Metaverse

The word meta in Greek means "about", "beyond", and in English is used as a word prefix to "... indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept." The word verse is "... a single metrical line in a poetic composition; one line of poetry. "

The word metaverse was coined by Neal Stephenson's in his book Snow Crash in 1992. Neal uses the word to describe a virtual world that allows people to connect into and physically participate in a virtual world. People physically jack-in. The world is part virtual reality, part internet, part story.

At the moment there are a few games that are starting to broach this subject of metaverse. Games like everquest, for example, bring together all players into a single universe. People now hear of things like weddings occurring in cyberspace or real-estate being sold for real money. There is also a commodity market developing for game items such as magical weapons. Virtual items are being sold and bought with real money. Of course, one can argue that money is as real as the magical cloak that can make the owner appear or disappear or protect the wearer from all sorts of attacks.

The major difference between the cyberworlds these games create and the metaverse, is that the metaverse is not a game but real life. It has stores and restaurants, bars, and clubs. It has side walks, and bus lines and a very sophisticated police infrastructure. There is a class system, and a stable real-estate market. To get there, we need a basic virtual reality system, and a simple meta language like HTML. It should be relatively simple to create stores and shelves, and chairs, the humans will act as humans. The imaging can be performed locally, with only meta language being passed around. You should be able to walk into a store on the internet and have the same or better experience as walking into a real store.

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