Projections For The Metaverse, Spatial & Immersive Environments

Will a new form of media emerge heralding an explosive and sustained burst of artistic and intellectual creativity or the power of Big Tech, Big Media and Big Brands be entrenched. Could Metaverse, Spatial Computing, and Immersive environments become the “Next Big Thing” it’s been a long time coming the first scaled Metaverse “Second Life” was founded in 2003. The current catalyst is AI becoming embedded within content creation, and computing architectures, has the adoption equation changed? Numerous questions occur, what are the impacts on media and content could “Big Media” be disintermediated. Will every form of content become fungible, changeable or faked at scale, as a text prompt can create any form of media. Could “Big Tech” advertising models be challenged by a collision of social media and crypto. The stakes are high for the UK with a large creative workforce of c1.4 million what forms of disruption can be expected. Is there a dark side, could immersive media generated at an individual level be designed to manipulate and condition. What arguments can be made for new forms of regulation to prevent harm. Can this form of immersive metaverse based on computation herald a new age of artistic and media creativity, with digital avatars becoming the new social media and spurring an explosive burst of discovery, learning and efficiencies in business, medicine, academia, media and fashion. Conversely, will the predictions of science fiction dystopia prevail, with every single digital media experience touched by a human every day full of dark patterns seeking to manipulate, control or sell.