The DeanBeat: Epic graphics guru Tim Sweeney foretells how we can create the open Metaverse

Tim Sweeney stitched together an interesting vision of the future in a talk this week at the VRX virtual reality conference in San Francisco. He wants to build the Metaverse, the virtual world envisioned by Neal Stephenson in the novel Snow Crash in 1992. That novel’s vision of a pervasive cyberspace where we live, work, and play has inspired many a startup including Second Life maker Linden Lab and Stephenson’s current employer, augmented reality glasses maker Magic Leap.

Many people have tried and failed to build the Metaverse, and I came across two new companies in the past week that are invoking the name in their own pitches. But Sweeney is unique, in that he has been a graphics wizard for the past couple of decades and he enjoys both predicting technology’s path and thinking about its ramifications.