Meet Me in the Metaverse #TechVision While What companies are starting to realize is that across humans and machines alike, identifying threaded through our physical environments in in their drive to survive during the pandemic where ambitious enterprises can find rich increasingly sophisticated ways. It projects how they have accelerated the future. The pivots opportunity by uprooting themselves from today the convergence of 5G, ambient computing, and inventions they made are becoming the and planting themselves firmly in the future. augmented reality, smart materials, and more 14% foundations for the new worlds that are starting are paving the way for businesses to reshape to take shape. Though the challenges of the First in WebMe we explore how the internet is how they interact with the physical world. of executives report the pandemic still weigh heavily on businesses being reimagined. The last two years spurred As technology becomes part of the fabric pandemic is continuing to today, we are starting to adapt to our new enterprises to explore new modes of digital of our environment, it allows us to treat our disrupt their organization’s reality, and leaders are taking a more deliberate experience and pushed people to live virtually environment more like technology – unlocking business plans and approach to shaping what comes next. to an extent they never expected. Now the an unprecedented fidelity of control, operations, another metaverse is emerging as a natural evolution that automation, and personalization. These companies and those that join them reconciles how the internet is designed today as leaders will evolve and shape the emerging with what we will demand from it going forward. When it comes to populating new worlds, Metaverse Continuum in ways that, for now, The advent of the metaverse, and underlying humans are the primary residents. But we are we can only speculate about. Each has its own efforts to reimagine how data shapes our also tracking the emergence of The Unreal – 86% idea for what the optimal future looks like, but it digital experiences, will challenge businesses a trend where our environments and businesses would be a mistake to believe these efforts are to rethink their presence online and become a are increasingly filled with machines that are report that their organization mutually exclusive. In some cases, companies’ part of shaping the next platform revolution as passably human. “Unreal” qualities are becoming has adapted to the disruption ambitions will irreconcilably conflict, but in they build new ways to connect to customers, intrinsic to the artificial intelligence, and even of the pandemic and has others they will amplify one another. partners, and their digital workforce. the data, that enterprises aspire to integrate into found a new normal. mission-critical functions. At the same time, In this Vision, we explore how today’s technology But the value of new virtual worlds would be people are coming face-to-face with bad actors innovations are becoming the building blocks of capped if not for parallel changes that anchor using this technology – from deepfakes to bots our collective future. The trends investigate the them in the physical one. The Programmable and more – igniting a growing concern that entire continuum, from the virtual to the physical, World tracks how technology is being may turn into the biggest hurdle for enterprises Introduction // WebMe // Programmable World // The Unreal // Computing the Impossible 15