The metaverse was an open standard in Snowcrash. The villain L. Bob Rife was distributing a mind virus in the metaverse and in real life using a drug, but he didn’t create or own the metaverse.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash

I took another look. In one way yes …

> The dimensions of the Street are fixed by a protocol, hammered out by the computer-graphics ninja overlords of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Global Multimedia Protocol Group.

> In order to place these things on the Street, they have had to get approval from the Global Multimedia Protocol Group, have had to buy frontage on the Street, get zoning approval, obtain permits, bribe inspectors, the whole bit. The money these corporations pay to build things on the Street all goes into a trust fund owned and operated by the GMPG, which pays for developing and expanding the machinery that enables the Street to exist.

… but in another way this:

> „I deal in information,” he says to the smarmy, toadying pseudojournalist who “interviews” him. He’s sitting in his office in Houston, looking slicker than normal. “All television going out to consumers throughout the world goes through me. Most of the information transmitted to and from the CIC database passes through my networks. The Metaverse—the entire Street—exists by virtue of a network that I own and control.“

So somewhat the moneychanger-in-Klondike approach.

(“He” = Bob Rife, the villain; CIC = privatised CIA)

I was on the IEEE committee that worked on the "metaverse" standards back in 2007. I gave up after companies added members who pushed their own proprietary visions into the standard that made it meaningless. I have no hope for open standards.

It would be really cool if you could share some of what you guys envisioned for the metaverse at that time and how developments in AR and VR since have lined up with what you foresaw vs diverged, etc.

Piggybacking on here to +1 the request for perspective.

I'm sure you can share some interesting stories and/or arcs of what-was-envisioned vs. what-ended-up-happening.

Simplest example, how does an Avatar from one proprietary system travel to another? You would need a common(open source) format for the avatar metadata (what meshes make it up, how/where are they attached to each other, what animations the avatar has, what textures they have, what shaders they use), a common format for the animations, the meshes, the textures. You also need a common name for avatar actions, walk, run, crawl, wave, etc. Of course everyone wanted their own proprietary format to be the standard. This doesn't even touch on more complex issues like currency, voice communications, video communications. The problem is everyone has to find value outside of their proprietary systems, which 14 years ago was as much of a problem as it is now. Only outcome I can see is we will live with silo's until we get AI good enough to convert from one systems format to another's.

I believe PKD's "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" is a better metaphor for what Facebook wants to do with the Metaverse, but it'll end up more like "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Luckey".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Stigmata_of_Palmer_E...

I'm getting more of a "This Perfect Day" vibe from it, with how self-important Mark Zuckerberg treats himself.

Christ, Mark, Wood and Wei,

Led us to this perfect day.

Mark, Wood, Wei and Christ,

All but Mark were sacrificed.

Wood, Wei, Christ and Mark,

Gave us lovely schools and parks.

Wei, Christ, Mark and Wood,

Made us humble, made us good.