Interconnected Realities

1Introduction to the Metaverse

In November 1995, Bill Gates was a guest on Late Night with David Letterman.¹ This was in the very early days of the Internet, and David Letterman was puzzled by what all the fuss was about. Here's a shortened version of their exchange:

Letterman:	What is the Internet, exactly?
Gates:	A place where people can publish information. Everyone can have their own homepage. Companies are there, the latest information. You can send electronic mail to people.
Letterman:	I heard you could watch a live baseball game on the Internet. What I want to know is – does “radio” ring a bell?
Gates:	There's a difference. You can listen to the game any time you like.
Letterman:	Do “tape recorders” ring a bell?

The conversation carried on in this vein. For everything that Bill Gates told David Letterman that the Internet would be able to do for him – get motor sports updates, communicate with other cigar aficionados, interact with others with similar interests – Letterman was able to point to something already in his life that was, in his view, a perfectly adequate source of the same information. He already had cigar magazines and the Quaker State Speedline phone service for motor racing updates. Really, what more could the Internet do for him? Gates was not able to convince him, or the live studio audience, of anything new that the Internet could bring him.

This is the problem when new platforms and types of media formats are created: It's difficult to ...