I wrote a book. That book rewards you with crypto.

When I finally sat down to write The Metaverse Handbook this past winter, my mission was clear: help readers make sense of the Metaverse.

Every day I read a new story about an early Metaverse adopter making money in some absurd way.

Like the story of Joe Hunting, a filmmaker who filmed an entire documentary in VRChat called We Met in Virtual Reality, which was later selected for the Sundance Film Festival.

Or the story of Robert Doyle, a real estate agent who began investing in income-producing metaverse businesses such as a virtual car repair shop and a virtual bank in a Metaverse called Polka City.

What these two stories (and the hundreds of other Metaverse case studies out there) have in common is that they don’t help the people who have zero knowledge of the Metaverse; the people who lack a foundational understanding of what the Metaverse is, and therefore, cannot even begin to try to follow in the shoes of these Metaverse go-getters.

And so I wrote The Metaverse Handbook – a simple guide to understanding the Metaverse for non-technical readers. And starting today, you can…

Order The Metaverse Handbook and receive it on release day – Tuesday, May 24th, 2022.

Why You Should Order The Metaverse Handbook

There is a multitude of reasons that I believe you should order The Metaverse Handbook today. In order of importance, the reasons you should buy my book are:

  1. You need to understand how the Metaverse is changing the Internet – There’s not a single company, brand, or individual that won’t be impacted by the Metaverse (or what I like to call The Immersive Web). And more likely than not, one of your competitors is thinking deeply about their Metaverse strategy.
  2. You won’t find a more comprehensive and approachable resource on the Metaverse – Believe me, I’ve read all of the books and blogs about the Metaverse. And what I wrote is the most complete thought on the subject. I couldn’t have done it without my incredible publisher, Wiley, my thought-provoking co-author, Scott “DJ SKEE” Keeney, and a wonderful foreword by Paris Hilton.
  3. You will be rewarded for supporting my book before Tuesday, May 24th – As a promotion for all of my early supporters, anyone that buys The Metaverse Handbook before Tuesday, May 24th will receive an allotment of $1Q9X tokens. Below, you’ll find more information on why I’m doing this and how you can claim your $1Q9X tokens.

Buy the Book, Receive Your $1Q9X Tokens

I’m a firm believer that social tokens (or creator coins) will be a major part of the Metaverse economy. Basically, these are cryptocurrencies that are tied closely to a single person, giving them the ability to create reward mechanisms for their supporters and their fans.

That’s why I’m launching the $1Q9X social token with a company called Roll. They’re the leading blockchain infrastructure for designing and deploying social tokens. Notably, they created $WHALE – the top social token backed by WhaleShark’s massive NFT collection.

Broadly speaking, I’ll be using the $1Q9X cryptocurrency in tandem with my next business venture (launching in late July) that I’m building in partnership with DMINTI. And the $1Q9X token will allow you to participate in that endeavor. DMINTI partners with contemporary artists to bring their vision to the blockchain, creating innovative and relevant NFT projects and Web3 experiences with wide appeal and expansive points of access.

If you want to hear more specifics on the $1Q9X token, then join my Twitter Spaces talk with Roll on Wednesday, May 18th at 1pm EST.

All you need to know right now about the $1Q9X token is that if you show me support by buying The Metaverse Handbook, then I’m rewarding you with ten $1Q9X tokens. It’s quite simple. Here are the steps:

  1. Order The Metaverse Handbook 
  2. Fill out the form on MetaverseHandbook.com/1q9x
  3. You’re now eligible to receive your allotment of $1Q9X tokens

The number of $1Q9X tokens you receive is tied to how many books you purchase. Let me say that again. The more books you buy, the more $1Q9X tokens you will be gifted!

With my previous best-seller The NFT Handbook, I quickly found that people were ordering in bulk for their employees and teammates, for their school districts, and for holiday/birthday gifts. After all, isn’t The Gift of Knowledge the best gift of all?

No matter the number of books you buy, I will be honoring the $1Q9X token rewards proportional to your purchase.

Also, if you’re interested in purchasing 30+ books at once, then please email me directly for a bulk purchasing rate. (I can get you a better deal than the list price and Amazon caps you at 30 books).

There’s one small caveat: I’m only offering the $1Q9X token reward until Tuesday, May 24th at 11:59pm CDT.

I realize this doesn’t give you a lot of time to make a decision. But if we’ve learned anything about the world of crypto over the last six-plus years, it’s that there’s never enough time to make a decision on buying/selling crypto. So if you want in, then get in.

Although the contents of The Metaverse Handbook are relevant to what I’ll be building with the $1Q9X token, ultimately, I want you to buy The Metaverse Handbook because you want to learn about the Metaverse. And I truly poured some of my best future thinking into this book.

