Engineers are an interesting cross-section of practical thinking and creative vision. When you give them a problem like the metaverse to work on, they’re going to look at it in a different way.

Science fiction writers and Hollywood creatives have done a good job painting the vision of the metaverse. But the engineers are the ones who have to think about building it. To get a sense of the practical side of metaverse engineering, I spoke with Thomas Coughlin, president of Coughlin Associates and president-elect of the IEEE engineering society.

Coughlin is a Life Member of IEEE and has provided technology and market analysis services to…