Metaverse is not a new word, nor is it a new concept.
Contrary to other beliefs, M in the Metaverse should be capitalized. Even the inventor of the word Neal Stephenson used the “Metaverse” word 119 times – all capitalized – in his book Snow Crash. M in the Metaverse should be capitalized regardless of the word’s position – initial or mid-sentence.
Neal Stephenson wrote the book Snow Crash in 1992. The writer created Metaverse from “Meta” and “Universe.”
Meta + Verse (from Universe) = Metaverse.
Some people argue that Metaverse should be capitalized only if the word is at the start of a sentence; otherwise, it should not be capitalized, which is inaccurate.
In the book, the writer gave detailed examples of what Metaverse is. The concept is entirely similar to today’s Metaverse concept and implementation.
According to the author:
“The idea of a “virtual reality” such as the Metaverse is by now (1992) widespread in the computer-graphics community and is being implemented in a number of different ways.”
“The words “avatar” (in the sense used here) and “Metaverse” are my inventions, which I came up with when I decided that existing words (such as “virtual reality”) were simply too awkward to use.”
The author further writes:
“So Hiro’s (protagonist) is not actually here at all. He’s in a computer-generated universe that his computer is drawing onto his goggles and pumping into his earphones. In the lingo, this imaginary place is known as the Metaverse. Hiro spends a lot of time in the Metaverse.”
“He is not seeing real people, of course. This is all a part of the moving illustration drawn by his computer according to specifications coming down the fiber-optic cable. The people are pieces of software called avatars. They are the audiovisual bodies that people use to communicate with each other in the Metaverse.”
“By drawing a slightly different image in front of each eye, the image can be made three-dimensional. By changing the image seventy-two times a second, it can be made to move. By drawing the moving three-dimensional image at a resolution of 2K pixels on a side, it can be as sharp as the eye can perceive, and by pumping stereo digital sound through the little earphones, the moving 3-D pictures can have a perfectly realistic soundtrack.”
From the above three paragraphs, we can see that the author describes a virtual reality world connected by high-speed internet and the users using VR goggles similar to Oculus to access it.
Therefore, even though the word Metaverse was created similar to Metaphysics, Metabolism, Metaphor, etc., the “Metaverse” has a different meaning.
In conclusion, the word Metaverse is being used to represent a connected virtual world and services. Apple, Microsoft, Google, Netflix, etc., all capitalized regardless of its use – initial or mid-sentence. Similarly, M in the Metaverse must be capitalized, as its author originally described in this book Snow Crash in 1992.
You may ask that most news organizations and other blog articles use “metaverse,” are they wrong? We would say that yes, they are wrong, unfortunately.
