The Old Man’s Views The Old Man Looks Back on 2021

Firstly, I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.

Omicron upturned my Christmas plans, but we all got through it safely.

We are about to enter another year of government restrictions and lockdowns, and it’s just not good enough.

“5-weeks to stop the pandemic” has become 2-years, and we are still being screwed around by our governments. Indeed, the only thing our governments seem good at is creating the perception that there are problems only governments can solve.

The mishandling of the Covid pandemic by our governments should be a lesson for us all. But I doubt it will be a lesson learned.

In fact, it looks like we are turning our back on solving real-world problems and prefer instead to create alternative worlds, the Metaverse, where we can live with relative freedom, providing we don’t feel the need to get our backsides up from our sofas.

I don’t know what I think about the Metaverse regarding its being healthy for humanity. Still, I do know it’s going to be the biggest thing in 2022, and perhaps for a few more years after, as younger generations prefer escapism rather than facing reality.

I can see the positives of VR, AR and further development of AI, and there is no denying that what’s coming is incredibly innovative and exciting.

So, how will future Christmas’s look?

There will be no need for me to buy plane tickets, get Covid tests, and suffer the aggravation of travelling because I will be spending Christmas on my sofa logged into my own little virtual wonderland living Christmas through the eyes of my Avatar.

I can spend Christmas at a virtual North Pole, on a virtual beach, or a weird planet of my own creation. I will do my Christmas shopping in a virtual shop, dealing with a virtual shop assistant, who will deliver the presents I purchased with cryptocurrency within 24-hours.

That done, I can arrange to meet some friends in a virtual bar, where we will converse whilst watching a virtual copy of Maria Carey or George Michael performing our favourite Christmas songs.

After leaving my friends, I will visit a virtual restaurant, where I can order the Christmas dinner of my choosing, which I know will be delivered to everyone’s house at precisely the same time.

Our Avatars will be much more realistic than those currently available. They will look like us and have multiple facial expressions, so we can see the joy on each other’s faces when we open our virtual presents, play virtual games, or listen to music.

There is no end to what will be possible, and if you really want to get creepy, we could make avatars of those we have lost and use AI to interact with our dearly departed. Indeed, when we are gone, there will be enough data gathered that our avatars can live independently, spending every Christmas and birthday with our children and grandchildren.

It will not be long before machines are developed which allow us to smell the food we buy in the Metaverse, or feel the heat from the virtual log-fires we sit around in our virtual worlds.

And when it’s all over, we can retire to our private piece of the Metaverse, invite our favourite, virtual girlfriend and have a night of virtual pleasure. The following day we will wake up, take stock of our virtual presents, and take them back to the virtual shops, where we will exchange them for cryptocurrencies of our choosing.

This development will take place, and this will be the future of Christmas.

2022, according to the talk in the LinkedIn echo chamber, will be the year this all starts to take off and to benefit from it we only have to buy the suitable cryptocurrencies and own the right NFTs.

I find the idea of such a Christmas distasteful and impersonal. Still, with so many young people already living their lives through social media, the art of communicating person-to-person, face-to-face, is already on the wane.

Of course, the Metaverse brings many advantages to the commercial world. Having the ability to hold business meetings in a virtual environment will allow for massive savings in both time and money.

But at what cost?

The drive to develop the Metaverse is about money. The real world is in such bad shape that people want somewhere to escape to, and the Metaverse offers that escape – for a fee.

However, whilst we are all sitting on our sofas with our headsets and goggles on, who will be taking care of the real world and real-world problems?

I worry about this at my age, but I don’t think our younger generation does. Or at least that seems to be the way things are trending. Today it is just about entitlement and instant gratification. If you can’t get this in the real world, stick on a headset.

There is much said concerning what we should buy to maximize our return from Metaverse. There’s certainly a lot of currencies from which to choose. I think it’s still early days, but if you buy a little of this and a little of that, you have a good chance of seeing one of your currencies take off.

However, it’s worth considering that today’s big players may not be the future of Metaverse. I remember the early days of the internet, when companies like Yahoo, Altavista and AOL, were massive, but then along came Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

It’s also worth remembering that no empire lasts forever, and my wish for next Christmas is to see more people move away from funding Mr. Zuckerberg and his terrible websites.

I will finish by wishing everyone a Happy and Healthy New Year.

My resolutions will involve more learning and understanding, and to also help more newbies navigate an eco-system where everyone seems to be saying the same thing.

So, until next year,

Good luck and good trading.

Source: https://www.blockleaders.io/the-old-mans-views-the-old-man-looks-back-on-2021/