Despite the cost-of-living crisis, the Meta Quest series performs well when it comes to tech gifts this Holiday season after recent price drops around Black Friday and the launch of the latest Quest Pro. If this series of device opens the door of the more and more mainstream “metaverse”, parents are being urged to familiarize themselves with the potential risks of virtual reality (VR) ahead of Christmas.
This past week, The Safety Metaverse Week led by the XR Safety Initiative, organized a full program of conference to explore and prepare for the challenges of these new immersive technologies, from Human Rights in the Metaverse to Child Safety, Communities and Safe Spaces, Immersive Healthcare, and closing with Policy, Trust and Governance. The panels are available in replay on the XRSI YouTube channel.
In a recent episode of Informing Choices, Futurists Sylvia Gallusser and Steve Wells imagined how Christmas and Holiday celebrations might look like in 2040: How will we celebrate Christmas in 2040? Will we still have a traditional dinner at home with family or share virtual activities in the metaverse with friends and celebrities? What gifts will be popular and how will they get delivered? And how will Santa look like in 2040 – more diverse, rebranded, sponsored, holographic…?
In the episode, we start by scanning over two futures-thinking related concepts (the Advent’s “waiting/looking forward” time, and Charles Dickens’ “Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come”).
We then introduce four alternative scenarios of Christmas:
1- Outsourced Christmas (Growth Scenario)
2- Escape Christmas (Decline Scenario)
3- Snowbound Christmas (Constraint Scenario)
4- Choose Your Own Christmas (Transformation Scenario)
Let’s engage on how traditions and celebrations are impacted by the changes we identify in the future of the home, the future of family and social interaction, the future of consumption and retail, the future of spirituality, and the emergence of the metaverse.
Silicon Humanism 