Metaversed

Chapter 1Predictions

[A]ll information looks like noise until you break the code.

—Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

The metaverse. Do you know what it is? Can you describe it? If anyone tells you that they can, at least within the next few years, they don't really know. Well, they might throw in an educated guess, but they don't know know. They might be basing their answer on what they read online, the history of technology, maybe on references in books, movies, or TV shows. Some might have a deep awareness of what's possible now with emerging technologies and may offer a good guess as to what's ahead. But it will always fall short, as technological developments and ramifications are many, and we're still in the early days of exploring them.

Mark Zuckerberg mentioned the word metaverse over 80 times in his Facebook Connect introduction speech on October 28, 2021. That one talk sparked a frenzy of discussion by the financial press around the definition of the metaverse. For those working with emerging tech and blockchain communities, this public acknowledgment of the topic's importance felt like validation of their vision and years of work, ourselves included.

Mainstream excitement was (finally) building around this technological vision of the future. Even though the biggest tech companies—like Apple, Snap, Niantic, and Alphabet—had been investing billions in creating it, the sparkling hype generated by this speech created the sensation that the metaverse seemingly matured overnight ...