Alejandro Franceschi’s Post

About a decade ago, a high school pal and I were having a beer in downtown San Francisco. The conversation turned towards an XR-enabled future, as I was launching what would become my Lumiere award-winning #XR #startup. #Facebook had just purchased #Oculus (where I would later work), and glimpses of AI were starting to take root in new teams. One of the ideas I shared with my friend was about digital worlds where thematic IP, genres, or various types of stylization would be overlaid atop the physical world. I didn’t mean just a GUI or a character but entire cities mapped out down to 1m accuracy or better. The physical world would inform the digital, to best take advantage of procedural content generation that would keep the user safe, while grounding the overlay in a semblance of physical correspondence to the senses. We had seen virtual worlds depicted before, but I had never seen XR envisioned quite that way. He recommended I pick up a copy of “Rainbow’s End” by Vernor Vinge (https://lnkd.in/g_HWj-pU), winner of the #HugoAward in 2007. Vernor’s book cohesively articulated the abstractions I had in mind. Better still, when placed inside the thrust of a narrative, albeit fictional, it resonated deeply with me, especially since it’s set in my beloved San Diego in 2025. 👀 In the book, entire worlds are tailored to the individual, and entire economies of scale can exist for just a single person and their version of the world, licensed to whoever wishes to partake in a given digital (mass) hallucination. Their uses ran the gamut from #entertainment, #education, to #healthcare, and so on. This reality is coming more into focus for platforms like #MetaQuest, although it seemed then more like the realm of enterprise to me for at least another 20-30 years. Indeed, I spoke to companies like #Disney and other #themepark creatives about it, because it seems like a natural progression for #themedentertainment: a fully controllable, expansive, autonomous, immersive experience that could exist before, during, and after one’s attendance at a physical park. I have written about this concept more extensively for the #EDM #musicfestival known as #Tomorrowland (no affiliation to Disney, though I discuss them in the same breath), in another article from a few years ago: https://lnkd.in/gZm4nzP9? More recently, Kyle Goodrich (from #Snap) posted a #vfx example here on #LinkedIn, that fills in one's everyday very much like the book. I hope others will be inspired by these, as well as the novel. Keep grinding, but make sure to spend some time with friends—you never know where, when, or how the necessary inspiration will find you! _ Kyle's original post: https://lnkd.in/g8sDvBMz _ #scifi #metaverse #cyberspace #vr #ar #iappa

“Rainbow’s End,” by Vernor Vinge: https://a.co/d/0kDzktW

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