Axios

We're encountering lots more robots in our daily lives — delivering our food, pouring our drinks, mowing our lawns — but they're just a small glimpse of what's to come.

Why it matters: As brainy machines take over tasks as diverse as chopping vegetables, driving trucks and assisting the elderly, the human labor force will see major shifts in what jobs are needed.

Metaverse builders will have to try to maintain safety across a virtual landscape even larger than today's internet.

The catch: So far, the technology is only blurring the lines of who is responsible for policing it.

If the metaverse becomes a popular way to hang out online, it could be a sort of hybrid of an open-world video game and 3D hangout, supported by entry fees or maybe ads.

• Or it could be something very much powered by and in the spirit of cryptocurrency: a place with digital land that users truly own.

It could take eight to 10 years for the metaverse technology to become a mainstream reality. Now is the time to decide: What is the digital world we want? What do we want to bring over from today's internet, and what do we want to leave behind?

Holograms allow the display of a high-quality, three-dimensional digital representation of a person without the need for viewers to wear a headset.

State of play: It's more real than you might think. There are a variety of holographic display systems on the market and even more impressive technology within tech companies' labs.

Immersion in a digital world depends on sound as much as on vision. Developers are banking on spatial audio as the key to making that work.

• It places audio in three dimensions, so when you turn your head, sounds change direction and volume just as they do in real life.

The most immersive metaverse experiences all require new types of display technology to put images directly in front of the eye.

The big picture: Replacing computer and phone screens as the primary window onto a digital world won't be easy, thanks to limits on miniaturization and battery capacity.

The metaverse — the virtual dimension the tech world sees as the next big thing — won't have one big grand opening. Instead, it's coming to life in pieces all around us, in research-lab breakthroughs as well as within products available now.

Why it matters: These early glimpses give consumers, activists and legislators a chance to weigh in now on what they like and don't like, shaping the digital future alongside the companies building it.

Good afternoon, and welcome to our Deep Dive on how the metaverse will come together, piece by piece, and how much of it is being developed in plain sight.