Technology Quarterly | The future

The Metaverse is coming

But people need to be kept at the centre of it

WITNESS ANY videoconference call, and it is striking how awkward it still is—everyone is in boxes, looking off in random directions. Microsoft tried to fix this recently with “Together” mode for its Teams application. Created by Jaron Lanier, a virtual-reality pioneer, it does away with boxes and puts everyone in a shared virtual space such as an auditorium. All participants see the whole group at once, as if they were all being reflected in a huge virtual mirror. Mr Lanier says this allows social and spatial awareness functions in the brain to work more naturally, and makes it harder to notice irregularities in eye contact.

This article appeared in the Technology Quarterly section of the print edition under the headline “What is real, anyway?”

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