DUDUETSANG MAKUSE

Across the Metaverse: Policy priorities

The “Metaverse” is a 30 year old term that was coined in 1992 by author Neal Stephenson in his book, Snow Crash; when he described it as a shared three-dimensional digital world that allowed users to escape the mundanities of their physical world. Today the concept has varied meaning depending on who you ask. In the general public imagination, it is a term that many heard for the first time when Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, announced his company, “Facebook”, would be renamed “Meta”. Many imagined a science fiction inspired reality where
we become consumed by our interactions in the virtual world and where the internet was even more dominated by one company. In reality, this rebrand was a pronouncement of a fundamental shift from being, primarily a social media company and a move towards becoming a “metaverse company, , which will focus on building the future of connection and immersive experiences.

For those who have been operating in the ecosystem for much longer, “the metaverse is the next generation of the internet...” Underpinned by AR and VR development, the metaverse is seen as a technological evolution, where “a virtual, interconnected reality seamlessly woven into our physical world, causing our social, virtual and business experiences” to collide into an intertwined experience