Making a Metaverse That Matters

Preface

The Metaverse is a vast, immersive virtual world simultaneously accessible by millions of people through highly customizable avatars and powerful experience creation tools integrated with the offline world through its virtual economy and external technology.

(If some or most of that sentence seems obscure to you, don't worry: I wrote this book in part to explain what it means.)

This is the story of the people who have worked to realize something like the vision contained in those words since at least 1992 and still strive to bring it to full fruition.

For at least the last two decades, they have been building metaverse platforms with nearly all the aforementioned features.

They are tantalizingly close, at last, to entirely realizing that goal.

But this preface is mainly intended for you, dear reader, who isn't quite convinced the Metaverse is even worth your time.

So if you are wavering on that topic, may I tell you at least seven things to know about the Metaverse, even if you read no further?

Most of what you have probably read or heard about the Metaverse across media in recent years is somewhat or completely wrong, often deceptively so.

• The Metaverse is not for everyone. Chances are you've seen more than several tech evangelists across various media outlets insist that we'll all soon be in the Metaverse. I can tell you from painful—but also amusing—experience that this is unlikely ever to be the case. And, no, you probably won't wear a VR headset on a regular basis, ...