In Snow Crash, a 1992 novel by sci-fi author Neal Stephenson, his “Metaverse” is a bleak dystopia in which virtual reality both substitutes for real life and mimics it.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announces Metaverse. (Image: Facebook)
The recent, earthshaking announcement by Mark Zuckerberg that he was changing Facebook’s name to Meta and plunging his fortunes into the creation of the “metaverse” prompted New York Times technology correspondent Kevin Roose to remind us that this brainstorm was hardly a newborn Minerva sprung from the head of the latest high-tech incarnation of Zeus. Roose notes that it dates all the way back to Snow Crash, a 1992 novel by sci-fi author Neal Stephenson, whose “Metaverse” is a bleak dystopia in which virtual reality both substitutes for real life and mimics it.