Newsletter #2
Some criticisms, more investments and a newdamn cool piece of hardware
Disclaimer: quote ≠ endorsement, occasional mentions of NFT projects ≠ financial advice, views are my own.
What happened this week?
BlackRock preps ETF targeting metaverse companies: Bloomberg
BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, filed a new ETF aimed at capitalizing on metaverse-facing companies, Bloomberg reported.
Named the Ishares Future Metaverse Tech and Communications ETF, the fund will track companies in the metaverse that are exposed to virtual reality, non-fungible tokens (NFT), augmented reality and game-centric financial applications (gamefi).
The ETF filing shows that BlackRock plans to launch a Metaverse-like exchange-traded fund.
Japan to Invest in Metaverse and NFT Expansion
TLDR
Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said in a speech on Monday that the country’s plans for investing in digital transformation include non-fungible tokens (NFT) and metaverse services.
The country has steadily been promoting investment in digital technology, including tax incentives for companies that embrace a digital future. In his speech to Japan’s parliament, Kishida said the country will continue to focus on “supporting the social implementation of digital technology” and will “promote efforts to expand the use of Web3 services that utilize the metaverse and NFTs.”
Tim Cook questions the Metaverse
A few weeks back Mark Zuckerberg pointed out some the deep philosophical competition between Apple and Meta.
This week is Apple CEO’s Tim Cook turn. During a visit in Europe, he declared he believes most people can’t even define the metaverse, let alone spend long periods of time living their lives inside of it.
Cook is a big proponent of AR. He recently said: “I think AR is a profound technology that will affect everything; […] we are really going to look back and think about how we once lived without AR”.
But despite persistent reports of Apple’s interest in building all manner of AR and VR hardware, these products have yet to hit the market.
Will we see an AR/VR headset in 2023 as Bloomberg says?
Anyways, what is certain is we now have the “big” players adopting completely different strategies.
Meta is betting on VR and interoperability, targeting the consumer and commercial space.
Apple continues to claim that “AR is the future” but has not launched a real product yet. It’s easy to predict they will build a walled garden and a creator’s economy.
Microsoft is also all about AR but with a focus on the industrial metaverse and Digital Twins.
Google in the meantime has gone missing and (news of last week) they are even going to shut down Stadia (their cloud-gaming experiment). Luckily they said I will get my money back. Well played Google ( pun intended :-) )
On a side note, do you know who is really critical of Mark Z?
Our dear Prof G (aka Scott Galloway). In a recent podcast he declared:
<<There is no data showing that the VR is going to be a viable way into the metaverse. Meta has sold about 15M of their Quest headsets, meanwhile Roblox has 55M daily active uses and approximately 3/4 of them are accessing the gaming platform via a mobile phone. I could not have devised a more brilliant strategy to diminish Meta’s power than a CEO with total control, because of dual class voting shares, [that decides] to go all in in spending between $10B and £20B dollar to try and replicate our world across business, entertainment, gaming, education. He is arrogant enough to loose 2/3 of his wealth because he believes he can use processing power and computer science to replicate our world. Guess what ? You were wrong: this is the biggest tech failure of the last decade!>>
We love Prof G.!
Another Metaverse Officer appointment
The number of companies establishing a formal organisational structure around the “metaverse” matter keeps growing. The last one to make the news if Gucci who names Robert Triefus CEO of Gucci Vault and Metaverse Ventures
According to Vogue Business, Triefus will lead Gucci’s experimental platform and metaverse activity in addition to his current role as senior executive vice president for corporate and brand strategy.
My take-aways?
Corporates need people to help them navigate the so-called “meta-jungle”
Establishing a team is also a way to signal to the market that they are “on top of things”
Branding and marketing, at least for now, remain the low hanging fruits when it comes to use cases
Playground
New haptic gloves
Immersivity in VR has a lot a lot with tricking your senses, and the more senses you trick the more realistic the illusion is.
In this episode of his “Dope Tech” series, Marques Brownlee (aka MKBHD) reviews an alpha version of senseglove.com. They claim to have built «the most practical haptic gloves for natural XR interactions … [you can] feel the size, stiffness and resistance of virtual objects. Unlike controllers, [they] allow you to hold, push, touch, connect and squeeze the virtual like it is real.”
They are compatible with the Quest 2 but, don’t get too excited! They cost $4500 and are only available to selected enterprise clients. So, for now we need to rely and trust Marques’ review.
One thing he points out in the video, is how the gloves are not able to simulate the weight of an object.
I happened to be at Maker Faire Europe just yesterday, where the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna di Pisa was showing off some of their haptic tech. Apparently some experiments to simulate weight exist: they use an exoskeleton with actuators that simulate gravity but they are far from being a practical product (kindofcool never the less).
Events
The Economist Metaverse Summit
October 26-27th 2022 • San Jose CA and in the metaverse
Having collaborated as media partner with The Economist Impact team, I know for a fact that they always pull off some great events! With a great line up of speakers, including Matthew Ball, Cathy Hackl, Neal Stephenson just to name a few, and fantastic agenda I’m sure this will be no different.
I will be there in person on the 26th Oct - if you also are attending, drop me a note and I’ll meet you there!
A quote
We, as a society, as people, did not evolve for thousands of years to interact with 2D interfaces. There's a belief that the Metaverse is a more intuitive way to express, to create, and to explore.
Source: Matthew Ball - Can we build a Metaverse that's GOOD? (bigthink.com) - must watch!