I remember back when Microsoft was first pushing the Hololens, they redefined the word “hologram” to mean something different from hologram. Because there was a big marketing push behind it, a lot of people started to call things holograms that were not holograms.
Now something similar is happening with the word “metaverse”. The word has a very specific meaning, dating back to when Neil Stephenson coined it in his 1992 novel Snow Crash.
But now Facebook is rebranding it to mean something different. I wonder whether the original meaning will become lost as the word is, um, “borrowed” for commercial purposes.
That would be a shame. In its original sense, “metaverse” was a word of great power and vision. I hope we don’t end up losing that.