A recent McKinsey report indicates that the economic potential of the metaverse could be as high as $5 trillion by 2030. However, while most people think the metaverse concept only started with Zuckerberg’s rebranding, innovators and visionaries have been flirting with the idea since the 1980s. First in the minds of cyberpunk novelists (such as Gibson, Vinge, or Stephenson), then in the minds of scientists and philosophers (Gelernter, Chalmers), and finally in the minds of the techno-capitalists. However, outside the inner circle of the “usual suspects,” metaverse was quite an esoteric term before 2021 (as Google Trends proves: https://trends.google.it/trends/explore?date=all&q=metaverse). So how has a dystopian novel turned into a trillion-dollar industry almost overnight?