Read this before you invest! — So much hype, so little clarity. I write this because after listening to people around me, it turns out there is much excitement around NFTs, but few understand what an NFT actually is. So here’s what you need to know before jumping on the bandwagon. Consider yourself warned. What’s an NFT? An NFT is a digital token which resides…

And look what happened. — Much talk has been made lately of the so-called “Metaverse,” most recently surrounding Facebook’s corporate re-brand (and accompanying massive investment) to signal its ambitions in the space. Evidently Mark Zuckerberg truly believes the Metaverse is “the next chapter for the technology industry.” But what exactly is it? What is the Metaverse? Good question. As…

I would humbly submit that in reference to a Git repository, it is an entirely different 'master' in use. In this case, the word is deployed in a 'master - copy' semantic, a metaphor to analogue media. This is in clear contrast to, for example, an IDE channel, where the…

I recorded an audiobook! — Last year when I wanted to listen to Empire and Communications, no audiobook was available (except a useless TTS robo-read). So I recorded one myself, in case anyone else might find it useful. Help yourself — it’s free. (But be warned: I am not a professional reader) What is Empire…

Change the metaphor; change the reality. — “Why do you want to make movies?” my mom once asked me. “Wouldn’t you rather do something that helped people? Like a doctor? “A doctor can only help one person at a time,” I tried to explain. “A storyteller can help the whole world.” Notwithstanding research doctors, I still hold this to…

De-abstracting presence and agency matters in a big way. — I’ve been hearing a lot of talk recently denigrating VR. It seems as though wave of hype has finally crested and the pessimists are having their day. “It’s just a fad” they say. “Remember 3D TV? Google Glass? VR in the ‘90’s?” “What does VR bring to the table that…

Finite-branching Narratives, Procedural Stories, World Building and the Art of Storytelling — Story Architect vs. Writer — just as it is a writer’s job to make a traditional linear story compelling, it will fall to a Story Architect to design interest into a procedural story. …

Adaptive Virtual Environments will be a magical application that can only happen in VR, and solve the problems of “room scale.” CRASHING ON THE SHORES It is 2016, “the year of virtual reality.” Hardware manufacturers have launched long anticipated VR headsets (HMDs), and the content ecosystems are germinating. For creators and consumers of “experiential…

You can put away the GoPros now. — I thought this was as obvious as the sun, but apparently it’s not. So I’ll lay it down here: Video, as any imagery captured with a camera, does not work in VR. Yes, even stereo-ocular 360º spherical video. Why? Because the camera was fixed at one point in space, and…