The metaverse is 30 this year! The idea first appeared in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 cyberpunk novel. snow shock. Stephenson envisioned a future where everyone settled into a virtual online world where they worked, played, lived, and, in this dystopian novel, suffered from a mysterious physical and digital virus as well.

There have been attempts since then to create the metaverse for real, some good, some bad, and some downright ridiculous. Now, in 2023, some of the biggest global players have entered the game. Meta offers us a glimpse of the metaverse as a future social place, a virtual reality version of Facebook. Microsoft is taking a more serious approach, envisioning it as an office environment where we’ll work online.

So what is the metaverse and will we all flock there? Commune…