Metaverse Tuesdays

Over the next five years, major tech companies will invest a huge amount in the Metaverse, in the tens of billions of euros. Because? The first to talk about the "Metaverse" was a science fiction author, Neal Stephenson. In his novel "Snow Crash," published in 1992, he describes it as a three-dimensional digital world — a shared virtual reality experience — that allowed users to escape from a physical world that had become uninteresting.

In reality, after the experience of the pandemic that forced us to replace our daily activities with telecommuting or distance learning, at first glance the prospect of spending our entire lives in a digital world does not seem particularly stimulating. One of the goals of the Humane Technology Lab is to understand what it will mean to live in the Metaverse, to take advantage of its opportunities and avoid undesirable effects. The cycle of three meetings – Metaverse Tuesdays – which will begin on Tuesday 7 March in Milan,at Università Cattolica in collaboration with Corriere della Sera, pursue this aim: to analyse the relationship between human experience and the Metaverse in an hour of dialogue through direct confrontation between those who are at the forefront of driving this change.

The first meeting – The new scenarios of Metaverse work (7 March, 5.30pm) – will involve Christian Colonna, Metaverse eXtended Reality Design Lead ICEG at Accenture and Ivan Montis, Secretary General of Web3 Alliance. Their task, stimulated by Daniele Manca, deputy editor of Corriere della Sera, will be to explain how the Metaverse will affect the world of work, changing practices and generating new professionalism.

The second meeting - The prospects of training in the Metaverse (4 April, 5.30 pm) - will be attended by Nicola Ravarini, Founder & CEO of VRZONE and Andrea Gaggioli, full professor of Psychology. The third and final meeting - The Metaverse and the communication of the future (9 May, 5.30 pm) - will instead try to answer a crucial question: what will be the impact of the Metaverse on communication processes? The question is critical given that the Metaverse is a transformative technology, capable of changing cognitive mechanisms and what people think is reality.