How will the intersection of metaverse, web3 and generative AI look like?

After a period of dormancy, this long-standing blog, founded in 2008, is being resurrected. In the past, our focus centered on the exploration of virtual worlds, with particular attention paid to Second Life and the burgeoning field of online education epitomized by the advent of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)…. Continue reading

Learning, Connectivism, AI, Virtual Environments

I’m still thinking about the video-conversation of Stephen Downes and George Siemens. Maybe we could change the title of the course from the rather bland ‘E-Learning 3.0, Distributed Learning Technology’ to ‘Human Learning in the Age of Machine Learning’. After all, Connectivism, the learning theory developed by Stephen en George,… Continue reading

New media theatre

So many interesting things are happening in and around the virtual world High Fidelity that I can’t keep up. The company raised $35 million in June and combines virtual worlds, virtual reality and the blockchain. Philip Rosedale, creator of both Second Life and High Fidelity, also manages to invite interesting people… Continue reading

“VR-worlds need to enable writing emails in order to take off”

I attended a Fireside Chat in the virtual world High Fidelity with Philip Rosedale and Peter Diamandis. Dr. Diamandis is founder and executive chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation, best known for its $10 million Ansari XPRIZE for private spaceflight. High Fidelity is not as easy to access as an app… Continue reading

High Fidelity continues the tradition of virtual intellectual “salons”

What I love about virtual worlds are the incredible smart and visionary people one can meet there. This totally applies for High Fidelity, a young and cutting edge virtual world (think decentralized architecture, tokens, blockchain, VR-enabled, avatars who are responsive to their real life users). Founding father Philip Rosedale had… Continue reading

The limits of blockchain, for now

An interesting take on the use of blockchain in the mass consumer markets by Adam Frisby, CEO and lead developer of Sinespace, a Unity-based MMO and social VR platform: on VentureBeat he explains “why blockchain isn’t ready for primetime“. “As it stands, blockchain is caught between three competing objectives: fast,… Continue reading

Post from another internet

I’ve been experimenting with Graphite Docs, a decentralized app (DApp) on the Blockstack-platform. It works remarkably well, it’s like an alternative for Google Docs. I actually prepared this post using Graphite. What I dislike about the Blockstack-universe is that one has to pay in bitcoin in order to get a… Continue reading

Decentralized internet for you and me

It seems all the talk about the “decentralized internet” gets more concrete for ordinary internet users (citizens?) like me. Tom Simonite at Wired did a great job explaining decentralized applications (DApps) in his article The Decentralized Internet Is Here, With Some Glitches. He discusses alternatives for Google Docs (using Graphite),… Continue reading

Philip Rosedale and Fred Ehrsam discuss blockchain in a virtual salon

It seems the virtual world High Fidelity is hosting interesting events, like this salon about blockchain with Philip Rosedale (High Fideltiy, founding father of Second Life) and  Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam. I think it’s a good idea to organize these salons, they remind me of the Metanomics series in Second… Continue reading

Blockchain for avatars

Even though I’m sceptical about the appeal of open-ended, user-created virtual worlds for a mainstream audience, I still follow people who are very active in that field because they tend to be highly creative out of the box thinkers. One of them is Philip Rosedale, the founding father of Linden… Continue reading