I finished reading Snow Crash, a novel by Neal Stephenson. While reading it I kept wondering why is it that Silicon Valley has decided that the Metaverse is the next big technology revolution. The book is a fun read and the Metaverse is cool the same watching the virtual world in Free Guy is cool or the way Oasis is cool in Ready Player One. But for the characters in the world of Snow Crash, the Metaverse isn't that cool at all. It's actually kind of terrible. People can actually die in the real world from a virus that infects your brain making you speak in tongues until you finally die. Have the web3 tech bros even read this book?
Perhaps I might need to re-read the book, but I don't believe Neal Stephenson was proposing that the Metaverse was a good idea for humanity. It is a dystopian cyberpunk future. No technologists is saying that we should build Skynet. (Please don't email me.)
Most of the AR/VR Headset market is betting that the next Internet, like the idea of the Metaverse, is going to be a General Purpose VR, but we've had Second Life and Minecraft for a bit, and while these sandbox games? have been successful, they have only reached only a small niche of non-gamers.
Apple coming out with a headset captures my interest, but as Gruber points out in the end, what would be the point?
Google Glass suddenly seems more like the logical next step in the evolution of the web. If only we can make 'em less creepy. For now we will have to make due with Zoom for our standups.