Hi I’m Matt and once again welcome to Friday Links. Here are a few toasty hot hyperlinks that caught my eye this week.
Source: OzzieGooen / LessWrong.com
I enjoyed this experiment with office work in virtual reality (LessWrong).
It seems thoroughly bonkers to strap on a headset and drop into a simulated environment… only to recreate screens.
But why not? It could be neat to work from any cafe and any train but with your perfect desk setup right there. And if it’s augmented reality, so you can see the world around you, and the screens hang in the air just for you and invisible to everyone else… well, why not. Smart glasses now pls.
Speaking of work… the Co-op Digital Newsletter covers supermarket and grocery news and wider tech trends.
And in the most recent issue points out that, with everyone working from home, they’ve all been inhabiting a lo-fi Co-Op metaverse.
“In reality, the last 18 months working from home has created a small-scale Co-op support centre metaverse: we all existed online with purely digital interactions, and with with mixed reality backgrounds. Change the video from your face to a digital avatar, and we’ve essentially been in our own mini-Minecraft.”
That’s Adam Warburton, Co-op’s Chief Product Officer.
It’s an interesting point! An online space where we are together and we feel like it has placeyness — it doesn’t need to be full-blown 3D virtual reality. It can be far more lo-fi and still have the ability to organise our work and thoughts, and form teams and friendships.
(The pic is of Facebook’s Horizon Workroom product, as discussed in this article in The Verge. There are more links in the newsletter.)
