I distinctly remember not being able to wrap my head around Twitter when it first launched. It must’ve been around 2007 and I was sitting in my office with Jim Schneider, retrofit’s contributing editor, who then was senior editor of another publication I managed. We were chatting about Twitter. “But why?” I remember asking him. “Who is going to read 140 characters someone is randomly spouting on the internet? I just don’t get it.”
Recalling that memory makes me laugh now because Twitter has become part of my daily work activities (follow @retrofitmag for the latest news, articles and products we post on our website!). I even find myself personally checking Twitter regularly—mostly to gauge the temperature of people’s reactions to certain news. For example, during the early days of COVID lockdown, the voices of regular people in other parts of the country helped me better understand—and anticipate—what was coming my way in terms of illness and safety precautions. Thinking about the “old” days like this helps me open my mind to the metaverse, yet another one of those internet “things” that will likely be a part of my life soon.
It’s a fun coincidence that Jim Schneider again is explaining this new-fangled phenomenon to me and you in “Trend Alert”. Defined as an “un-flattening of the internet” by Andrew Lane, cofounder of digby, a technology and innovation consultancy for A&D, the metaverse potentially will impact how architects and other construction industry professionals do their jobs.
“Over the next 10 years, we’ll see important evolutions in how we think about design for integration of physical and digital spaces,” Lane predicts in the article. “This will mean more firms looking to bridge the divide with ‘phygital’ [physical-digital] approaches, firms using 3D spatial environments to help with the planning and procurement processes, data collection and more. The opportunities are only beginning to make themselves apparent. Along the way, the current limitations of seamless access— goggles as we know will improve and even disappear—and computing power will be solved and open the door to a truly seamless human experience that effortlessly blends the physical and the digital.”
The metaverse sounds exciting but, as a Gen-Xer, constantly teetering between technology and old-school ways of doing things, I can’t help but worry just a tiny bit that the metaverse will give everyone an excuse to stay home in bed and never interact with other living, breathing humans again.
I then remind myself of something the facility director of my alma mater told me when I wrote a story about the college’s retrofit from central steam heat to individual boilers with a building automation system. He told me today’s maintenance staff is not the staff of my college experience (20-cough-some-years ago). These are men and women who grew up with technology and played Nintendo and PlayStation, which innately prepared them for today’s IoT era. I now give video games and youngsters with tablets more credit while trying not to worry about a future I can’t even begin to imagine.
However, I know nothing beats the experience of actually physically traveling to a luxurious hospitality and entertainment venue, like the beautiful facilities featured in this issue, and immersing yourself in total relaxation. At least nothing beats that feeling yet …