Those dark prophecies, first alluded to by Neal Stephenson in his novel, Snow Crash, speak of how virtual reality would affect the way humans interact both because it is a medium and because that medium is controlled by those who built it. Although Zuckerberg denied any connection to the news cycle, there were important omens in those allegations that were predicted in the very novel that the optimists were using for inspiration. The announcement of the rebranding of Facebook to Meta arrived in October of that year, in the midst of criticism about how the social network failed to manage misinformation on its platform. Advocates believed that the technology and infrastructure needed was finally available, and Zuckerberg wanted his company to be the leader in realizing this new world. The project to create a shared virtual world that Mark Zuckerberg recently called an “embodied internet” had been growing for years. “The metaverse is having a moment,” wrote Casey Newton in July of 2021.
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