Why I Wrote The Metaverse Handbook

When it comes to making a decision about buying a book, we generally care about who wrote the book, what’s in the book, and how it’s written. The answer to all of those questions can be found at metaversehandbook.com.

What that page doesn’t cover is WHY I wrote the book. And on that note, I have three reasons.

Nobody Was Talking About Culture in the Metaverse

Culture crafts society. Without culture, no single technology would catch on. The Metaverse is no different. It needs culture in order to be cool. And once it’s cool, then people will use it.

Despite this simple equation, you’d be hard-pressed to find any Metaverse blogs or books that dissect the importance of culture in the Metaverse. Until you pick up your copy of The Metaverse Handbook, of course.

That’s why I brought on DJ SKEE as my co-author. For the last two decades, DJ SKEE has been at the epicenter of driving culture forward in sneakers, tech, sports, and music. Today, he’s building metaverses for the brands that are at the center of worldwide culture. SKEE was the best co-author for the job.

Additionally, Metaverse culture is why we asked Paris Hilton to write the forward. Not only is she responsible for creating the culture of Internet Influencers, but she’s also making huge strides in Paris World, (her Roblox Metaverse). For example, Paris threw a New Year’s Eve bash in Paris World which had more attendees than Times Square did on NYE. Talk about being culturally relevant in the Metaverse.

Ultimately, culture is the main ingredient that will transform the Metaverse from a techie fantasy into the next great digital gathering space. And so we wrote The Metaverse Handbook with a major emphasis on the subcultures emerging in the Metaverse, as well as in what ways popular culture is taking notice of the Metaverse.

Black Representation is Needed in Emerging Tech

I grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – a city where the crime rate is scarier than the poverty rate. I’m not going to beat around the bush, literally, all of my close childhood friends are dead. And that’s a reality for a lot of successful young black men like me.

Furthermore, when you hear of Apple or Amazon building their second or third headquarters, places like Milwaukee are never on the shortlist of destinations. It’s not as if we have tech companies craving our employment.

So when you come from a place where the opportunities to make something of yourself are minimal, just simply making it out is an achievement. But for me, making it out is not enough. I want to show the next generation of QuHarrison’s a new path they can take. Perhaps a path that they hadn’t considered before.

When we hear black people talking about tech, oftentimes they’re talking about yesterday’s technology. They’re not talking about tomorrow’s technology.

With The Metaverse Handbook, I’m setting an example that we don’t have to play catch-up. We can be at the forefront of emerging technologies too.

A Blog Post Wasn’t Going to Cut It

There’s a major difference between a blog post and a book. And I’m not referring to the length of the writing. Rather, the amount of input that you get when you write a book is unmatched by a blog.

When you decide to write a book, you’re agreeing to let others touch that product. You’re giving publishers a chance to put their name on the cover and therefore they must be as proud of the product as the author is.

Here are all of the checks and balances a blog post doesn’t go through:

  1. A 40+ page book proposal
  2. Market research and positioning for maximum impact
  3. Dozens of strategy sessions to drill down on the book’s contents
  4. Hundreds of hours of writing, rewriting, scrapping ideas, and writing again
  5. A technical edit
  6. A grammatical edit
  7. Final additions from the authors
  8. Another technical and grammatical edit

By working with John Wiley & Sons (my publisher), what we got with The Metaverse Handbook was an entire team of future thinkers providing input into what would make the book better, easier to read, and more impactful for the reader.

When all of that goes as planned, the result is a book that everyone who contributed is proud of. A book that they know says something worthwhile. And a book that will spread the knowledge you want others to have. That is exactly what we accomplished with The Metaverse Handbook.

With that being said, I hope that I’ve made a compelling case as to why The Metaverse Handbook is the book for you. And so for one last time, you can order your copy of The Metaverse Handbook here.

The NFT Handbook is Now Available

It’s rare for an emerging technology to get both its cultural moment of acclaim at the same time that it’s user-friendly and accessible to everyone. NFTs are among this rare class of emerging technologies.

Many of you may know me from the days I was selling digital art back in 2015. I had created 23VIVI, the world’s first marketplace for rare and limited edition digital art using the Bitcoin blockchain to create certificates of authenticity. Needless to say, digital art has been a passion of mine for over half a decade.

Although NFTs go back as far as 2014 and 2015, they’ve only just received mass attention with the headline-making, multi-million-dollar sales. Perhaps you heard about the CryptoPunk digital collectible that just sold at Christie’s for $11.7 million or maybe it was the $69 million sale of Beeple’s First 5,000 Days of Everydays.

What’s so rare about this moment in time is that NFTs are both in the zeitgeist and also accessible to everyone.

Not only can analytical, right-brain people toy around with this new form of digital asset verification, but NFTs are also well-suited for creative, left-brain people to play around with and test their ingenuity.

