A couple of weeks ago, I received an unusual meeting invite. It said “Test Apple Vision Pro.” I read it twice and jumped at the opportunity. I had been longing to get my hands on an AR/VR device that could make my dream idea – an augmented world (project Vmess platform) – a reality. That day was finally coming.
What better way to cap off an amazing work week at Banque Internationale à Luxembourg (BIL) than by getting up close and personal with Apple’s groundbreaking #mixedreality marvel – the #VisionPro? Last Friday, I had the immense privilege of taking this pioneering device for a spin.
Let me be blunt: before trying the Vision Pro, I thought I had a decent idea of what the metaverse experience would be like. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. This isn’t just the future – it’s a portal to parallel universes that shattered my expectations.
The Vision Pro isn’t a smartphone replacement; it represents an entirely new frontier, a mind-bending window into the so call #metaverse. Furthermore, everything is at hands: you pinch to interact. like every Apple creation, it exudes sophistication down to the finest detail.
The display resolution? Words fail to capture its otherworldly crispness and depth. And we’re not merely talking apps here; these are full-fledged, multi-sensory experiences that transport you to realms you thought only existed in science fiction.
Mark Zuckerberg was certainly onto something with his metaverse vision, but Apple seems poised to leapfrog everyone with this staggering delivery that must be witnessed firsthand.
My rendezvous with the Vision Pro was more than a tech spectacle, though. It was also a heartwarming reunion with the brilliant minds at Virtual Rangers. Their #VR app portfolio is impressive, but what moved me most was “Roudy’s World” – an experience lovingly crafted to inspire hope and joy in children facing unimaginable adversity.
Immense gratitude to Matthieu Bracchetti and the entire Virtual Rangers crew, along with François Giotto, for making this future-altering experience possible. The metaverse future we yearned for? It’s already here, and it’s far grander than we ever conceived.
“Nasir, check this out. Didn’t I tell you PSG would win against New Manchester? Two bitcoins, baby. Who is the soccer king?”
“Stop bragging, man. Gee, I don’t know how you do it. Hey, Betmania, tell me how this regular human with his XXL ears looking like satellite dishes can beat your prediction. Thank God, you were a freebie AI.”
The bet bot replied, “I am not qualified to review Dr Anoli’s performances. Yet, his 97.26% accuracy is…”
Nasir interrupted the hologram: “Ahh, shut it! It was a rhetorical question. My man! You are good, you gooood.”
He lifted his hand, nodding repetitively to perform his most vigorous handshake.
The upper deck lit up like a lighthouse, and then a deafening sound followed the illumination. Beeeeeepp. “Emergency. Purple alert. All medical engineers on deck. I repeat, Purple Alert. All medical engineers on deck. This is not a drill.”
My heart was pounding. The message was still resonating in my head.
The sudden drop in temperature, produced by the arch-reactor of the medical drone transporter, announced the arrival of an unusual patient. This is the first time I have seen a flying one. Usually, these vehicles were stored in the Corps of Peacekeepers‘ R&D facilities.
The temperature drop caused a fog to rise like a curtain. I saw a blurry figure approaching slowly.
My colleague interrupted my stupor: “I haven’t seen a purple alert for 7 years now, it’s serious. Purple means death.”
The flying ambulance emerged at the heliport located at the center of the critical emergency service. Work is pretty easy on platform seventeen, actually. Nowadays, bioengineering is solving almost all critical injuries as they occur. An accident at a construction site? Any multifunction robot worker medic cauterizes your wound with accelerated healing enzymes, bypassing block surgery. As long as you’ve subscribed to the right medical service, the AI health model can be downloaded, and the tier two healing kit purchased for printing.
“What on earth could have happened?”, exclaimed Nasir.
The hologram of the AI diagnostician, Dr. Ernesto, popped up from the ambient hospital Phygital network while the paramedics were transporting the patient out of the medical drone transporter. Then, she said:
“This is unprecedented, we are losing it. We’ve tried traditional medicine and printed the generic assistance bacteria. Nothing works. The patient’s vitals fluctuate over time at an unconventional rate. Scanning the available knowledge from the current corpus does not provide any satisfying answers. The highest probable disease is the Genova IV virus with a probability of 31%”.
