The science fiction author Neal Stephenson coined the term metaverse in the novel Snow Crash, 30 years before Facebook would rename itself Meta and declare its intention to occupy a digital realm of the same name. Snow Crash tells the story of Hiro, a pizza delivery boy in an anarcho‐capitalist future. A hacker in his spare time, Hiro draws a cast of computer nerds, tycoons, and mafiosos into daredevil schemes in an immersive, virtual reality, massive online multiplayer game called the Metaverse. Before nearly anyone else, Stephenson imagined that people would want to merge their physical and
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