8 January 2022 | New Scientist | 39>Welcome to
the metaverse
Facebook’s rebrand has produced a new tech uber-buzzword.
What does it mean for us, asks Chris Stokel-Walker
H
IRO PROTAGONIST doesn’t see much
promise for his future. Stuck in a
dead-end job in a world where
traditional money has been supplanted by
encrypted alternatives and a few big companies
shape things to their own ends, he struggles to
make ends meet following a global economic
collapse. To escape, he slips on virtual reality
goggles to visit a place called the metaverse,
where his digital avatar walks the streets of a
more interesting, engaging, inclusive world.
This vision of a 21st-century reality comes
from Snow Crash, a 1992 book by science fiction
writer Neal Stephenson. But wind forward to
2022, and one large and powerful company iscertainly betting all on Protagonist’s escape
route. In October 2021, Facebook rebranded
itself as Meta, and founder Mark Zuckerberg
set a goal for a billion people worldwide to join
its version of the metaverse by the end of the
2020s. It committed at least $10 billion last
year alone to make that a reality.
Zuckerberg isn’t the only one latching on
to a radical vision in which we go to work, seek
entertainment and connect with each other
not in a physical world, but in a virtual reality.
The buzz surrounding the metaverse raises
many questions. Chief among them are, what
exactly is the metaverse, is it really just around
the corner and, if so, do we actually want it?SU
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