I replied “Too much uncertainty… What do you suggest, Nasir?”
“It looks like the emerging meta-virus. The… guy on B-Hacker YouTube Entertainment System… Sorry, I can’t remember the name of that journalist… said it was an open-source public CASPRed experiment.”
I could not believe it at first. But when I saw his wound mutating in front of me, there was no doubt that the potential disease was human-made.
“Arrrghhhhh. It burns… Please get it off me. I am begging you. Just cut it!” shouted the patient.
I was stunned. I cannot remember the last time I saw a real person suffering that much. Dr. Krovariv told me about it. This was surreal. So much pain.
“Hey! Gather yourself, buddy. There’s no time to waste. We might be facing a level 5 threat here,” said Nasir.
He was such a great guy. He was the embodiment of coolness. Not only was he a great bioengineer, but he always kept his cool on the field. I was more of a lab genius. I wish I could be more like him.
“Huh, yeah. Sorry, I froze,” I said with a coating of stupor, disappointment, and anger. I continued without hesitation, “What’s the status?”
While he was unplugging the portable bio-scanner from the trembling body, Nasir replied: “Body temperature 39.9. Heartbeats – 137. Adrenaline level 50.5. Oxygen level 92.12%. Stress level is increasing by 2.4% per minute. If we don’t act quickly, he is going to have a seizure. The stem cell differentiation rate… 272%! This is too high. It looks like he is growing a supernumerary limb, but I don’t know what kind.”
“Pick up the nano-extractors and verify traces of xeno-mRNA.” It was a Sanofi Nano-extractors SNX43, a state-of-the-art fleet of nano-medical machines with a portable management system. Current extractors were all managed centrally by the hospital drone intervention unit.
I quickly put my face next to the patient’s ear and asked, “Sir, I am going to need your authorization to perform an intracellular analysis. We don’t know what you have, this might be your last chance…”
He grabbed my head and screamed, “What the hell are you asking for? Do it! Arghhhh!”
I felt foolish. Yet, there was no way I could bypass the authorization because the device had a legal lock encoded in it.
“That will do,” I whispered. The nano-extractors became operational, switching from blue ‘stand by’ to green ‘proceed.’ The extractors looked like a stick, no longer than a large pen. I placed it next to the wound, and it opened, deploying four branches on each side, and anchoring onto his skin. I heard a sequence of small noises, like pistons. The extractor fleet deployed into his body.
Then a ballet of lights came up. The SNX43 beamed a 3D representation of the arm’s inner part. The system rendered the location of the fleet in real-time.
They moved surprisingly slowly. I was disappointed. I was used to contemplating much livelier robots with the previous version.
Nasir said deductively: “There’s something wrong. They appear to be sucked in or blocked. Zoom in, Nicolas”.
I pinched out the holo-display to enter the zoom command and tapped on the max button. The illusion of slowness came from the fact that the machines were moving at such a speed that it was hard to follow with the naked eye. They looked like bees on steroids, fighting a wall of flesh. But the alien cells rebuilt the wall as soon as it was destroyed.
“I get it; the cellular growth must be faster than the robots can clear the path. It is not good. Not good at all.”
“Have you ever seen something like this before?”
“No…” said Nasir. It was the first time I saw fear in his eyes.
Then he jumped. “It could be contagious. I want all containment units on the platform now. I request a total lockdown of platform seventeen. Now!”
Nasir stopped, then looked at me insistently. I immediately thought something was happening to me.
Then, Nasir froze and fell to the ground.
I jumped immediately to grab him, but something inside me pulled back. My bioengineer spinal safety device prevented me from approaching the new pathogens. Whenever it triggered, it reminded me of the auto-braking mechanisms in my grandparents’ cars. I do not like the idea of having a machine tweaking my neural system. Yet, once more, it saved my life.
“This is not the time,” I whispered. I looked at the sky and said, “Dr. Ernesto. Launch orbital containment in ten. Authorization Kappa-Sigma-Omega-1337.”
Dr. Ernesto answered, “Authorization confirmed. Launching orbital containment in 10, 9, 8…”
“Meanwhile, call the World Health Emergency.”
