Digital spaces can create communities, but the property-obsessed metaverses imagined by tech companies are depressing and uninspiring, writes Holly Nielsen.

Talking about the metaverse feels like an almost impossible task. There is no cohesive answer as to what exactly it is. Is it a new kind of Internet? A videogame? A virtual reality experience? Trying to understand the metaverse is wrestling with the buzzwords and lofty promises of tech companies in an attempt to make them cohesive.

The main problem is that “the metaverse” is a term that does not refer to a particular technology, but to a loose and unwieldy set of mainly speculative ideas about how we will relate to and interact with technology in the future.

Trying to understand the metaverse is struggling with…