Today’s dispatch is like a double-barreled shotgun: two bangs in one.
Both items are related in that they’re tied to the myriad ways in which crypto and NFTs are methodically—and quickly—rewriting the rules we’ll all play by tomorrow.
To me, an amateur futurist, they’re also fascinations that are just fun to think about. So many cool possibilities spring from what’s already happening underneath the noses of everyone who pans crypto and NFTs.
The first fascination: The eyes have it.
For many, many months now, I’ve been writing to you about this thing called the metaverse—an immersive, interactive, 3D internet that will replace the 2D internet that exists today.
This new internet is going to exist all around us. When you’re at home watching Netflix, the movie will happen in three dimensions right in front of you. When you’re out on the street, maps will appear directly in front of your eyes, and perspectives will change as you move your head.
A new, smarter version of Siri will be your assistant and guide you to wherever you want to go, while also alerting you to new emails, subway delays, or traffic jams.
Pass within a few yards of a favorite store, and a customized coupon will pop up in your field of view.
But here’s the fascination: You won’t be wearing those godawful and bulky 3D virtual reality goggles of today. Or even a slimline version.
You’ll be wearing augmented reality-enabled contact lenses.
And get this: The first successful demonstration of that—in a real human eye—occurred just a few days ago. It’s quite the notable feat because the miniature lens sits comfortably atop a human eye, must communicate wirelessly with external devices, and must be fully powered without a physical tether. A California company called Mojo Vision built a working prototype.
The lens has a 14,000 pixel-per-inch MicroLED display, which means it has 30x the resolution of the best iPhone. Its lenses also come packed with a radio transmitter, an accelerometer, a gyroscope, and a magnetometer to track eye movements.
Think about this even at the most simplistic level. You’re gonna ask Siri’s heir where Pinetta’s Pizza is located, and a 3D map—aligned with your field of view and orientation is going to pop up in your vision, and you’re just going to follow the route in front of you, like Hansel and Gretel following a trail of breadcrumbs.
My bet is we see this in mass production before the decade is out.
Fascination number two: An NFT that highlights the future I’ve been telling you about.
The NFT is called “Blxckout,” and its purpose is to become a repository for all manner of public data all over the world. Think: land registries, real-time public transport data, geographical information such as physical world coordinates…and ultimately driver license information, passport data, criminal records, and on and on. Pretty much anything and everything government collects and which might be of use one day.
Blxckout is gathering and moving that data onto the blockchain for Web3 developers to use in building the apps and services we will all use one day as a normal part of our lives.
Think about that metaverse example I just mentioned about mapping your way to a pizza joint.
Geospatial data is necessary for that, and it must be processed instantaneously as heads swivel this way and that. Blxckout aims to be the first mover in this industry, and with an NFT that allows holders to earn income when developers buy access to reams of data necessary to power their applications.
Right now, Blxckout is focusing on the U.K. since it’s a proof-of-concept. It will expand as demand expands.
These are the kinds of projects that generate for me a great deal of excitement. At a time when so many jabber-mouths say crypto and NFTs are dead or useless, these kinds of projects shine a small spotlight on where we’re really headed.
The jabber-mouths can jabber all they want. They’re the modern-day reincarnation of the naysayers who claimed the world had no need for this newfangled automobile thing when the horse-and-buggy was quite satisfactorily delivering people and goods across a city.
Remind me again: When was the last time anyone saw a horse-and-buggy delivering an Amazon order?
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