MEDIA

Insights, interviews, podcasts, and conversations exploring the future of reality, technology, and human experience.

"Riz Virk combines the mind of a scientist with the heart of a mystic, using video games to explain the virtual reality that we live in."

Dannion Brinkley, bestselling author of Saved by the Light and At Peace in the Light

“Virk … makes a cogent, clear-eyed guide to the head-spinning science of parallel universes, quantum indeterminacy, and the possibility-terrifying or relieving—that our perceived reality is in fact part of a great simulation.”

Publisher's Weekly

"Rizwan Virk walks us through the concept of a computer-generated reality that Philip K. Dick posited in the speech that he delivered in Metz, France, in 1977 ... Perhaps The Matrix is more than a science fiction film; perhaps it reveals some truth about our world and our lives in this world."

Tessa B. Dick, wife of Philip K. Dick and

author of Conversations with Philip K. Dick

Startups & Venture Capital

A curated collection of Riz’s writings on startup strategy, founder psychology, and venture markets.

The Startup Market Life Cycle

"When I was at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, I marveled at how my economics professors...

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5 Startup Tech Trends to Watch During the Pandemic

Venture capital is a long game. Startups take many years to mature before venture capitalists can get a return on their investment. While you may think...

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How to Manage a Startup Through Troubling Times

The pandemic of 2020 has tested most sectors of the economy. Like the downturns in 2008 and 2001, this has been a very trying time for entrepreneurs running startups...

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Three Startup Financing Myths You Should Avoid

If you are building a startup, you’ll find no shortage of people who are willing to give you advice, particularly when it comes to raising financing. Unfortunately...

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Startup Myth: Is it Better to Be First to Market or Not?

You have to be first to market is one of the most persistent myths in the startup world and also one that is most often...

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Why Startups are Harder than MIT: Stress and the Entrepreneur

A little while ago, I was having lunch with an entrepreneur friend, who was back in Silicon Valley from Russia. We were discussing...

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Simulation Theory Essays

A curated collection of Riz’s writings on startup strategy, founder psychology, and venture markets.

ChatGPT and the movie ‘Her’ are just the latest example of the ‘sci-fi feedback loop’

In May 2024, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sparked a firestorm by referencing the 2013 movie “Her” to highlight the novelty of the latest iteration of ChatGPT. Within days

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Opinion: 25 years later, ‘The Matrix’ is less sci-fi than tech reality

“The Matrix,” released March 31, 1999, wasn’t the most anticipated film of the final year of the 20th century (that would probably have been

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The Metaverse Is Coming: We May Already Be in It

A few years ago, while doing research for a virtual reality (VR) program at MIT that I would be running, I donned a VR headset and played a ping-pong game. The game was so realistic that it momentarily fooled my brain

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More by Rizwan

The App Wars: Trump, China and Tiktok (NBCNews, 2020)
Is the Age of Robots Finally Arriving? (Hackernoon, 2020)
Computer Chips that Read Your Brain Are Here - Are We Ready? (NBCNews, 2020)
Fortnite Shows Why Apple is So Much Worse Than Google or Facebook (NBCNews)
Will Human Writing and AI Writing Become Indistinguishable? (Hackernoon, 2020)
Brain Computer Interfaces in Video Games (Hackernoon, 2020)
Here's How the Big Tech Breakup should Go Down (VentureBeat, 2020)

Metaverse/Blockchain

VIDEOS:
- A (Not So Brief) Visual History of The Metaverse
- A Visual History of Avatars and Virtual Characters (part 1 and 2)
The Metaverse is Coming - We May Already Be In It (Scientific American, 2022)
Threads of the Metaverse: A Comparative Framework for Virtual Worlds (Draft Paper, 2022)
The Death of NFTs has been greatly exaggerated (NBC News, 2022)
Why It’s Unlikely Facebook Will Run the Metaverse (NBC News, 2021)
A Death in the Metaverse, A Mystery circa 2045 (Sci Fi Draft, Co-author, 2022)
How Blockchain Could Kill Both Cable and Netflix (VentureBeat, 2018)
How I Cornered the Market for Bitcoin Mining Using a Quantum Computer (Hackernoon, 2017)
Automatic Online Auctions for OTC Trading of Cryptocurrency (Paper, Co-author, 2015)
Building a Peer to Peer Cryptocurrency Trading System for Bitcoin (Paper, 2013)

Spiritual / Synchronicity / UFOs

Government UFO report timed for Halloween seems to downplay spooky sightings (NBC News, 2022)
Congress is finally paying attention to UFOs. But it's still missing the point. (NBC News, 2022)
The U.S. military takes UFOs seriously. Why doesn't Silicon Valley or academia? (NBCNews, 2021)
Meditation Hacks for Westerners (and Easterners Too!) (Hackernoon, 2018)
Magic and Miracles in the Himalayas: What to Read After Autobiography of a Yogi (Parts 1-5) (Atlantis Esoterica, 2019)
The X-Files Revival: 5 Things You Need to Know about UFOs ( Medium, 2016)
How the Simulation Hypothesis Explains the Unexplainable - Ghosts, UFOs and More (Collective Evolution, 2020)
The Mandela Effect - Science, Science Fiction or Mass Delusion (OneZero, 2019)

Miscellaneous