Weekly Journal: Virtual Reality Fitness
[6 min read] Your weekend guide to getting ahead on the digital frontier. Hear from the founder of FitXR about what they have learns and then future of immersive fitness.
Welcome to this week’s Weekly Journal 📔, your guide to the latest news & innovation in emerging technology, digital assets, and our exciting path to the Metaverse. This is week 157 of the 520 weeks of newsletters I have committed to, a decade of documenting our physical and digital lives converge. New subscribers are encouraged to check out the history & purpose of this newsletter as well as the archive.
- Ryan
🌐 Digital Assets Market Update
To me, the Metaverse is the convergence of physical & virtual lives. As we work, play and socialise in virtual worlds, we need virtual currencies & assets. These have now reached mainstream finance as a defined asset class:
🔥🗺️Heat map shows the 7 day change in price (red down, green up) and block size is market cap.
🎭 Crypto Fear and Greed Index is an insight into the underlying psychological forces that drive the market’s volatility. Sentiment reveals itself across various channels—from social media activity to Google search trends—and when analysed alongside market data, these signals provide meaningful insight into the prevailing investment climate. The Fear & Greed Index aggregates these inputs, assigning weighted value to each, and distils them into a single, unified score.
🗞️ Metaverse news from this week
📖 Read of the week
The Metaverse Didn’t Die. It Quietly Changed Shape
While the consumer-facing metaverse has become a punchline in 2025, the underlying technology is quietly gaining traction where it actually works. Rather than trying to recreate everyday life, immersive virtual worlds are increasingly being deployed as purpose-built tools for training, simulation and decision-making.
Enterprise and public sector use cases are driving this shift. Immersive environments are now used to train police officers for crisis response, help lawyers rehearse complex litigation strategies, simulate surgical procedures, and test industrial systems like jet engines under extreme conditions that cannot be safely recreated in the real world. In some cases, companies report that hours spent in virtual training can replicate years of real-world experience.
This evolution reflects a broader recalibration. The metaverse today thrives not as entertainment at scale, but as infrastructure for high-stakes learning and scenario planning, often combined with AI and digital twins. Results are strongest where immersion adds value beyond what screens or classrooms can deliver.
However, risks remain significant. These platforms handle sensitive data, including biometrics and behavioural metrics, raising privacy, security and liability concerns. Poorly designed simulations can create false confidence or psychological harm, especially in law enforcement or healthcare contexts. Governance, data protection and careful integration with real-world practice are essential.
The takeaway is simple. The metaverse as mass consumer hype failed, but the metaverse as applied, specialised infrastructure is very much alive. Its future lies in solving specific problems, not replacing reality.
🎥 Watch of the week
I really enjoyed this video, looking forward to seeing what gets made.
AI Spotlight 🎨🤖🎵✍🏼:
In the Metaverse, AI will be critical for creating intelligent virtual environments and avatars that can understand and respond to users with human-like cognition and natural interactions.
That’s all for this week! If you have any organisations in mind that could benefit from keynotes about emerging technology, be sure to reach out. Public speaking is one of many services I offer.