Digitally Curious

CHAPTER 11THE METAVERSE

I’m sure we all remember how in October 2021, Mark Zuckerberg bravely rebranded Facebook to “Meta” to try and capture some share of the hype and messaging around the metaverse, reportedly pumping tens of billions into this part of the business.¹ In 2021 and 2022, I was regularly speaking on the metaverse and Web 3.0 – it looked certain that this would be the next big thing.

This only illustrates the challenge futurists face. ChatGPT’s arrival on the world stage in late 2022 changed everyone’s focus. Since then, interest in the metaverse has waned in favour of AI. However, it is still valuable to talk about the metaverse for two reasons:

• It has the potential to show us how the internet may evolve as Web 3.0 and technology advances.
• It serves as a warning to be careful of the difference between the hype behind a technology and how things might unfold. During peak metaverse hype, some companies created entire “Metaverse divisions” and hired metaverse experts. Looking at the profiles on LinkedIn of people in these teams in 2024, I see many of them have removed the word “metaverse” from their job title.

Where Did the Concept of the Metaverse Come From?

The idea of the metaverse might seem a little sci-fi and for good reason. The word “metaverse” came from science fiction in the first place. Back in 1992, Neal Stevenson² wrote a book called Snow Crash where he coined the term “Metaverse” while describing his main character.

“Hiro’s not actually here at ...