.com/edition/daily-amazon-apple-2021-12-16?open-article-id=20761482&article-title=forever-21-joins-the-metaverse-with--roblox--shopping-world&blog-domain=vrscout.com&blog-title=vrscout
A History of A.I. in Art, From Ancient Inca Data Systems to the New Battlefield of Algorithmic Bias
We identified some of the earliest developments and key movements in the field today.
While the fiction of A.I. art is pretty neat, the messy reality is that artists who work with computational systems have much more say in the outcomes than the term might suggest: they provide the inputs, guide the process, and filter the outputs.
Antecedent Technologies
A.I. didn’t spring forth from nothing in the 21st century. Here are its earliest seeds.
3000 B.C. – Talking Knots
The ancient Inca used a system called Quipu—”talking knots”—to collect data and keep records on everything from census information to military organization. The practice, in use centuries before algebra was born, was both aesthetically intricate and internally logically robust enough that it could be seen as a precursor to computer programming languages.
See the full story here: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/artificial-intelligence-art-history-2045520
Nike Just Bought Leading Metaverse Fashion House RTFKT
Nike today announced the purchase of RTFKT Studios, a leading metaverse fashion house best known for its lineup of high-end digital clothing. Since 2020, the company has employed a variety of cutting-edge technologies such as NFTs, crypto, blockchains, and AR technology to establish a one-of-a-kind brand that blends the physical and digital worlds.
What began with NFT sneaker drops has since expanded into a full-fledged digital clothing brand.
See the full story here: https://www.virtualrealitypulse.com/edition/daily-apple-amazon-2021-12-13?open-article-id=20738470&article-title=nike-just-bought-leading-metaverse-fashion-house-rtfkt&blog-domain=vrscout.com&blog-title=vrscout
Yesterday Once More
Reducing culture and consumers to data will continue to produce the same representations of nostalgia for backward-looking algorithms to recommend. Those who worship the power of digital technology may believe that we are on track to a utopia where people can escape from the future we’ve made. But if we let algorithms predict the future for us all, we will find there is nowhere to go but back.
See the full story here: https://reallifemag.com/yesterday-once-more/?fbclid=IwAR3Nub-puqTCH3BGskul6L-Fzakzy21Kbx1Bg5KZ8a6rRI2DWj7hG423xnM
The article was posted by Monika Bielskyte
Bring the Disrupters
Marshall’s 2021 SCALE event brought together the biggest names in blockchain, cryptocurrency, NFTs and other instruments of financial disruption.
At the Nov. 3, 2021 SCALE conference, titled “Building the Blockchain Future,” and held virtually, Borquez brought in and interviewed a literal who’s-who in that space.
Cathie Wood from Ark Investments. Anatoly Yakovenko of Solana. Richard Rosenblatt of Autograph. Tom Brady (yes that Tom Brady) made an appearance.
“It was one of the biggest blockchain events in Southern California,” said Borquez, who is a faculty member at the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. “Having one of these speakers would make a solid event. We had eight.”
...Borquez intends to help position USC as a thought leader in Blockchain, cryptocurrency and financial disruption. ...
“This year a record 20 percent of my class had a blockchain element written into their business plans,” he said. ...
See the full story here: https://www.marshall.usc.edu/news/bring-disrupters
Ten tech predictions for 2022: what’s next for Twitter, Uber and NFTs
PhilNote; these are pretty interesting
Twitter might actually get its act together
NFTs will remain hyped to oblivion, some people will lose their shirts
Jack Dorsey will start a blockchain company. Peter Thiel might invest
DAOs will be the new Spacs
Ports are the new ports
See the full story here: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/12/10-tech-predictions-for-2022-twitter-uber-nfts-virtual-reality
Using Snapchat’s new glasses showed me where AR goes beyond phones
For companies like Snapchat parent Snap, the approach has been to continue developing phone AR ahead of physical glasses. That's still Snap's approach, even with AR glasses already in the hands of developers. Snap is working on more ways to scan the real world and overlay it with AR in its app-like Lenses on the Snapchat app, and moving some of those tools over to developers for its still-not-ready-for consumers AR glasses.
...But Snap's approach also has an interesting wrinkle: creating unique face filters and AR effects to be used in other apps. Your avatar -- or your cat face -- could travel cross-app, in a sense.
See the full story here: https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/using-snapchats-new-glasses-showed-me-where-ar-goes-beyond-phones/
