Taking Another Crack at Neal Stephenson’s “Metaverse”

First William Gibson introduced us to the concept of “cyberspace” in his classic science fiction novel “Neuromancer“. Then Neal Stephenson, in his classic sci-fi novel “Snow Crash“, introduced us to the “Metaverse”, the global virtual reality universe that everyone uses for virtually everything–socializing, shopping, whatever. In the past decade, many companies have tried (without too much success) to create the real thing, with names like Blaxxun Interactive, Active Worlds, Linden Lab and others.

Now, a new player has entered the fray. As ExtremeTech reports, the latest virtual world is called There and is available for public beta testing. Rather than focusing on being a massively multiplayer game, There is focusing on becoming the next generation of instant messaging and chatrooms. The world is modeled on Earth, using actual topographic maps. Like other virtual worlds, you represent yourself via a normal, human-looking avatar. There goes a step further, however, allowing you to express yourself not just via cartoon-style bubbles that pop up above the avatar’s head, but also via detailed gestures and facial expressions. You can wink, flirt, nod, laugh, smile and even blush. Whether There will succeed where others failed remains to be seen, but the Metaverse is slowly getting closer to becoming a reality.