Indeed, interoperability — the working-together of many virtual worlds — is key to the concept. It’s also what’s missing from almost everything that’s suddenly being called “the metaverse.”

A search of the Factiva database finds that it has appeared in more than 12,000 English-language news articles in the past two months, after appearing in fewer than 4,000 in the first nine months of 2021 — and fewer than 400 in any prior year. (Not surprisingly, Facebook was by far the most commonly mentioned company in those articles, with nearly 10 times as many appearances as the next most-mentioned firm, Microsoft.) Google Trends, meanwhile, shows that searches for the word have spiked roughly twentyfold since mid-October.

Apple will vault ahead of Facebook in virtual reality. There’s a new Oculus headset due,

where the metaverse, blockchain and Web3 l

“what’s next” moment

What I offer here is a plea for humility as a practice of reasoning and policy that accepts uncertainty as its foundation and harm mitigation as its goal.