“Opening channel.”
The dial ended almost instantly.
“Dr. Anoli, this is Dr. Krovariv – replica number 3. State the nature of your emergency.”
“I need to speak to the real Dr. Krovariv. This is a purple priority request.”
“Accepted. Please stand by…”
Time stood still while the platform was flying to space. The quietness of linear magnetic propulsion was staggering. My god. Is Nasir going to make it?
“The patient! I am a monst…”
“Dr. Anoli. What is it about?” Her question interrupted my thoughts.
“Dr. Krovariv. I am sorry, but Nasir has been contaminated by an unknown biological agent. I am heading toward space containment. Furthermore, the patient at the source of the contamination is dying. This agent is too dangerous. Please advise on the protocol,” I finished with a frail voice.
“In this situation, the protocols are clear. Once in space containment, you may use the ‘yellow horizon’ protocol. But you know what will happen if it fails.”
“Yes… I know.”
“I am sorry, son. Since CASPR got open-sourced, we are overwhelmed by these idiots… I am waiting for your decision.”
I had a deep look at Nasir. I knew it would probably be the last time I would see him. It was probably the last time I would see anything else. I exhaled loudly and said, “Permission to print a new species as a countermeasure.”
“Permission granted. Good luck.”
Asking was the easy part. I was her protégé.
As I was climbing space, the platform changed its path toward a new direction. The Athena Life Engineering Lab, or ALEL, was lighting up like a giant light bulb. It was my dream to one day be worthy of visiting the lab. It was proclaimed as a symbol of hope. But not like this. Not on the verge of my very own death.
ALEL was the only accredited location where humans were allowed to engineer and print new life forms. No one was allowed to penetrate the labs. Akin to the Athena Orbital Data Centre, it was solely operated by robots and machines following a strict chain of command.
Soon after, the platform slowed down, then stopped near the lab, and the docking system engaged to secure the system. A muffled noise gave me the chills.
“Welcome, Dr. Anoli. My name is Marie Curie. You have been granted the usage of the Athena Life Engineering System by Archdoctor Krovariv of the World Health Organization on the date of 30th December 2060. Any inquiry going against the principles of life and Human Civil Rights will result in your immediate termination. Do you want to hear these principles?”
“No, thank you. I already vowed to fight for life when I became a biomedical engineer.”
“Understood. Please state your prompt, please.”
I thought to myself, “What? Just like that?”
“Marie Curie, I need you to engineer a biological agent to counter Dr. Nasir’s condition. Focus uniquely on alien gene alteration and accelerated growth features. Do not augment the agent with inorganic material. Do not add metamorphic adaptation capabilities. Encode the maximum life duration to be 72 hours. Add automatic degeneration from 70 hours as a failsafe mechanism. No reproduction. No replication. I need you to confirm the supernumerary growth first before proceeding.”
“Supernumerary growth confirmed. Your prompt is acceptable. Proceeding to the registration of the new specimen identified by Anoli-alpha-31122060-001. Beginning prototyping phase.”
As I reached the point of no return, I could not help but wonder if our life would end here. ALEL was a universal robotic womb. What would happen if I asked the Life Factory to… recreate Nasir… Is rebirth possible?
Apple unveiled an innovative #AI method for creating animated human avatars in #3D from real humans named #HUGS.
The technique means Human Gaussian Splats It uses 3D Gaussian Splatting (= reconstruction from multiple points of view).
The features are: 🔹Recreates human avatars in 3D from video and scenes. 🔹Separates humans from static scenes in videos. 🔹Use the SMPL body model for human representation. SMPL = Skinned Multi-Person Linear Model. In essence, it is a way to render a realistic 3D model of the human body 🔹Generates animations 🔹Achieves high rendering quality at 60 FPS.
Why does this publication matter?
First, it is a clear signal that Apple is also in the AI models race.
Then, interestingly, Apple announced the Vision Pro on the 5th of June 2023, with the promise to provide a #Metaverse experience never seen before.
With HUGS, Apple pushes a foundational building block for making the #AR/#VR experience feel more like real life: the dematerialization of your avatar to increase the sentiment of intimacy and immersion.
