the.com/metaverse
The future that was promised in 2021 and quietly cancelled by 2023.
means A proposed successor to the internet built from persistent, interconnected 3D virtual worlds where people work, play, and socialize via avatars.
from Coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel 'Snow Crash,' where it named a fully immersive virtual reality successor to the internet — the term sat quietly in sci-fi circles for decades until Facebook rebranded itself Meta in 2021, dragging the word out of fiction and into corporate keynotes, where it inflated fast and deflated faster.
- burned billions
- Meta spent over 45 billion dollars chasing it
- coined by
- Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, as a dystopia
- real usage
- mostly empty plazas and awkward legless avatars
- pivot irony
- same companies now sell the metaverse as AI