Note / What is the Metaverse?

“The Metaverse is a massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds which can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence, and with continuity of data, such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communications, and payments.”

There have been umpteen articles and commentaries defining and clarifying definitions and speculations of the metaverse. Because my interest in writing about (and in) the metaverse will be a daily practice, at least in the year 2022, I will contribute my understanding of the metaverse, if only to sharpen my abilities to discuss the metaverse.

Let's start with what the metaverse isn't.

The metaverse isn't virtual reality or augmented reality or holograms or spatial audio just as the internet is not computers, tablets, phones, and smart watches.

I like to imagine the metaverse as a viscerally lived, embodied internet.

I can imagine a world in which VR headsets do often stand in where we would turn to a computer or tablet today. And in this world, AR devices might likely stand in where phones and smart watches now exist. But they would just be devices, means for experiencing the metaverse.

Right now, metaverse destinations like The Sandbox or Decentraland are the GeoCities and Angelfire of a genre of digital experience and expression that is just in its early days.

But remember that GeoCities and Angelfire would've only given a curious futurist insight into websites — there are web services and applications that personal websites of 1999 could've never predicted, so it's probably unwise to limit one's idea of the metaverse to a fancier Decentraland.

Prominent metaverse bro Matthew Ball has said, "we should not expect a single, all-illuminating definition of the ‘Metaverse.'" And I think that's fine.

In my upcoming pieces, I will explore what the metaverse is today.

After all, if you and I, dear reader, are to be the first generation of metaverse writers, we can't spend all day blue-skying our Matrix fanboy fantasies.

To learn more about how fiction and dramatic writers are inventing future forms, subscribe to Writers in the Metaverse.