WHAT IS THE METAVERSE? Part One

Almost two years ago, I wrote The Seven Rules of the Metaverse in response to abundant nonsense swirling about the infosphere. Techies, creatives and fanboys alike got swept up in mad excitement after Zuck said the M-word and rebranded his company. Newly minted experts crawled out of the woodwork. ETFs and consultancies appeared out of nowhere. Books and magazines proliferated.

Initially a reaction — actually a series of tweets volleyed into the aether — The Seven Rules formed into a solid thesis, a minimalist framework for sifting through the noise to find the signal, yet an expansive view on the heaps of technology that were and still are under development at a furious pace. It’s not just VR, not even just 3D, and definitely not just gaming; it isn’t confined to any kind of hardware, trapped in any proprietary platform or confined to a single use case. The argument went: it’s basically just a newer, better Internet — but not the same Internet we grew up with; rather, it’s the Internet that is unfolding around us as we speak. Any definition beyond that would have to be technical, based on design and programming work still to be done.

The Seven Rules was well received. My medium post has been shared tens of thousands of times.

A little after that, I co-created a six-episode podcast series, A Brief History of the Metaverse, with Mark Pesce, my original partner in developing an early iteration of the Metaverse back in the 1990’s. The show was equal parts history, autobiography and media theory, presented as a teleplay. A Brief History was also incredibly well-received, though it suffered from lackluster distribution. More people need to hear it! In all humility I think it’s brilliant, some of my best work.

We opened and closed the series with a question: What is the Metaverse? We asked our dozens of interviewees to answer the question. During the final episode, we played back all their responses. Nobody, not even Neal Stephenson, the guy who coined the term, could provide a comprehensive, definitive answer. Nor could Mark or I. The best we could offer was hand-wringing, wizened concern: what is this thing we’re making and where is it all headed? A Brief History may not have answered anything, but it took us on a thrill ride of connection, communication, and creation.

And it was highly effective psychotherapy for me, after devoting nearly thirty years of my life trying to push an idea that still hasn’t come to full fruition.

Thankfully, the Metaverse doesn’t need me, or anyone else, to figure it out. It’s doing it all on its own. It’s happening as we speak.

Fast forward a year and a half. I’m ready to answer the question.

I know what the Metaverse is.

And it’s not what you think.