Facebook Meta Isn’t New. The Future Started in 2003

“Imagine a world where you can be anything you want to be.” I already did 18 years ago.

Mark Zuckerburg announced that Facebook, the social media platform the has shaped our culture, was rebranding and transitioning to a virtual world called “The Metaverse… or Meta.

Meta offers some pretty amazing concepts such as Avatar creation, shared virtual spaces, immersive environments and user generated content that will take users far beyond the third person experience of simple status box. Facebook Meta will feature teleportation to other users rooms and customized experiences. From inside, you’re no longer an idle profile picture, but a 3-D representative of yourself. Within this world exists a new social media platform called “Horizon.” It promises detailed and expansive worlds with infinite possibilities and will essentially redefine the way we communicate, collaborate and educate.

Within the Virtual world, you can attend concerts or watch a movie with friends. You will be able to go to parties with thousands of other people around the world or watch a sporting event from the front row, listen to talk shows with your favorite celebrities or buy, sell and trade virtual digital goods. Work from your office 3000 miles away or walk with dinosaurs from 40 million years ago in real time without ever leaving your home.

If this sounds familiar, maybe it’s because you’re a fan or Ready Player One or read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Or maybe… just maybe, you did this all before, if you’ve ever logged into Second Life.

Second Life is the brainchild of Silicon Valley innovator, Philip Rosedale who founded the company that oversees the virtual world, Linden Lab. In beta since early 2002, Second Life is an open world where the users create everything from the design of the terrain, to clothing and attachments for avatars, to lavish and extraordinary buildings and shops. Every door that opened and game you could play was developed and coded in-world by the players. Every texture, every…