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Quo Vadis, Metaverse? If you read popular Science Fiction, then you probably already have an idea of what the Metaverse is or at least how it is portrayed. Basically, we would be immersed in a virtual reality world with the idea of meeting, playing and working together in a fantastic setting while remaining physically separated. If you look at the difference in vision between Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg (who thinks we could all have meetings virtually or at least augmented) and Epic’s Tim Sweeny (Who believes the Metaverse should be a world for games and interaction), then you will see these visions are somewhat different. My ideal Metaverse is a global, immersive, digitally created computer environment that is accessible via the Internet, is open to everyone (and is governed by both commercial and non-commercial interests), may require devices that can translate between the virtual world and human senses, and allows for interoperability with other generated digital worlds.   But regar...

Yes, there’s so much speculation as to what our medium- and long-term future might look like in a post-COVID19 world. If you read the newspapers and magazines ( here , here , and here ) you will have noticed that most reports talk about a delay of 18 months until we have a working vaccine. You can probably add another six months to that number until the production and distribution have scaled up; and then of course there are still question marks around herd-immunity and how long one stays immune after having built-up antibodies. In summary: we’ll be wearing masks for at least another two years. But you might also have read about accelerating the digital transformation of our lives and that we have significantly advanced topics that have lingered for 20 years, within the span of a month. For example, online grocery shopping and remote health care. Given that we now have a good two years to ease into a new reality, I have tried to think about what all this means for us as a specie...