AI is Trying to Give Refs a Break
1. FIFA will use AI to Remove Some Subjectivity from The 2022 World Cup
Refereeing requires an intimate understanding of the rules, strong observational skills, a sense of justice… and an ability to tune out your harshest critics.
And in a sport where duping the refs has increasingly become a point of parity among top players and teams, they need all the help they can get.
FIFA has announced it will implement AI-powered camera to help judge offsides calls at the 2022 World Cup. They will leverage positional sensors and tracking cameras to monitor the locations of players (and 29 different points on their bodies!).
The system will alert a ‘ref control room’ off the field who will validate whether a player was indeed offsides. This tech should give the fans one less gripe with the stripes and allow the refs to focus on figuring out if this deserves a red card:
2. A New Angle In: Retail as an Entry Point to Web3
While some are working out how to add a physical/retail component to their web3/virtual experiences, others are trying to do the opposite. Salvatore Ferragamo is giving customized-on-the-spot NFTs to IRL customers that purchase physical goods at its concept store in Soho.
The NFTs, bought alongside physical goods, are customized in-store via an immersive experience. Customers step into a mirrored booth displaying digital artwork that can be altered by touch. They are then minted on the Ethereum blockchain and delivered to the recipient’s wallet.
The in-store customization experience is a ‘web3’ experiment, but also one in product personalization and on-demand manufacturing as Ferragamo uses similar touch screen tech allowing for the customization of 6R3ENE sneakers, made-to-order. The digital products just arrive faster.
4. Who Could Have Seen it Coming?
We still don’t know exactly what the ‘metaverse’ will look like as it matures (or if it will even be called the ‘metaverse’). Many were only exposed to the broader term in the last year as Facebook rebranded to ‘Meta’.
Those topics that fall under the ‘metaverse’ umbrella (virtual worlds, avatars and identity, web3, etc.) are not new ones. Popular culture has delivered more than one prescient piece that explored the very same topics, though the visuals may not have look exactly like our current vision. Below are just a few:
While looked back on as ‘hokey’, the 1982 film Tron was the first to leverage significant CGI and explored concepts like digital worlds, AI, and identity online as Jeff Bridges’ character entered the virtual and battled an omniscient AI.
Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel, Snow Crash coined the term metaverse and envisioned a ‘successor’ to the internet that was fully 3D.
And most recently, Ready Player One took on the beefy topic of decentralization and control in a virtual environment that a failing IRL world had come to rely on. It also has the best depiction interoperability… allowing you to bring your ‘skins’ into any virtual environment!
4. A New Library of Alexandria
As the Internet matures, the future it will deliver is difficult to fully conceive. At the same time, our past is becoming as accessible as ever thanks to Histography.io.
Matan Stauber’s algorithm identifies and extrapolates historical events from pages added to Wikipedia and automatically places them on a interactive timeline starting at the Big Bang. Now we have the ability to sift through mountains of historical data points, placed in context and sorted by categories (like wars, music, and more). It’s downright cool.
Hopefully, we can avoid burning this library down. It should be a little more difficult at least.
…And In Case You Missed It
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