My 10 Favorite Posts of 2023: Incredible Metaverse Creations, Discussions on AI and Human Culture, Including a Conversation with Philip Rosedale

My essay for The Atlantic with The Book and guests ("There will never be another Second Life"), Fast Company ("Neal Stephenson isn’t giving up on the metaverse or cryptocurrencies.") and VentureBeat ("What’s wrong with the ‘Metaverse’? Insider’s follow-up investigation"), Here are some of my favorite 2023 posts from New World Notes:

• April: ChatGPT comes to Second Life! Inside a giant, a humanoid rabbit.

• May: The Insider and Ed Zitron’s "obituary" To The Metaverse is actually a bunch of zombies with shameful half-truths.

• July: Philip Rosedale and I talk about the rise of AI, VisionPro, and creating a critical metaverse (watch above).

7 more below the cut!

• October: Dear Zuck: The metaverse doesn’t need surreal IRL avatars
• October: Plant in a Pot: Second Life’s popular virtual plant growing game, regularly played since 2000
• October: The VRChat deaf community creates a new sign language dialect to accommodate limited VR hand tracking.
• November: The nightmarishly infinite library of Babel has haunted people for decades. Borges’ impossible vision now exists in VRChat.
• November: New gamer survey data provides answers to a continuing mystery. Why are there so few massively popular science fiction-themed MMOs?
• November: Will artificial intelligence completely transform culture and intellectual work? Engineer and author discussion. Part 1, Music and Film; Part 2: How artificial intelligence can transform the Metaverse platform and challenge the creators who make a living from it
• December: Linden Lab says: "Spicy Adult-Friendly Bedroom Secrets" Coming to Second Life in 2024. It’s a sign of changing times!