A 22-year-old breaks down how to join the metaverse

Create an avatar

The first thing I had to do before stepping into the metaverse was create my avatar. The panel was loaded with options to customize my hair and eye color, clothing, and even accessories. My avatar came wearing a pretty atrocious outfit, so of course, I had to change it up.

Start exploring

After spending too much time deciding on the perfect outfit (a light pink shirt with some overalls to escape the New York winter weather), I was finally dropped into Genesis Plaza, a starting point within Decentraland. This was definitely the most crowded area of the platform that I saw, and other avatars popped up to my left and right as I took in my surroundings. When an avatar got close to mine, I could hear a human voice saying something unintelligible.

See the full story here: https://fortune.com/2021/12/07/how-i-signed-up-metaverse/

New University-wide institute to integrate natural, artificial intelligence

Harvard University on Tuesday launched the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence, a new University-wide initiative standing at the intersection of neuroscience and artificial intelligence, seeking fundamental principles that underlie both human and machine intelligence. The fruits of discoveries will flow in both directions, enhancing understanding of how humans think, perceive the world around them, make decisions, and learn, thereby advancing the rapidly evolving field of AI.

The institute will be funded by a $500 million gift from Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, which was announced Tuesday by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The gift will support 10 new faculty appointments, significant new computing infrastructure, and resources to allow students to flow between labs in pursuit of ideas and knowledge. 

See the full story here: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/12/new-harvard-institute-to-study-natural-artificial-intelligence/

Crystal City to host voice technology conference this week

VOICE Summit 2021, a conference highlighting the latest in artificial intelligence and voice technology, will kick off this evening in Crystal City.

This is the first major tech event to relocate to National Landing — collectively, the Crystal City, Pentagon City and Potomac Yard neighborhoods  — since Amazon announced it would build its second headquarters in Arlington in 2018, according to Arlington Economic Development.

The two-day event will be virtual and in-person at the Renaissance Arlington Capital View Hotel (2800 S. Potomac Ave). The event will feature keynotes, fireside chats, panels and breakout “conversations” that allow the audience to play an active role in the discussion.

See the full story here: https://www.arlnow.com/2021/12/06/crystal-city-to-host-voice-technology-conference-this-week/

I regret to inform you that Digital Human as a Service (DHaaS) is now an acronym

The actual news here is that Japanese telecom giant KDDI has partnered with a firm named Mawari (which means something along the lines of “surroundings” in Japanese) to create a virtual assistant you can “see” through the window of your smartphone in augmented reality, one who might automatically pop up to give you directions and interact if you point your phone at a real-world location. (You’ll also see walking directions and indoor maps in the video, but those simply appear to be packaged together as part of the proof of concept.)

If you peek the video atop this post, you can see it’s not that much more advanced than, say, Pokémon Go. But behind the scenes, the partners claim that KDDI’s 5G network, Amazon’s low-latency AWS Wavelength edge computing nodes, and a proprietary codec from Mawari combine to let “digital humans” stream to your phone in real time instead of running natively on your phone’s chip.

See the full story here: https://www.theverge.com/tldr/22821377/digital-human-as-a-service-kddi-mawari?fbclid=IwAR1PNKa2ESulsW9AYt-QWfJcf0f-puN1nVx6S47vRRuiUU8fG4IFJYFpf2U

Amazon launches its $19.99 per month ‘Alexa Together’ elder care subscription for families

Once configured, the system allows the elderly person to say “Alexa, call for help,” if they’re ever in need of emergency assistance. A trained agent on the other end will then be able to dispatch the police, the fire department or an ambulance to their location, much like what’s possible with some home security systems. However, the Alexa Together system can also work with third-party devices from Assistive Technology Service (ATS) and Vayyar to detect if the customer may be in need of emergency assistance from a fall and proactively help.

Vayyar Care is a wall-mounted sensor that is able to identify when a fall has happened, while SkyAngelCare by ATS is a fall-detection pendant that aging customers wear around their neck. Both can detect a fall — the latter if the customer presses a help button on their pendant. Amazon says more device makers will be added to Alexa Together in time.

The subscription service is offering an expansive six-month free trial to allow customers to determine if the solution is a good fit for them. And existing Alexa Care Hub customers will also now receive a free year of Alexa Together starting today until December 7, 2022.

See the full story here: https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/07/amazon-launches-its-19-99-per-month-alexa-together-elder-care-subscription-for-families/

Ranked: The World’s Most Popular Social Networks, and Who Owns Them

See the full story here: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-social-networks-worldwide-by-users/?fbclid=IwAR2sJrfMqMLbZpksVrwxSQSsflsJc1rZynU3SzLhz2T4nADsLg7nDI1Q5FM

NFT categories (Shelly Palmer)

... While there are an unlimited number of ways to use an NFT (non-fungible token), four general use case categories have emerged: Digital Collectibles, Gaming, Digital Identities, and Tokenization of Physical Goods and Services. The underlying technologies, smart contracts and distributed ledgers (AKA blockchains), are common to each use case. But each is inspiring innovation in slightly different ways. ...

See the full story here: https://www.shellypalmer.com/2021/12/top-4-uses-for-nfts/?ck_subscriber_id=958930034&utm_source=convertkit&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Top+4+Uses+for+NFTs%20-%207134864

The first metaverse experiments? Look to what’s already happening in medicine

... Zimmer Biomet, a Warsaw, Indiana-based medical device company, recently unveiled its OptiVu Mixed Reality Solutions platform, which employs HoloLens devices and three applications — one using MR in manufacturing surgical tools, another that collects and stores data to track patient progress before and after surgery, and a third that allows clinicians to share a MR experience with patients ahead of a procedure. ...

In real-world applications of AR medical technology, Johns Hopkins neurosurgeons performed the institution’s first-ever AR surgeries on living patients in June. During the initial procedure, physicians placed six screws in a patient’s spine during a spinal fusion. Two days later, a separate team of surgeons removed a cancerous tumor from the spine of a patient. Both teams donned headsets made by Augmedics, an Israeli firm, equipped with a see-through eye display that projects images of a patient’s internal anatomy, such as bones and other tissue, based on CT scans. “It’s like having a GPS navigator in front of your eyes,” said Timothy Witham, M.D., director of the Johns Hopkins Neurosurgery Spinal Fusion Laboratory.

See the full story here: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/04/the-first-metaverse-experiments-look-to-whats-happening-in-medicine.html

The metaverse needs aggressive regulation

...Ultimately, the metaverse will enable amazing applications that enrich our lives, expanding what it means to be human. At the same time, there are very real dangers we need to avoid. The best way to enable the magic while preventing the dangers is to aggressively regulate the space. And we need to do it now, before the problems become so deeply embedded in the infrastructure and business models they’re impossible to unwind.ADVERTISEMENT

The alternative is to end up living in a metaverse that looks and feels natural, while behind the scenes, powerful corporations are manipulating our experiences for the highest bidder without us even realizing it. ...

See the full story here: https://venturebeat.com/2021/12/04/the-metaverse-needs-aggressive-regulation/

‘Metaverse’ hype fuels booming digital property market

...According to crypto data site Dapp, land worth more than $100 million has sold in the past week across the four largest metaverse sites, The Sandbox, Decentraland, CryptoVoxels, and Somnium Space.

...And while it may be some time before these sites operate as true metaverses, transporting us elsewhere with VR goggles, digital land is already functioning as an asset just like real land, said Hackl.

"They can build on it, they can rent it out, they can sell it," she said.

...Ultimately the value of the land investments depends on whether people start flocking to these sites. ...

See the full story here: https://www.rfi.fr/en/metaverse-hype-fuels-booming-digital-property-market