Happy Tuesday,

Through my writing I've connected with some amazing folks, had awesome conversations, and landed new clients. Through one of those clients I met the founders of a new startup.

They asked me to join and now I'm helping them part-time on a super early stage startup focused on building an alternative education platform for teens through augmented and virtual reality.

My first long-form article was my Guide to the Metaverse, back in October of last year, and now I'm contributing to building it. The long-term goal of the startup is to be a Metaverse alternative school.
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How cool is that? :)
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How the United States will fall

I've been working for a few months now on my essay series exploring the probable fracture of the United States in the near future, but I was asked by an editor
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"why fracture and not war or collapse?"

I got you covered editor!

​Full article here​

Briefly, let's look at the potential options for ending a country

1. Collapse ​
   Could we have a financial collapse worse than 2008, one severe enough to end the country? Not likely.
2. Revolution​
   It would be a fitting end since it's how we started, but we don't have the underlying conditions to make this happen.
3. Annihilation​
   Probably the scariest of the four options, but we've got two things going for us.
4. Mutually assured destruction - we have nukes, no one wants complete planet destruction so China, Russia, etc don't attack.
5. Setting nukes aside, we have allies. China and Russia can't take on the United States AND our allies.
6. Fracture
   ​Now we're looking at the most probable scenario, but fracture comes in a few flavors, one of which is civil war.

I, of course, don't believe we're on the brink of civil war, but you'll have to read the whole article for my thoughts ;)

Ok, what then?

So let's say you buy my line that the US fractures, what happens after that?

Some potential scenarios:

• The era of city-states - mass fracture globally could lead to thousands of countries
• The UN era - a rise of one supranational organization
• Post citizenship - seems crazy, but global society could move past a concept of citizenship to a country

Want to read the whole article? Go here:
​https://www.danielsisson.com/articles/how-the-united-states-will-fall​

2 crazy things ✌

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🦴 Augmented Reality Cadavers

I was talking with a friend recently and he mentioned that some medical schools are now using AR cadavers for students to explore anatomy of the human body without needing to cut up a ton of bodies. This is a genius use of AR. I couldn't find the actual startup the med-school might be using but I found these guys: https://www.visiblebody.com/ar that use mobile AR to teach students anatomy

This is just one of tons of use cases that show XR isn't just about games.

😎 Facebook + Ray Bans = AR

Facebook has partnered with Ray Bans to make AR-ish glasses. At least they're stylish 🤷‍♂️

​Full article: Facebook On Your Face (The Verge)​

Post US what's the likely scenario?

So let's say that the US does end in fracture, what could be a 2nd or 3rd order effect?

Let me know. Just hit reply, I read and respond to everyone!
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Have an awesome week and see you next Tuesday!

Daniel
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Augmented Reality is a critically important part of Apple’s future
‍Tim Cook, Apple CEO