Dr. Rolando Zubiran is Global Head of WEB 3 & Metaverse Services for RRD, or R. R. Donnelley & Sons, an American Fortune 500 integrated communications company.

Rolando refers to this as “Meta-Marketing 2.0.” As our identities merge with online worlds, he believes that the way we envisage the economics and society of the future will be made possible not simply by the technologies we deploy, but by the stories we use to comprehend and shape the world around us.

Thirty years since Lawnmower first aired, I asked Brett how the metaverse of our own time mirrors the Sci-Fi stories I grew up with as a kid. Will AI creator tools allow billions to summon their own simulated realities? How will artists imagine and construct what Brett calls “storyworlds” using technologies that are incredibly advanced, but also really human - and fallible.

Ahead of his workshops at GITEX, we caught up with Professor Xi Chen from NYU Stern for a discussion on how technologies are converging in ways that are impossible to predict.

In a way, data has become a dirty word. It doesn’t necessarily need to be. A new data economy is emerging on the blockchain, in which users can provide access to and possibly derive profits from data they control.

But what would these new data markets look like? What industries will be the first to adopt? Will internet browser cookies one day be a thing of the past?

This week we’re talking with Bruce Pon of OceanProtocol, on data as a new asset class.

Alex Bornyakov is Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine on IT industry development, and head of the Diia City project.

In this episode Alex provides background on Ukraine’s digital transformation, which was already continuing apace before the war. As Ukraine descended into conflict and physical locations such as government offices and centralized data-centers fell under attack, things like digital citizen services and cloud-storage became even more critical.

Muhannad Ebwini has been working in online payments in the Middle East from almost the beginning. In this episode we chart the story of payments in MENA and KSA from its early origins during the .com boom, to the increasingly cashless society of today.

It had to happen: “Blogchain” - that’s blog, not block-chain - is a decentralized Substack competitor seeking to combine Web3 infrastructure with good writing. Built using IPFS and NEAR, the system hopes to free writers from the problems that have bedeviled Web2 creator platforms: politicization, unfair algorithms or writing for ad revenue, and not customers. Even getting paid will hopefully be easier, with crypto wallets.

Of course the debate surrounding digital publishing isn’t simply technical. It’s also political and ideological. Will the blockchain empower free speech, or will communities find new architecture to moderate themselves? If centralized platforms are a thing of the past, what does the future of publishing look like?

Nadim Kobeissi is a former adjunct professor in computer security at NYU Paris. After completing a PHD in cryptography, Kobeissi founded Capsule Social to explore what he calls “decentralized discourse.”

Melanie is founder of the ‘Word of Mouth’ protocol and a ‘collaborative event’ which connects creators, founders and artists. The event is called ‘Superverse.’ It recently made a notable impact in Dubai, where it succeeded in deepening an already promising relationship between the city's tech industry and creative class.

Michael Gord started talking about Bitcoin in High-School, which seems both inconceivable and opportune. From there he started FinTech clubs at McGill, Bitcoin Canada, and later the blockchain association of Canada. At one point the world’s first Bitcoin Embassy in Montreal, was based ‘2 blocks away’ from where he lived. Today, Gord is co-founder and CEO at Assets International, which according to the website “provides institutions with exposure to its premier Global ecosystem of cutting-edge blockchain technology companies.”

Threefold describes itself as “layer 0 infrastructure for an open source P2P Internet owned by humanity.” Rather than an Internet based on centralized web servers, expensive cloud storage facilities and geographically BI-FUCATED bifurcated access, their team are creating what they call a “new planetary network.”