Also, it pushes further the seamless continuum from digital to physical and vice-versa. It makes the #Phygital Experience. Digitally generated media is essential to the future of the “Metaverse”.
I am sitting in my garden watching my granddaughter, Aleïs. She is playing with one of her advanced robotic toys, a Tyranausore Rex, and a ghost diplodocus. Yes, an invisible diplodocus. At least, this is what it looks like with my naked eyes. She is seeing more things despite she wears corrective glasses. In reality, she is playing with another digital dinosaur that only exists in the digital world. Glasses come with augmented reality by default, even for kids now. I remember when Apple launched them for the first time for the mainstream. I was just before the 5th digital revolution came, the age of the Phygital Internet
First, it was a gadget, it became rapidly a social advantage, to conclude as a social divide. It became indispensable when Apple partnered with major Glassmakers. Wearing glasses was no longer a sign of disability but a sign of “Augmentation”.
Suddenly Alëis sees virtual options popping atop The T-Rex. Some of them are locked and can only be obtained as “in-thing” payment. This kind of payment is sneaky but convenient, but sneaky! Of course, she wants to see the brand new flame animation coming out of her toy, and she wants to download cool dance moves like in Fortnite back in the day. She is into robotic animal engineering. She is much more skilled in information technologies than I was at her age. Like me, she is thrilled by trying and messing with new techs. I am so proud of her.
She taps on the menu to buy it. She is 14, and at this age, she cannot buy anything without the consent of one of her parents. One of the good features was family group management and sharing of financial assets and digital rights. Because I am an elder of her family, I receive her authorization to buy.
My Smartphone displays a notification. I smile because now they are holographic. And even when I am still amazed to see holograms popping out of the screen, smartphones are nowadays considered a relic from the past. Never mind, I am old anyway, I too am a relic. I should have died a long time ago. But they print organic lungs now, turning pneumonia into vintage flu. I put my finger on the notification and I approve with my face and my voice.
It reminded me of something. I say to Aleïs “There you go. You’re lucky, 15 years ago you couldn’t buy this option yourself”.
And she replied, “What do you mean, Papi Yannick?”.
“You see when I was younger, my mother had to go to the bank to open my account. I had to fill out some paper, present a printed copy of my national id card, and sign the paper with a pen. Later on, we could do it with our smartphones. Digital Onboarding was the coolest thing. We struggle to make it happen due to the strict regulations of the financial industry. Cyber fraud was high, and trust in the system was low. Eventually, the governments decided that laws had to be strictly enforced by code. You know, IT programming. Actually, this was the birth of the now famous expression “In Code We Trust”. Now everything is different. I mean normal for you but different for me. Ever since financial matters entered the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it did change a lot for the good. Now each human has a bank account the moment they land on planet earth. It is a birthright. Of course, they have to pay if they want more options, like your T-rex! If I recall correctly, Mankind agreed on changing the law after the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“Now look at that. You can ask permission to pay with your glasses. Then I can approve it with my relic. You get the right to spend the money from your bank account. Finally, you get a T-rex spitting flames and dancing like Justin Bieber!”
“Justin Bieber? Papi, you are soooooooooo old”
“Yeah… I know”
“But I know things that you don’t”
“Ok tell me! Tell me pleeeeaaaassseeeeee!”
“Did you know that, in fact, you are not paying directly? It is your T-Rex that sends a payment to Amazon?”
“Seriously??? How come???”
“Ok. When I was still working at the bank, we figured out that autonomous cars were always connected to the internet because they needed specific cloud resources. As you know, the management of a fleet of cars is completely reliant upon the vehicle’s intelligence and collective intelligence. To operate correctly, each car needs to dynamically allocate computing power. I mean significant computing power. Now everything is quantum computing and photonic memory, it was ridiculous compared to now. The allocation is performed by buying volumes of TPU in the Financial Stock Exchanges. Funny story though, this is how Nvidia came to dominate by far the NASDAQ.
