The novel snow crash has had the privilege of coining a term that would later become one of the most important words of the 21st century: metaverse.

Google search trend data for the term shows an explosion from relative obscurity with a search volume score of 4/100 in early October 2021, to a world record high for search volume of 100/100 alone. two weeks later.

Since then, the interest has remained steady, if not growing even more, with everything from crowdfunded startups to tech giants, to every other business really, aiming to break into…