"What will the internet look like in 10 years? One answer is the “metaverse.” At least, this is what Facebook, Microsoft, and a handful of other tech companies are saying. It’s not exactly a new idea. The dream of an immersive, embodied internet is an old one. It predates the modern internet itself: the “cyberspace” of William Gibson’s immensely influential Neuromancer (1984) envisioned users plugging their nervous systems into a networked sensory environment, at a time when the internet was in its infancy. And VR has an equally long history. It saw a boom in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and a bunch of headsets came out—I rented a Virtual Boy from a Blockbuster for one disappointing weekend in 1995—before the hype cycle hit a wall of consumer indifference and the bubble popped."