3 ms·
The Metaverse concept has basically existed fully-formed, and even with that exact name, since at least Snow Crash (1992). The wider idea was clearly floating
by adhesive_wombat 3y ago
The Metaverse concept has basically existed fully-formed, and even with that exact name, since at least Snow Crash (1992).
The wider idea was clearly floating around in the zeitgeist as the Red Dwarf episode where they get stuck in a game called Better Than Life aired in March that year, a few months before Snow Crash was published.
- dash2 3y agoOr Neuromancer. (Any advance on Neuromancer?)
- AndrewDucker 3y agoI think that Neuromancer was about as early as it went, fiction-wise. But VR was about from the 70s (NASA's JPL had one), and the metaverse is basically VR + chatroom. Popularisation certainly happened by the early 80s, which is presumably where Neuromancer got it from.
- layer8 3y agoBurning Chrome precedes Neuromancer by two years and first used "cyberspace" in the sense of a VR-like network.
- twic 3y agoTrue Names, 1981. Which, IMHO, is a far better story than Neuromancer, but also much less stylish, and hence less influential.
- cb321 3y agoAnd don't forget Lawnmower Man in March 1992 [1] (Snow Crash was June 1992). I think the "VR headsets" of the day were popular for a few years before both, driving said particular zeitgeist. As mentioned in a sibling, William Gibson { and probably Philip K. Dick and Stanislaw Lem } presaged all this stuff decade(s) earlier. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lawnmower_Man_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lawnmower_Man_(film)