Michael Simon, staff writer for PCWorld, discusses President Obama's comments in an interview with Prince Harry where he warned against the misuse of social media, hinting at leaders that use platforms to divide and spread misinformation.
Simon discusses how news outlets play to their specific partisan audiences, MSNBC to its liberal viewers and Fox to conservatives. Simon predicts that the shift will be to more opinion-based news as opposed to fact-based sources. And in this age of targeted advertising, that is what works
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin is putting new laws in place that will oversee use of the internet in his country. The Russian president has acknowledged that he will be monitoring the activity of certain companies more closely as they head into the upcoming Russian election.
Interest in the concept of the metaverse is heating up as more companies get on board, and Cathy Hackl, CEO of Futures Intelligence Group, a metaverse-focused consultancy, joined Cheddar to talk about trends to watch out for in 2022 and what it will take for it to be more than just a buzzword. Hackl noted that businesses likely will have to consider big technology upgrades in the upcoming year in order to keep up. "We're going to need new levels of computing power to be able to enable shared virtual experiences, both in VR but also in augmented reality," she said.
Ron Gutman, Co-CEO of Intrivo, joins Cheddar News to discuss how the company is creating a test and tech solution for Covid testing called 2Gather, and how it's using data-driven digital diagnostics to make these tests widely available and affordable.
The metaverse took the world by storm in 2021 and it is just the beginning of the virtual universe. Consumers are jumping on board and companies like Meta and Roblox are already taking advantage. Entrepreneur Andrew Duplessie joined Cheddar to discuss how the metaverse will impact the future of socialization and business. "If I'm doing anything right now, I'm building an app, I'm jumping into that ecosystem, and I'm testing it. I'm seeing what people think," he said.