Besides, these cars were expensive to make. Thus, they needed to come with insurance from a third-party company. So what we decided at the bank is to create a bank account for Things. Nowadays, we generalized this concept to almost all objects. Fridges, washing machines, carrybots, you named it. So, in your case, the T-rex you received on your birthday has:
a bank account
a 10 years insurance bound to it
a return policy that mummy and daddy can use if they want, and the list of features unlocked
There is also a piece of information that says “this T-rex belongs to Aleïs Huchard”. Thus even if you lose it, someone can bring it to the nearest Post office and a delivery drone will bring it back to you. Isn’t that great?”
“How does the bank knows that it is mine?”
“Actually the bank does not know. The bank information system request the Worldwide Identity Service — a blockchain so to speak — to verify that this object is yours and it is safe to send a payment to Amazon. And since the monthly spending limit on your toy that your parent has set is not reached, you can buy your options. I mean the T-rex can pay for its hot upgrade, ah ah ah!”
We are both laughing loud together.
I continue with “ What do you want for your upcoming birthday? I was thinking about a trip or something”.
“Yes, I’d like to go to Senegal. You find the best Agrotech schools there.”
“You’re already thinking about university? Geez, you’re growing so fast.”
“Indeed. According to my personal finance advisor, we all have to save €20 per month on our “special event group account”. Annnnnd, this is me supposing I’ll receive €50 from you, Granny, Mummy, Daddy, and auntie Azea at my birthday!”.
“Yeah, sure you can count on that…. When did you become so good at finance?”
“I simply asked my personal financial advisor.”
“Can you show me?”
“Sure, here it is”. She looked at me with her glasses and made a swipe gesture in the air like I used to do on my NotSoSmartphone.
A hologram pops up. I was expecting a dude in suit-and-tie, like… a banker. How cliché. Instead, it was an oldish robot covered with rust. And says “How may I help you, Yannick”.
“Show me your list of features, please?”
“Sure, here it is”
A mind map of all features floats in the air. Then I say “I get it, this is an upgraded version of mine. I guess I should ask questions more often to my own personal advisor to train it with my needs. Or even better, I am going to ask your personal finance advisor to train mine. Although mine looks much more friendly. Why this robotic face, Aleïs? It looks like a half-baked Optimus Prime!”
“Don’t you like this skin, Papi? If you don’t like it, just change it. You can replace skins and voices. Check the marketplace.”
“Hmm… Open the marketplace please”
Now I am checking the marketplace. I see a lot of stuff produced by independent artists. Ever since ING came up with the “Platform Bank” idea, all Banks built their own “Financial Auchan”
See that, I can buy ad spaces on social media… Buy games on Playstation XR… Hmm… Buy tuition to the Elon Musk School of Technology… And, oh, even get me the avatar of Gary Vee for defining my attention strategy. Sweet.
Ah… Skins…
Oh, you can even buy Investment Strategies too !? “The Warren Buffet Strategy by Eleanor Neetz”… “The Silent Investor, by the Wall Street Journal”… “The Sustainable Index Strategy” is currently trending. And they even have a leaderboard now. Wow, did you know that the top performer of the month won €34023! Little one, your friends, and you should buy this strategy to fund your trip!”
And she replies “You prefer Social Network Investments to cool Skins, Papy? Your so oooooooooold!”
Check the following video introducing the Builder Bot, which creates VR worlds with your voice :
I can only acknowledge that it is a clever move. The first versions of VMESS in 2015 had a quite similar goal in mind.
Meta intent to be a Metaverse Forge Platform: the host a Digital Multiverse. At the end of the day, it is about giving one the possibility to pioneer the Metaverses (with an “S”).
Overall, it is an even greater strategic milestone for the Meta Group as Facebook needs to pivot to some degree in order to not face the same destiny as MySpace.
However, Mark Zuckerberg has 2 problems to solve (per the recent 230 billion $USD loss in value) till then:
Even if the social value of Facebook has been proven, with its 2.9 billion users, Facebook has this negative image of being an “evil company”.
Considering the amount of data gathered on each member of this social network, political opinion influence, the toxicity of Instagram for youngsters, etc. this image needs to change.
Mark Zuckerberg. Yes, Mark is the image of Facebook, and it is not shining at the moment. Maybe it would be wiser for Meta to have a different public face (communication-wise) to perform its complete mutation.
