Somnium Space is a metaverse platform and live forever service. Its Live Forever mode creates a digital avatar of users based on information collected when interacting in the Somnium Space through VR headsets, controllers, and soon, full-bodied haptic suits with motion capture and biometric monitoring. Data on facial expression, body language, conversations, voice, character traits, and gait, allows the avatar to walk, talk and react with descendants and friends who can interact with the avatar of their deceased loved one. Initially, death bots and private chatbots were based on data supported by dead individuals but Somnium Space goes one step further with a moving full-body avatar. Somnium CEO Artur Sychov created the project after his father died from an aggressive form of cancer.

Over the last couple years, I've been spending time writing about creating ghosts -- perhaps an inevitability in the midst of a pandemic. While created by far-from-supernatural means, these are ghosts nonetheless; they are created from an essence of you -- from your voice, your data, your feelings, beliefs, habits, and history. Groups around the world are looking to take such information, this essence, and use it to create a digital version of you that may last once you are gone. Consider it a technological solution to the problem of death. Over the last couple years, I've been writing about creating ghosts -- perhaps an inevitability in the midst of a pandemic.

Imagine you live in a time before the internet. When we all had to work in offices, go to shops to buy things, when TV couldn't be streamed on demand and when most monetary transactions were made using notes and coins. Now imagine someone coming up to you and telling you how something that didn't even exist was going to make all those things seem like ancient history. You'd have found the idea fantastical, laughable even – exactly the way you might feel about the metaverse and the fact that there's a real estate boom going on there right now. Prices have risen by as much as 500% since Facebook changed the name of its holding company to Meta in October 2021, with people paying millions of dollars to buy plots of pixellated land in this virtual world, even though it doesn't fully exist yet.

It was the beginning of September, spring was coming in Prague, when I attended Tech Conference Europe organized by PICANTE. The publishing website picks the latest news about technology, finance, and many other topics that resonate today. If you asked me why to attend any tech conference, I would say – to meet interesting people and get inspired. Events like this one are an amazing opportunity to broaden your horizons and discover what's going on in the industry. Picante conference focused on different fields such as blockchain, Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Virtual Reality (VR).