What the heck is a metaverse?

If you're reading this, you probably know what the real world is. But here's a refresher for those of you who didn't pay attention in your high school English class:

The real world is that whole three-dimensional place where we walk around, wearing pants and such.

It's Earth!

Duh! Right?

Well, no. Technically, the real world could be any physical place where people live and interact. For example, there could be a whole other Earth with humans on it. And those humans could have their own idea of what "the real world" means to them--and they'd be totally right in calling it "the real world."

The point is, the word "real" doesn't always mean "what I think it means." We like to call things "real" because we think that gives us control over them. But sometimes reality is hard to pin down. Sometimes it sneaks up on you and smacks you in the face, like when someone mentions a metaverse in conversation and all you hear is "blah blah blah" because you are distracted by how awesomely cool it sounds.

This is what we're here for: to make sure you are always on the know.

Anyway, the metaverse is a concept for a collective virtual shared space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual space, including the sum of all virtual worlds, augmented reality, and the internet.

The term was coined by Mark Zuckerberg in his 2014 Facebook manifesto, but it's been around since at least 1979 when Michael Heim introduced it in his book The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality.The first iteration of the metaverse was called Onlive, which was pretty much just Second Life without the users. It came out in 1999, but no one really noticed because people were more excited about dial-up internet at that time.The next big step in creating a metaverse happened in 2012 when Oculus Rift put on their first annual conference. They brought together some of the greatest minds in VR to discuss how we could bring virtual reality into the real world instead of just allowing users to explore these other realities from within their homes.

What do you think will happen next?