#1058: Building Blocks of the Metaverse are Interoperable Standards: Summarizing the MetaTraversal Initiative Conversations

There's a lot of debates about the Metaverse, and whether or not it's complete BS or if it's the natural evolution of the Internet as a culmination of a spatial computing revolution that's been evolving human computer interaction from 2D frames to immersive 3D worlds. Because I cover VR & AR technologies, then my orientation to whatever the Metaverse may become is through the lens of XR and how the sense of active presence, mental & social presence, emotional presence, and embodied & environmental presence has the potential to transform nearly every contextual domain of human experience, which I documented in my 3-hour, episode #1000 of the Voices of VR podcast. I also recently gave an opening keynote at The Gatherverse Summit where I presented my vision of what the Metaverse is, and how I start to conceive of it. It's a densely packed talk which is on YouTube, but the slides are also available. However, as much as I've explored the different theoretical and sensemaking frameworks about the Metaverse, then there are still a number of aspects that I myself don't have good conceptual frames about. That's where the MetaTraversal Initiative and my conversation with some of the key members in this podcast episode have helped to close some gaps, and help focus the conversation through the near-term open standards and specifications that will continually develop and inform whatever the building blocks of the Metaverse may be built out of.