NFTs are for everyone and that’s what makes them so special.

However, many people don’t know where to start. And that’s why I’m thrilled to announce my new book: The NFT Handbook.

I wanted to write something that made NFTs approachable for anyone and give the tools and knowledge to everyone to get started.

The NFT Handbook is one part education – walking you through creating your digital wallet, minting your first NFT, and starting an NFT collection. And one part inspiration – showing you the rich history of digital art, outlining marketing case studies of successful NFT sales, and teaching you how to contribute to this growing ecosystem of digital creators.

With my co-author Matt Fortnow and the support of Wiley Publishing, we’ve written something that truly brings you up to speed on NFTs while also inspiring you to dive into this thrilling new horizon.

Purchase The NFT Handbook here

Why Zoom Should Start Offering Group Card and Board Games Immediately

Six months ago, if you told me that I’d be having weekly family gatherings on Zoom I would’ve told you to take a hike. The business-focused video chat app had no place in social circles.

But now, Zoom has become an antidote to isolation during this pandemic lockdown.

Inevitable/Human is Discontinuing Memberships

Due to the unfortunate circumstances, COVID-19 has had on our business, we’ve made the tough decision to discontinue the membership components of Inevitable/Human.

We would like to thank all of our members for rocking with us these past few years. We’ve learned a lot and shared some incredible insights about the future amongst this community.

Nonetheless, in times of crisis, you often can’t control what happens next. However, you can control how you evolve from that situation. 

Helping You Make Decisions During the Pandemic

When the game is on the line what great athlete (or aspiring great athlete) is found sitting on the sidelines? Jordan, Brady, Gretzky, Phelps, Ali. No matter the circumstance, they were in the game.

In the past few days, Ryan and I have toiled with a tough decision. Ultimately, we decided we couldn’t sit idly during this time. Ultimately, we realized that there were other Future Thinkers that needed a place to share their wisdom for dealing with this difficult time.

Finding COVID-19 Therapies

Future thinking is a luxury. Only once you’ve achieved Physiological and Safety Needs on Maslow’s Hierarchy, can you then get back to dreaming and pondering the future.

That’s the conclusion that the Inevitable/Human team has come to during the current COVID-19 pandemic. We felt that as future-thinkers, the best foresight we could practice was in contributing our resources to those that are working toward medicinal solutions.

Apple News and COVID-19

Apple is holding, in my opinion, the biggest hand in this entire pandemic situation. They’ve got pocket aces, at least here in the United States, for one very big reason. Apple has the ability to ping approximately 100 million Americans at the same time. It’s an extremely huge responsibility that no other media company or device manufacturer has.

The only rival power is the US President’s National Wireless Emergency Alert System, where he can text every American with a cell phone simultaneously.

The Next Era of Workplace Software

The first thing I do when I hit the office is open Slack, Google Drive, and Asana. Three separate workplace software. Three augmentations of productivity. But how will the software that guides our work improve over time?

Like anything, workplace software evolves. The three phases are:

  • Siloed, singular work on one’s own software
  • Collaborative work on shared, team software
  • Collaborative work with team and AI-assistance

Future of Packaging

I’m not going to lie, researching the state of consumer packaging and where it’s headed is very depressing. The enormity of the situation is too big for any one person to hypothesize solutions. And for every positive initiative, it seems like there’s lobbying to cancel its progress.

We should be past the point of getting everyone’s attention around single-use plastic consumption. But, just for good measures, I did a little back of the envelope math.

A Cashless Society

The cries of a cashless society have been ringing for many years. And while the number of cash purchases is slowly declining, making up 30% of all transactions in the US. This plan of pure efficiency seems about as likely as us reaching a utopia. Possible, but not for at least a couple of generational power shifts.

Still, tracking this battle of cashless payments and cash is important. And gives a lot of signals as to where we’re going to see innovation (and growth in the financial sector).

3 Ways AR Face Filters Will Change the World

Who would’ve ever anticipated that one of the greatest impacts that facial recognition would have on society would be through Snapchat lenses? Face filters and AR lenses have become so much more than kitschy ways of spicing up how we communicate.

AR filters have altered the way that people view themselves. Snapchat dysmorphia started to become known in late 2018, when stories surfaced of people getting plastic surgery to look more like their Snapchat filters.

Banking the Unbanked

One of the great financial failures to this point in time is that 12 million Americans are still using payday loan stores and more than 10 million Americans use a check-cashing service. An instant paycheck deduction almost entirely because that person lacks a bank account. Tens of millions of Americans aren’t given the right financial avenues to save money, let alone accumulate wealth.

47% of black households are underbanked or unbanked. That number is 20% for white families. Aside from the moral obligation to provide better financial services to people of color. There’s actually great opportunity here.

