New World Notes

Give the Gift of New World Notes! Send Someone Special a Patreon Membership or My Book Autographed

Please join my Patreon for free to help sustain New World Notes!

You can now also send someone a membership to my Patreon as a gift here. If you enjoy reading New World Worlds, I hope you consider sharing and supporting it over the holidays -- plus get quality early/exclusive content via the Patreon app, plus other benefits!

I'm also giving away my autograph plate to anyone who buys a copy of Making of Second Life or Making a Metaverse That Matters. I'll even write a special (short!) dedication message to you or a special someone.

Here's how:

Connect With Me on LinkedIn!

Here's my LinkedIn if you're on that platform and want to connect there, especially if you work in the game/virtual world industry, VR, and related fields. While I post New World Notes updates there fairly often, you'll also see posts related to my marketing clients in AI, product design, MMOs, VR, and assorted other verticals. 

I actually also recommend LinkedIn for discussions around virtual worlds, the Metaverse, and so on. Since it's primarily a job search network, you usually come across way less toxicity and bot flimflam than Other Social Networks. (In post comments, at least, the messaging system attracts a steady amount of Spam bots, in my experience.)

Join Me This Friday on David Orban's Live Podcast Recording!

I'm talking with veteran technologist David Orban for his podcast this Friday, hope you join us live! Click "notify me" on his YouTube channel (above), or go here to join via: his LinkedIn page or on this Facebook event page. 

Some topics covered:

• The true state of the Metaverse, beyond the hype and misconceptions
• Insights from Au's 20 years of experience in virtual worlds
• The evolution of metaverse platforms like Second Life, Roblox, Fortnite, and VRChat
• Potential impact of the Metaverse on society and business
• Common mistakes made by major tech companies in metaverse development
• The role of user communities in shaping the Metaverse

If there's other subjects we should hit on, please post suggestions in Comments!

Metaverse Interoperability Across Multiple Platforms Was Tried By IBM & Linden Lab But Didn't Catch On -- Here's Why.

Why the Metaverse is Beating Gen AI https://t.co/0CegcGDiSk

— Open Metaverse Interoperability Group (@open_metaverse) September 6, 2024

Thanks to everyone from the Open Metaverse Interoperability Group especially host @jimmy6DOF for the fun and spicy conversation last Friday -- you can listen to the whole thing above (starting around 4 minutes in), with some particular spiciness around 36:30, where I mention that metaverse interoperability of virtual objects has been tried before and fairly failed, a topic I go into at length in my book. So below is a somewhat edited excerpt on that subject:

 

Tomorrow at 11am on X/Twitter: Join Me & OMI on Spaces to Chat Metaverse vs. Gen AI!

Join Wagner James Au @slhamlet with us on Friday!

Open House & Talking all things Metaverse -- what it was -- what it is -- what it could be -- and why he thinks it's beating GenAI !!!

Here on X starting :
11AM(PST) 2PM(EST) 6PM(UTC) pic.twitter.com/3OQTiPIAzO

— Open Metaverse Interoperability Group (@open_metaverse) September 4, 2024

I'm on an X/Twitter Space tomorrow at 11am PT co-hosted by the Open Metaverse Interoperability Group, where we'll be getting punchy about the continued vitality of the Metaverse and metaverse platforms, especially as compared to the (largely) unsustainable hype of generative AI. Get your questions ready and join the fun! 

Afterward (around Noon PT), we'll be hitting a virtual world after party in the web-based NOWHERE, in a space co-hosted by the Virtual Worlds Museum -- will share the link when we're there! 

Watch Me Talk Making a Better Metaverse With XR Reality's Dominque Wu

Here's a fun recent chat with Dominique Wu of the XR Reality Pro podcast, on Making a Metaverse That Matters. Dominique herself is a recent author (Spatial Design) and was recently a developer on Horizons Worlds, so we're able to delve deep into the weeds on what works and what doesn't with Metaverse platforms.

Actually I put my camera at a weird angle (or maybe my head has a weird angle), so you might prefer listening instead:

• Get it on Spotify
• Get it on Apple Podcasts

Here's some timecoded highlights:

Hear Me Out: Audio Version of Making a Metaverse That Matters 60% Off Until July 11!

Wagner James Au · What the Metaverse is -- and what it's not. (Excerpt, "Making a Metaverse That Matters".)

The audio version of  Making is ideal listening for long Summer trips/vacations (in my very totally humble opinion), and it's now 60% off at Audiobooks.com until July 11th here! Listen to a sample above, read the description below:

Special Discount Code to Augmented World Expo 2024 in Long Beach, Where I'll Be Blogging & Signing My Book!

Augmented World Expo 2024 is happening next month in June in sunny Long Beach, and I'm excited to say I'll be attending the world's largest XR/AR/VR conference, signing Making a Metaverse That Matters and roaming the conference as a blogger/consultant/etc. Hope to see you there!

Speaking of which, the team at AWE gave me this special discount code on registration for New World Notes readers:

Use SPKR24D as a discount code on sign-up for 20% off all tickets except VIP.

That's on top an early-bird discounted price if you order before May 8. And if you are coming, please let me know in Comments or on my socials!

Watch Me Talk About Second Life, VRChat & the Metaverse on Belgian TV!

Thanks to host Tim Verheyden, here's my segments on The Digital Dilemma, a TV series from Belgium's public TV network. Most of it's in Dutch, but hopefully the YouTube subtitle AI works. (Belgians can watch the whole thing here.)

I'm at the start of the episode, walking on the beach in Malibu, comparing Internet dangers to surfers swimming beneath the surfers. 42:50 is my main segment, chatting with Tim about Second Life and its relationship to Malibu, the gender difference in VR that Meta has ignored, and how metaverse platforms already benefit vulnerable people like the LGBT community and military veterans with PTSD. 

I kinda hate watching myself on video but this was a fun time (shot in November 2023) and Tim and his team were lovely; even though I came back with a pretty bad sunburn after 6 hours of shooting. 

And yes, massive great white sharks literally do swim right beneath the surfers in Malibu -- watch below! And yes, I know the 90s called and wants my hair back.

Watch: Why Creating Diverse Communities Make the Metaverse Matter (My Appearance on the Remote Daily Talk Show)

Courtesy the lovely people of Remote Daily, an online talk show that launched during the pandemic (with live music and everything), here's my recent appearance with award-winning VR creator Athena Demos, where we talk about creating community within XR platforms. My favorite passage is around 17:00 minutes in, where I explain my argument for why the Metaverse is enables us to create uniquely transformational communities: 

That's one thing I really wanted to focus on with the book, because after Mark Zuckerberg and others sort of glommed onto the term, they were kind of talking about it like it's a technology. And I was pulling my hair out [saying], No, there's a virtual world where communities can emerge, and they are only possible within an immersive virtual world space, because you have by definition millions of people from all over the world connecting in the same virtual space.

 

So you have a sense of "you are there" with other people. And because there's millions of people, you're gonna meet people from different generations, from different economic backgrounds, different races. And that's only possible, far as I can tell, within a virtual space where you have this sense of immersion. Because with social media, you're either connected with your friends or you're yelling at each other on Twitter, and so on.  

By the way (since Remote Daily's host mentions it, and it comes up fairly often), if you're wondering about my name: