Snow Crash was a science fiction classic authored by Neal Stephenson. It shows the earth as a completely digitised planet. Here the nation state is superseded by corporations. Everybody is a resident of metaverse, which is an amalgm of physical space, augmented reality and virtual reality.

Zuckerberg has repeatedly used the word metaverse in his recent public utterances. In the middle of 2021, he talks of metaverse as the next big chapter for Facebook.

Facebook is attempting a gaming development and VR platform, Horizon and a dollar backed digital currency.

Facebook has invested heavily in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). It has bought companies like Oculus in 2021 to create a product team to work on the metaverse. It will start publishing the financial results of its VR-AR labs as a separate unit. It is investing billions of dollars here to build the metaverse. It is doing so because its main advertising business faces significant uncertainty.

It is not expected that the investment will pay off in near future. However, in the long run, it is believed that the metaverse will be the successor to the mobile internet.