Irvin Bishop, Jr., Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Black and Veach.

When Neal Stephenson first coined the term “metaverse” in his 1992 novel snow shockfaxes were still a common mode of business communication, Motorola had just finished creating the first hand-sized digital cell phone, and Google, Amazon, eBay, and Yahoo had yet to be created.

Thirty years later, workers are texting, emailing, and video chatting with each other every day; most people in the United States walk around with laptops in their pockets; and an entire generation of children has just spent several of their formative years learning, interacting, and even attending concerts in fully digital worlds.

With this transition, the digital worlds in which people can create, interact, invent new identities and even…