JACOB LOEWENSTEIN STARTED his talk at the Augmented World Expo by apologizing. The audience in Ballroom B was small-fewer than a hundred people, masked and spaced apart at the Santa Clara Convention Center in the heart of Silicon Valley, waiting to hear about collaboration software for the virtual workplace. Loewenstein is the head of business development at Spatial, a venture-backed startup that has spent the past couple of years convincing big corporations to drop money on VR headsets and virtual meeting apps for their employees. But that day he launched into a presentation on his company's shift toward NFTs, crypto art houses, and "metaversal" meet-and-greets with members of the Utah Jazz basketball team. "This is kind of a weird situation," Loewenstein began. "For those of you who have used Spatial, you might be wondering, 'WTF? What has Spatial become? How many more buzzwords can they throw out?' And the answer is, infinitely more buzzwords, if it helps us make money. Just kidding."
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