Neal Stephenson Q&A, The Metaverse in Wartime, Shrek Ears — My Favorite New World Notes Posts of 2022

As always, my main focus with New World Notes (and the Metaverse in general) is not the technology or the business interests per se, but the people in the virtual world, the culture they create, and what that says about our lives in the digital age. Here’s my favorite 2022 posts within that theme:

After occasional e-mails over the years I finally got to chat about the Metaverse in-depth with Neal Stephenson himself.

I talked with an artist who used AI to create an avatar of her childhood self — and have a moving talk with her. 

The impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shuddered across metaverse platforms, with Russian content creators put in a tenuous place, and Ukrainian creators forced to flee for their lives.  At least one made it to relative safety — and in a testament to the Metaverse at its best, a Russian friend of hers helped keep her Second Life business running while she was in hiding.

I also talked with Linden Lab veteran Charity Majors about the special place Shrek Ears have to Second Life’s operation.

Another Linden alum told me about the lessons he tried to tell Meta, which ignored him, leading to disastrous results.

And I reminded everyone talking about the Metaverse as if it was some fanciful, nebulous, undefined concept that it’s a literal reference book to many actual companies like seriously Snow Crash was sitting there on the shelf in Linden Lab’s office back in the day.

Finally, here’s my favorite Second Life machinima from 2022, created by a college student as a tribute to creators who inspired her: