There are issues of trust with incumbent internet providers, and perhaps the potential for a new form of digital society. Large-scale social and immersive metaverse has low adoption and may not meet societal or business needs. From a business perspective, metaverse is not a good choice for remote collaboration. The term "digital society" may be more relevant and extend to spatial and augmented reality technologies, Web2, digital money, and trust. Investment in the recent Web3 bubble is coming from a curious blend of venture capitalists, and the `Meta', with a focus on distributed financial tooling and digital assets in the metaverse. A global ledger (such as blockchain) may be necessary to create transferable digital goods across society. Crypto has several problems, but its main strength is in creating "money-like networks". It is unclear which technology will succeed, but the tools are available now for integration and testing. Nostr is an exciting new protocol which has the potential to increase confidence in the end points of communication channels, mediate financial transaction, and link communities and virtual spaces. It, like Bitcoin, is opensource, and also likely impossible to censor. New open source tooling from StabilityAI may address issues of accessibility, creativity, language barriers, safeguarding, and governance. Image generation ML may enable the creation of collaborative global networks at the boundaries of art and science. AI and ML, or "supported creativity" or "augmented intelligence" blur the interfaces between users and digital society. Building an inclusive, open, and federated metaverse with transparent governance is a complex challenge, but reasoning and potential solutions are explored in this book, alongside some initial tooling to experiment with.

翻译：现有互联网服务提供商存在信任问题，而新型数字社会的构建潜力或许正在显现。大规模社交与沉浸式元宇宙的采纳率偏低，可能无法满足社会或商业需求。从商业视角看，元宇宙并非远程协作的理想选择。"数字社会"这一概念或许更具相关性，并延伸至空间与增强现实技术、Web2、数字货币及信任领域。近期Web3泡沫中的投资资金，源于风险投资公司与"Meta"的奇特融合，重点聚焦元宇宙中的分布式金融工具与数字资产。全球性账本（如区块链）可能是实现社会范围内数字资产可转移性的必要条件。加密货币存在诸多问题，但其核心优势在于创建"类货币网络"。尽管尚不确定哪种技术将最终胜出，但现有工具已可用于集成与测试。Nostr是一种令人振奋的新协议，有望增强通信渠道终端的可信度、中介金融交易、连接社区与虚拟空间。它与比特币同为开源项目，且同样几乎无法被审查。StabilityAI开发的新型开源工具可解决可访问性、创造力、语言障碍、内容保护与治理问题。图像生成机器学习技术有望在艺术与科学边界处构建协作型全球网络。人工智能与机器学习——或"辅助创造力"与"增强智能"——正在模糊用户与数字社会之间的界面。构建一个包容、开放、联合且治理透明的元宇宙是一项复杂挑战，但本书将探讨其逻辑论证与潜在解决方案，并提供部分初始实验工具。