Preface

The Metaverse is a vast, immersive virtual world simultaneously accessible by millions of people through highly customizable avatars and powerful experience creation tools integrated with the offline world through its virtual economy and external technology.

(If some or most of that sentence seems obscure to you, don't worry: I wrote this book in part to explain what it means.)

This is the story of the people who have worked to realize something like the vision contained in those words since at least 1992 and still strive to bring it to full fruition.

For at least the last two decades, they have been building metaverse platforms with nearly all the aforementioned features.

They are tantalizingly close, at last, to entirely realizing that goal.

But this preface is mainly intended for you, dear reader, who isn't quite convinced the Metaverse is even worth your time.

So if you are wavering on that topic, may I tell you at least seven things to know about the Metaverse, even if you read no further?

Most of what you have probably read or heard about the Metaverse across media in recent years is somewhat or completely wrong, often deceptively so.

The Metaverse is not for everyone. Chances are you've seen more than several tech evangelists across various media outlets insist that we'll all soon be in the Metaverse. I can tell you from painful—but also amusing—experience that this is unlikely ever to be the case. And, no, you probably won't wear a VR headset on a regular basis, either.
That said, it's also safe to say at least one in four people with Internet connectivity will be part of the Metaverse on some level. And the many side applications likely to spring out of the Metaverse are powerful, potentially impacting most everyone.
At a very conservative estimate, over half a billion people worldwide already use one or more variations of a metaverse platform now, from Minecraft and Roblox to Fortnite, VRChat, and Second Life. That's about 1 in 10 of the 5 billion people across the planet who use the Internet. While you may not personally use a metaverse platform, you almost certainly have many friends, colleagues, neighbors, relatives, or children who do. (As to why so many of them do so, read on to the Introduction.)
Despite what you may have heard, and no matter what its company name change from Facebook might imply, Meta is not and never has been at the forefront of metaverse development. In fact, I would love to tell you about the many fascinating ways Meta is repeating errors made by many of us over the last 20 years (despite several direct warnings made by some of us).
Meta is hardly alone in repeating past mistakes. Many of the major tech and media companies and venture capitalists of the world are currently spending tens of billions building their conception of the Metaverse. Most of them are also making profound (and avoidable) design, policy, even philosophical mistakes that may destine their efforts to disaster.
And because so many companies are making an assortment of tragic errors, while most government and community organizations remain largely oblivious of the technology, it's important that we understand the Metaverse, the people who make it possible and worthwhile, and what we can learn from their failures and successes.

Because more than any other technology that's come before it, the Metaverse is shaped by the user communities that thrive in it. Making a Metaverse That Matters is ultimately their story.

The introduction explains why we should even want a metaverse that matters. This book is told in four parts:

Part I, Conception, tells the untold story of the Metaverse's origins in and around Neal Stephenson's classic novel Snow Crash, and the first fully realized attempt to create it, with Second Life—and what we can learn from the near-disaster that followed. It closes with the Metaverse's rebirth as an idea championed by Facebook (now Meta) and how its many missteps have confused the underlying concept.
Part II, Realization, includes snapshots of several metaverse platforms that evolved, often in unexpected and surprising ways, to reach mass market prominence/mainstream awareness: Roblox, Fortnite, VRChat, and Lamina1, the platform co-created by Stephenson himself. Their successes and user communities help show us how the technology might evolve for the better—just as their shortcomings warn us how that evolution can sometimes go awry.
Part III, Promises and Perils, explores the many ways that metaverse technology might evolve beyond its origins in gaming, and the upcoming roadblocks that prevent it from reaching full flower. It's here that I also address the many myths commonly held among Metaverse advocates and the technorati—but which I believe tend to take us in fruitless directions.
Part IV, A Metaverse Worth Fighting For, is a vision for metaverse platforms that can continue to grow as businesses and as cherished virtual places for real communities, where grassroots creators can benefit from their inventiveness and artistry as much as the platform owners themselves. It is a guide to a Metaverse that has the best chance at being worthy of its highest aspirations—and in that process become the next great Internet medium.

As that last part suggests, there is a fight for the Metaverse's future, with the outcome far from certain.

This conflict will enmesh companies and the user communities who depend on each other, and draw the current Internet giants into the fray. It will finally ensnare whole societies and world governments, who scarce grasp the barest outlines of the alternate reality already emerging beneath our screens. Making a Metaverse That Matters tells that story too.

The “matters” of the book title comes with a hidden double blade. I believe the Metaverse will transform us, on balance, for the better. But it will also introduce dark old troubles in a new context and new dangers that we as a society are hardly ready to understand; I have seen too much of that side of things to avoid telling the full story.

The primary focus of this book is not on the technological and business components required to operate a metaverse platform. For that, I highly recommend The Metaverse (Liveright, 2022) by Matthew Ball, who has done essential work on that front.

Making a Metaverse That Matters is fundamentally about the people behind this technology, both as creators and as users. More than anything, their experiences explain why this concept, drawn from a relatively little-read sci-fi novel, has so much power. I've seen firsthand how the Metaverse can transform lives and enable human flourishing.

Making a Metaverse That Matters is also, finally, my story—one that I've been writing in one form or another for roughly 20 years, since around the start of my writing career.

In 2003, a publicist's email led me into the office of Linden Lab, the creator of Second Life, for a demo that went on to transform my life.

Hired as the startup's official “embedded journalist” in the virtual world, I began in 2003 to interview Second Life users as a roving avatar reporter wearing a white suit (my somewhat pretentious tribute to Tom Wolfe), impertinently asking them about everything—from virtual sex to ambitious collective art projects to savvy virtual business ventures that turned their founders into literal millionaires.

During that time, Second Life became the first metaverse platform to reach mainstream awareness. After leaving the company in 2006 to write The Making of Second Life (HarperCollins), I was shocked and saddened to watch as Second Life failed to realize its potential for many strange, aggravating, and tragically hilarious reasons—and feel some personal blame for what went wrong.

At the same time, I have learned from the ongoing story of Second Life, which still generally flourishes against all odds, what aspects of the Metaverse are truly compelling. So Making a Metaverse That Matters is also about watching the dream re-emerge and vowing that this time, everything possible must be done to ensure that it scales to the benefit of all.

A few housekeeping notes:

A back Glossary includes dozens of definitions for technical or insider terms used throughout this book that might not be fully unpacked in passing for the sake of space.
My blog New World Notes (nwn.blogs.com) is essentially a 20-year archive of stories and footnotes that went into Making a Metaverse That Matters. If you are interested in following up on references throughout, I welcome you to use the Google Search widget there to explore.
Throughout this book, the “Metaverse” (with an uppercase M) is the original vision depicted in Snow Crash and refers to the industry as a whole that's attempting to develop a fully realized version of it. However, “metaverse platform/startup/etc.” (lowercase m) refers to an individual startup, company, or platform within that ecosystem.

Now, keeping in mind the Metaverse definition that started this preface, let us begin.