[ruh-roh]

On a whim I picked up The Metaverse, Matthew Ball's book released last week (7/19). I am only about 1/3 of the way through it, so I can't recommend it yet, but I have two main takeaways so far...

1. If you can get through the marketing slog thrown out by FB, Epic, and others, many ideas behind a/the metaverse aren't terrible. Perhaps even good. As an old fogie myself, I cannot see spending hours/days in it, but I have to acknowledge there will be a market for it. (Granted, the author is a VC, so he might be a little biased here.)

2. We are a LOT further away from a functioning metaverse than people think/expect/hope. Many challenges exist across the tech (networking, storage, hardware, processing power, etc.). Not to mention identity, governance, and interoperability. Surely many more. Predictions in tech are always foolish, but I would be surprised if we approached anything like a 'Snow Crash' metaverse in the next decade.