Good Day! This is my weekly newsletter, with a dose of insights into the future. The topic of this newsletter is the exponential times we live in, hence the title of f(x) = e^x, which is the (natural) exponential function.

You can visit The Digital Speaker to book me as a keynote speaker for your next event or to hire me as a future tech coach for your CEO. I have also published my trend predictions for 2022.

Step into the Metaverse - eBook now available!

My latest book:

Only five months after I started writing my 4th book - Step into the Metaverse: How the Immersive Internet Will Unlock a Trillion-Dollar Social Economy - is now available as an eBook! Yay! 🎉

Around ~250 stakeholders involved in building the open metaverse contributed their thoughts and ideas to the book. The book is meant as a blueprint for creating an open metaverse—Jamie Burke from Outlier Ventures wrote the foreword.

The book has already received praise and recommendations from:

"In Step into the Metaverse, Mark van Rijmenam takes a comprehensive view of the converging forces that will fuse and someday become a future paradigm for human growth, prosperity, and existence. That is, unless we f* it up." - John Gaeta

"A comprehensive tour of vital contemporary metaverse discussions!" – Neil Trevett, President, The Khronos Group

“Dr. Mark van Rijmenam does a masterful job sharing a promising vision of the nascent metaverse while also being pragmatic about the challenges and gaps in existing solutions.” – Alec Lazarescu

“The next chapter of human existence is being formed right now, and as you Step into the Metaverse you’ll fully understand the power of the convergence of technology, consumer trends, brands, and reinvention of personal self-expression” - Justin Hochberg

“[Mark van Rijmenam’s] illuminating book on the beginnings of the metaverse is a light in the darkness for the curious and the bold.” — Matthew Brewbaker

If you are interested, you can find a free preview to read here.

Three Useful Nuggets of Information

My weekly tips from around the web to get you thinking.

1. Watch a giant Japanese robot fix railways.

The West Japan Rail Company (JR West) unveiled a new futuristic worker tasked with infrastructure jobs considered too risky for humans, and it looks a lot like a Transformer! 🤖 (TNW)

2. Digital Twins hold the key to Industry 4.0.

To win against competitors, innovative companies are building digital twins of their warehouse operations to handle complexities and improve performance. Digital twins enable endless simulations of equipment, factories, and entire systems and they can unlock Industry 4.0. (VentureBeat)

3. VR for your mouth is a thing now. 👄

In case you have always wanted to feel virtual haptic sensations on your lips while playing a virtual reality game, your endless wait is over - this new system can be attached to your VR headset and will send ultrasound waves toward your lips to create a kind of haptic sensation. (TechCrunch)

“May the 4th be with you.”

Today is Star Wars Day, but where did the famous phrase come from? A deep dive into the history of this famous saying.