6G and Onward to Next G

CHAPTER 2Metaverse: The New North Star

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

SIR ARTHUR C. CLARKEScience‐fiction writer, futurist, and inventor(1917–2008)

The Metaverse is anticipated to be the successor to today's mobile Internet. Recall from Section 1.2.2 that the original vision of the Metaverse was outlined by Neal Stephenson in his novel Snow Crash published in 1992 [1]. According to Wikipedia, Stephenson's concept of the Metaverse has enjoyed continued popularity and strong influence in high‐tech circles, especially Silicon Valley, ever since the publication of Snow Crash. As a result, Stephenson has become a sought‐after futurist and has worked as a futurist for Blue Origin and, more recently, Magic Leap, an augmented reality (AR) startup.

Unlike cyberspace that resides entirely in virtuality, the Metaverse aims at connecting virtuality with reality. Note that similar to the Metaverse, the term cyberspace stems from a novel as well. In his 1984 science‐fiction novel Neuromancer, William Gibson popularized the term cyberspace, which became the de‐facto term for the World Wide Web during the 1990s [2]. It is interesting to note that the critically acclaimed movie The Matrix drew from Neuromancer the usage of the term “matrix” that depicts a virtual reality data space in a dystopian future, in which humanity is unknowingly trapped inside a simulated reality (to be revisited and further discussed in Chapter 9 in the context of the so‐called ...