Emerging Tech Law Issue #12
How Apple Gets Shut Out of the Metaverse | Pig’s Heart Transplantation: A Crucial 1st Step
Note: I’m sticking with the format I introduced with the last newsletter, including a snippet of my long-form content with a link to read more on my new site, Emerging Tech Law. Feedback welcome and encouraged.
Quote of the week:
“I am not trendy. I am not 'in fashion'. I am simply a positive human being who has a positive outlook on life.”
-French fashion icon Thierry Mugler, who died January 23, 2022
METAVERSE
How Apple Gets Shut Out of the Metaverse: Cool Tech Clashes with Antitrust Laws
Apple is the one company that could make the metaverse cool, very quickly.
Immersing yourself in the 3D world of the metaverse is going to require gear – goggles or glasses to render the images, ear buds or headphones to transit the sounds, and haptics to convey the feel.
Put the design of that gear in the hands of Google, Meta/Facebook/Oculus, Invidia or some startup and the initial total available market will be teenaged boys, a few brave teenaged girls, and guys who drive their mom’s old Corolla and think of GameStop as a hangout, not a meme stock.
Put the design of that gear in the hands of Apple, and it will be sleek. Kids will “flex” the glasses at their neighborhood Starbucks. Parents will put them on their own holiday wish lists.
A God on Earth
This will position Apple as the dominant force in the metaverse, extending its lead as the top provider of mobile phones in the U.S. into a potentially much larger market.
Just like Apple created a music and video ecosystem that started with its iPod hardware and iTunes distribution channel that then extended into iPhones and the iOS (not to mention Mac OS) App store, Apple has the opportunity to dominate in the metaverse.
Just imagine the revenue from the sales of hardware, not to mention a (30%) cut of revenue from all of the app sales!
As Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games said, “This Metaverse is going to be far more pervasive and powerful than anything else. If one central company gains control of this, they will become more powerful than any government and be a god on Earth.”
BIOTECH
First Step to a Better Solution
Genetically modified and marinated in cocaine: Pig’s heart still keeping Maryland Man Alive
As of this writing, David Bennett of Maryland man is still alive a month after surgeons placed a pig’s heart in his chest.
The transplant was historic – the first xenotransplation of a heart from another species into a human. It’s a milestone on a path that eventually could lead to the routine use of organs for transplants from sources other than human cadavers.
Safer Cars = Few Organs for Transplant
Already, there is a shortage of organs for transplants. That situation will get even worse as another emerging technology – autonomously driven vehicles – develops further.
As we adopt self-driving cars, there will be fewer auto accidents and fewer traffic fatalities. It is no coincidence that you register to be an organ donor when you renew your driver’s license. Cadavers from car accidents are the primary source of organs for transplants.
Although fewer car accidents is a good thing, even more people will be left waiting, for years sometimes, for a transplant, and the urgency for alternatives will increase.
Stuck in the Middle
Work is underway on technologies such as new artificial organs and a method for creating organs from the patient’s stem cells using a 3D printer, but these solutions are years away.
As with many emerging technologies, we are in a “middle period” in the development of alternatives for organ transplants. During this period, the interim solutions may not be as good as the old solutions and getting to the better solution will require tolerance of the imperfections of the interim solution.
ALSO NOTEWORTHY
Bitcoin miners in Texas powered down to aid the state in coping with the electrical demands of a winter storm. (CNBC)
Ninth Circuit upholds California’s net neutrality law. (LightReading)
International Monetary Fund urges El Salvador to drop Bitcoin as legal tender. (Reuters)
Parting thought:
“Mathematical science shows what is. It is the language of unseen relations between things. But to use and apply that language, we must be able to fully to appreciate, to feel, to seize the unseen, the unconscious.”
-Computer Pioneer Ada Lovelace
.Obligatory disclaimer: Any opinions are those of the cited source or the author of this newsletter, not the author’s employer. If for some reason you think any legal advice is given in this newsletter, you’re sadly mistaken.
Love this stuff Bruce! Keep it coming - Damien