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Virtual Society

The Metaverse and the New Frontiers of Human Experience

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Virtual Society

By: Herman Narula
Narrated by: Herman Narula
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Is the metaverse a brave new world? An immersive digital playground? The next generation of online gaming? Or just the latest manifestation of our human tendency to create other realities?

Herman Narula argues that it is all of these things. His vision of the metaverse, deeply rooted in history and psychology, looks to the Egyptians, whose conception of death inspired them to build the pyramids, to modern-day sports fans whose fantasy leagues are as competitive as the real thing, and finds that humanity has always sought to supplement our day-to-day lives with a rich diversity of alternative immersive experiences.

Rigorously researched, passionately argued, and written by a tech founder and creator of digital worlds, Virtual Society reveals why the metaverse offers a new universe of ideas that offers users unprecedented opportunities to create, explore and find meaning. It's an essential guide for anyone who wants to get beyond superficial headlines and understand the true shape of our virtual future.

©2022 Herman Narula (P)2022 Penguin Audio Computer Science E-Commerce History & Culture Technology & Society Commerce Technology Middle East AI and Humanity Capitalism Virtual Human

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Most relevant
An overly long blog post, much like Matthew Ball's book, which rambles and hypothesises in a really generic fashion.

Narula is clearly bored of running Improbable, a company that's 10 years old and pumped full of millions in VC money but returned nothing that the games industry hasn't achieved on its own merits, and is eyeing up brain-computer interfaces as his next direction.

What could you build with $700m? Definitely more than another MMO server instance that's for sure.

Typical technologist's opinion

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