Metaverse Seoul?

 Have seen this kind of thing proposed way back, can it work?

Metaverse Seoul: How One City Used Citizen Input to Pilot a Government-Run Metaverse

In May 2022, the Seoul Metropolitan Government in Seoul, Korea launched the pilot of Metaverse Seoul, a virtual version of Seoul’s mayor’s office. As they worked towards building a broad, immersive, online government platform, they hoped to gain insights from citizens about everything from popular local tourist sites that could be experienced virtually to government services that could be delivered in the metaverse. But to do that, the team had to figure out how to solicit ideas from citizens and then determine which ideas to put to use. Professor Mitchell Weiss discusses their approach, as well as questions relating to his research on public entrepreneurship and what he calls “possibility government,” in his case, “Metaverse Seoul.”

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Brian Kenny:

In April of 2006, Beth Goza, a programmer at Linden Lab, excitedly showed off her image on the cover of BusinessWeek Magazine. But only those who understood Beth's true passion would've recognized the image as her, because it was actually an image of her avatar, Kealiaha Trudeau, who resided in Second Life, a virtual 3-D world that many considered to be the stepping off point for the Metaverse. Launched in 2003, Second Life allowed users to interact with each other in real time. The open source virtual world hosted a thriving economy that scaled quickly on the wings of user generated content. The site plateaued at about a million users by 2006, but proved too technically clunky for the casual user. But Second Life stoked the imagination of a generation of digital natives, who now have the benefit of working with significantly advanced technology, to create virtual worlds that might in some ways surpass the real thing. Today on Cold Call, we've invited Professor Mitchell Weiss to discuss his case entitled, “Metaverse Seoul.” I'm your host Brian Kenny, and you're listening to Cold Call on the HBR Presents Network. Mitch Weiss studies digital transformation and innovation ecosystems and is an expert on public entrepreneurship. He also holds the record for most appearances on Cold Call at six.  ...