The BMW Concept i4 is Setting a New Standard for Luxury in Electric Vehicles

There are very few instances throughout history where you can find luxury and practicality coexisting. Normally, to achieve one means sacrificing the other. You cut corners on style in order to achieve more efficiency. You cut corners on efficiency in order to achieve a look.

But the BMW Concept i4 is one of those few cases where both luxury and practicality coexist. They’ve taken the luxurious DNA of BMW’s Gran Coupe history and updated it with a fully-electric engine.

The Concept i4’s silhouette could stand in competition to every great BMW before it. The interior’s taste pallet makes you feel as though you’ve just entered a 5-star hotel. And then you turn the car on and are reminded that it’s a sports car (530 horsepower) but with a special caveat… It’s emission-free.

For a long time, “Going Green” was a rebellion against cultural norms. Electric vehicle owners were ostracized by the public for driving a car that stood against the horsepower we sought in our cars. I remember the days when truck drivers went viral on YouTube for running electric vehicles off the road.

We’ve come a long way since then.

BMW stands as a testament to this progress. They’re actively changing what it means to be a mobile world citizen. They’ve released concept after concept of what we should expect from the Future of Mobility.

The BMW Concept i4 shows a very real, very near Future of Mobility. The series BMW i4 will go into production in 2021, which means you’ll see this amazing vehicle moving through your environment very soon.

BMW is setting a high bar for the Future of Mobility – a future of style and impact.

AR-Based Messages

They say there’s no such thing as bad ideas, only bad timing. 3M was clearly a little ahead of the curve when they launched augmented reality sticky notes in 2012. It was a huge moment for AR, not in the sense of being able to write virtual notes. The major development was their use of cloud anchoring. Essentially being able to anchor a digital creation to a physical location.

Eight years later and we still haven’t come anywhere close to realizing the value of cloud anchoring. Imagine every restaurant review anchored to the restaurant, allowing you to read reviews as you’re looking at the menu. Imagine leaving Tweets in the real world. What if you could scatter holographic reminders throughout your walk to work – some motivational and some just regular notes on the day ahead.

4 Major PharmaTech Innovations

When I think of innovation in pharmaceuticals, I think of the work that goes on in a lab for years, sometimes decades, to create a groundbreaking drug. But the innovation doesn’t stop once that drug leaves the lab. There are loads of inconsistencies and problems that occur once a drug is on the market that need to be solved.

Below are four notable innovations in the PharmaTech pipeline.

Digital Art Marketplaces

Every day, millions of artists enter their studio and instead of picking up a brush, a pencil, or a can of spray paint, they power on their computers, tablets, and cameras. They are digital-native artists who, at the end of their creative process, have created a digital file. Does that digital file have value?

Sentimental value? Yes. Visual value? Yes. Monetary value? No. Digital files can’t retain monetary value. That is, until the year 2008 when the blockchain was created. The blockchain presented an opportunity whereby digital files (such as a digital artwork) could have a cryptographic signature that made it a unique asset. An asset that couldn’t be copied and pasted, for then the cryptographic signature, and its authentic identity, would be lost.

Robot Nurses & Drone Window Washers

Anyone looking for future job security should go into nursing. The overall aging population is precipitating a massive need for nurses. A need so large that we may not be able to fill it with humans alone.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Employment Projections 2016-2026, Registered Nursing (RN) is listed among the top occupations in terms of job growth through 2026. The RN workforce is expected to grow from 2.9 million in 2016 to 3.4 million in 2026, an increase of 438,100 or 15%.

Digital Health Guardian

How come YouTube can reliably recommend videos they know I’ll consume, but there isn’t a food search engine that’ll recommend healthy meals they know I’ll consume? How come Uber can always find the optimal route to my destination, but I’m completely unaware of an optimal route for my health?

In an age when algorithms understand us and personalize things for us at such an incredible ability, it is a shock that we don’t have this same level of personalization for our health.

Posture Mode

This behavior just isn’t sustainable. The entire world will be ruined if we keep this up. A decade from now, we’re all going to regret our actions. We’ll wish we’d done things differently. We’ll wish we hadn’t had such poor posture when using our phones and computers.

If you don’t think that this is a serious issue facing the world, then clearly you’re looking down at your phone too much to see everyone else with the same bent neck as you.

Computational Drug Design

The World Health Organization called it the world’s first “infodemic”. Social media has made it simple to spread fiction about the Coronavirus (or COVID-19). And when you stir up all the mud from the bottom of a pond, it’s difficult to get clean water. Especially in places where the spread of the virus is serious, people are having trouble determining what information to trust. This has led to panic where it’s unneeded and apathy where people should really care.

This is what happens when algorithms curate our news feeds, allowing anyone with an Internet connection to be heard.