Wagner James Au / New World Notes
Author, strategist, virtual world reporter
recent posts
- Welcome to New World Notes’ 2006-2025 Archive!
- Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
- Top Five Posts Including: Huge Rec Room Layoff & Meta Boots Neal Stephenson Off Facebook (Briefly)
- Four Glorious Second Life Sims to Explore — After Watching Sabina Valeska’s Machinima Tributes to Them!
- Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
about
Category: Making the Metaverse
-
Above: Chatting with a ChatGPT-powered NPC in a metaverse platform The producer of a major financial news program recently asked me a mind-boggling question: Meta and others ditching the metaverse for AI, is that the real future? Which is, wow. Asking if AI and not the Metaverse is the future is a bit like asking,…
-
The Metaverse is very much not dead, but while debunking random hit-and-run diatribes to that effect, I'm in the weird position of also wondering how (or even if) the 600 million+ active users across various metaverse platforms can (or should) somehow be seamlessly unified. Which paradoxically, means debating the approach taken by Metaverse-as-a-Service-startup Lamin1, co-founded…
-
Excited to tease my book cover for "Making a Metaverse That Matters" from Wiley, out next month! Here's how to pre-order: On Amazon here Or on Barnes & Noble here Or on Bookshop.org benefiting indie bookstores here This isn't the full book cover by the way, because it also has some very flattering blurbs from various…
-
Above: Insider's attempted Metaverse debunking comes replete with VR headset illustration indicating Insider's editors don't actually understand the concept Insider just ran a putative obituary for the Metaverse that's so incandescently wrong, it reminds me of that famous Mary McCarthy line, "every word she writes is false, including ‘and’ and ‘but.'" Obviously I'm somewhat (very)…
-
Beverly Millson, an emerging tech consultant and cyberculture enthusiast, was recently playing around with ChatGPT 3.5 and she decided to ask the AI about her Second Life avatar, Bettina Tizzy. Through that avatar name, she edited Not Possible in Real Life, which up until 2009 was a must-read site covering the works of an emerging…
-
Lots of interesting chat in comments and on social media for my post about Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth heatedly insisting to me — "Dude just take the L"– that the company was still focused on the Metaverse despite not mentioning it at all in his latest "vision of the future" post. Rony Abovitz, founder and…
-
Here's an epic new white paper on the Metaverse-as-a-Service platform from Lamina1, co-founded by literal Neal Stephenson (who I interviewed about it here). The paper itself is co-authored by Lamina1 CPO Tony Parisi, who's pretty much been striving to build the Metaverse ever since Snow Crash was published in the 90s, starting with the web-based VRML. …
-
This is a pretty powerful tribute to the VRChat community and the creativity they’ve wrought on the platform thus far — and as created and narrated by Raergur, the video expresses the essential appeal of the Metaverse ideal too: Built by and for the community, by real people. This is the real Metaverse. I’ve…
-
Excited to start promoting my book, coming out this June on Second Life’s 20th anniversary! Please pre-order my book on Amazon here Or on Barnes & Noble here Or on Bookshop.org benefiting indie bookstores here I’ll try to keep the plugging down to a dull roar for the sanity of regular New World Notes readers.…
-
Screencap of generative agent simulation — playable here Last week I wrote about the game developer who incorporated ChatGPT into his NPC-to-player conversations in his virtual world; now comes an experiment with "generative agents" — AI-powered NPCs, who talk with each other: In the experiment, the researchers placed 25 generative agents within a virtual world…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 