Metaverse

Encyclopedia : M : ME : MET : Metaverse

The Metaverse, a phrase coined by Neal Stephenson's science fiction novel Snow Crash (1992) constitutes Stephenson's vision of how a virtual reality-based Internet might evolve in the near future.

In Snow Crash, the Metaverse can be accessed through public-access terminals in reality. However, using them carries a social stigma among Metaverse denizens, in part because of the low visual quality of the rendered avatar; the Metaverse representations of a user in virtual-reality. Entering the Metaverse through a private terminal, making it possible to customize your avatar, is possible from almost any location using portable devices. In the Metaverse, status is a function of two things: access to restricted environments (such as the Black Sun, an exclusive Metaverse club) and technical acumen (often demonstrated by the sophistication of one's avatar). The Metaverse is frequented mainly by the upper and middle classes.

The landscape of Stephenson's Metaverse is a black ball 65536 km (2¹⁶ km) in circumference, over 1.6 times Earth's equatorial circumference. The Street runs around the equator of the virtual sphere and is 100 meters across. 256 Express Ports are located evenly at 256 km intervals beside the Street. These 256 kilometer intervals are further divided by Local Ports, one kilometer apart. Just like with terrestrial real-estate, you can buy a development license and build anything you want off the street so long it is approved by the Global Multimedia Protocol Group, the group which specifies and runs the Street protocol.

Implementations

There and Second Life are modern day virtual-reality worlds striving to implement the Metaverse. Others include The Palace, , and Active Worlds, which is based entirely on Snow Crash. Some also consider massively multiplayer online RPGs to be similar to the Metaverse as well. Solipsis, the Open Source Metaverse Project, the Croquet project and Virtual Object System are other attempts to implement the concept of the Metasphere. The Metaverse Roadmap Project is an effort lead by the Acceleration Studies Foundation to collectively predict the nature, scope and form of the Metaverse as it evolves.

The word "metaverse", without capitalization, is becoming a general term for the "universe within a universe" that is created by extremely popular fandom.

External links

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