Avi Bar-Zeev has been working on the metaverse for 30 years. He’s one of the key people behind Microsoft’s Hololens, co-founded Keyhole which became Google Earth, helped define Second Life’s technology, and has worked with Apple on, presumably, its rumored smartglasses.In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, I chat with Ari about the metaverse, what it is, what it isn’t, and how AR and VR connect (if they do).We also talk about what AR should be, about how it could fail, and the very real dangers it could represent. We discuss the one absolute necessity of the metaverse: interoperability. We ask whether a visual metaphor for the presentation of information is just unnecessary most of the time. We also we explore the future of life in an augmented reality rich environment, and the privacy implications of the metaverse.Links:RealityPrime: https://www.realityprime.com/Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work.TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/Subscribe to the podcast: https://anchor.fm/techfirstFull videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier