What is the metaverse?

Samson - you need to watch this one: https://youtu.be/kqtfPSP-f0k

In this episode, I talk about the metaverse.

Oh, the metaverse. It's a hot topic, yet no one seems to really know what it is.

Perhaps it's a hot topic because no one knows what it is?

The problem I have with the definitions I see flying about is that they focus on "immersiveness".

But imersiveness isn't new. A good book is immersive. A story well-told is immersive.

Neither is the concept of a "collective online virtual experience" novel. These things have been around for over three decades - people were getting immersed in collective virtual experiences called MUDs (or multi-user dungeons) back in the late eighties.

So is there anything that could be different this time, other than better resolution and faster response and rendering times?

Yes - true decentralized ownership.

For the first time Neal Stephenson's alternate reality can posses this one key property that wasn't previously possible, thanks to blockchain. (And it's a property that the tech giants of today are going to have a problem fully embracing, because it goes against the very fibre of their world view).

And so now we have to ask ourselves the question - do we really want this to be implemented by a bunch of Silicon Valley tech-bros who don't seem to have realized that Snow Crash is a dystopia?