GLOSSARY: Letter from Mat Honan, Editor-in-chief: What you need to know from EmTech Next

пятница, 16 июня 2023 г.

Letter from Mat Honan, Editor-in-chief: What you need to know from EmTech Next

Hello There,

Yesterday we closed EmTech Next, our signature digital transformation event and I'm still thinking about all the things that came up. I will admit to being something of a metaverse skeptic, at least in the form it's been most-frequently discussed in recent years. So I found several of these talks really illuminating. I hope you got a chance to check them out.

Here's some of what I am still thinking about from day 3 of EmTech Next.

5 takeaways from Day 3 of EmTech Next 2023

The metaverse: Cathy Hackl, chief futurist from Journey, spoke about what the metaverse can be outside of the ways it has been articulated by companies like Meta and her belief that Gen Alpha will truly embrace it. We talked about how that will affect the future in terms of skills, identity, and spatial thinking. I'm still skeptical, but Cathy did a great job of helping me see why the buzz still persists.
Web3: Beryl Li from Yield Guild Games talked about the practical use case of Web3 in learning, the seamless experience between Web 2 and Web3, how fast the industry is growing, and who the early adopters have been. She and Amy Nordrum also had a great chat about its role in gaming.
Digital ownership: Boy this was a good one. Mike Casey, a former MIT Sloan School of Management colleague of the SEC's Gary Gensler, delivered some really insightful thoughts on how the U.S. is moving into an enforcement phase that could put it out of step with the rest of the world, and the allure of soft power over financial markets. He also dove into the ways we can use blockchain technologies to use transferable digital ownership in novel ways for real world goods and services (think: concert tickets sans Ticketmaster). Great talk.
Digital twins and the industrial metaverse: Rev Lebaredian had a lot to say about NVIDIA's omniverse, where it's made digital twins not only of things like factory floors and train systems, but the earth itself. I loved what he said about Earth 2 and how simulations enabled with AI are significantly more "accurate" than classical simulators.
Mars: Another banger of a session. Thomas Cwik talked about how NASA wants to partner with funders and startups. He spoke about the challenges of NASA's projects – the connection back to the original goal and the science needed and getting from the idea stage to launch pad quicker. And of course, getting to Mars. That was cool.

I hope you get a chance to catch up on this year's EmTech Next. You can still register for the on-demand sessions and receive 50% off by using the code ONDEMAND50. And if you weren't able to join us for this one, I hope to see you at another MIT Technology Review event in the future.

Thanks for joining this year,