Metaverse Roadmap. Pathways to the 3D WEB

A Cross-Industry Public Foresight Project with the key info you should know about the 3D and virtual future, now to 2025. What happens when video games meet Web 2.0? When virtual worlds meet geospatial maps of the planet? When simulations get real and life and business go virtual? When you use a virtual Earth to navigate the physical Earth, and your avatar becomes your online agent? What happens is the metaverse.

"Over the past year the Acceleration Studies Foundation (ASF) and its supporting foresight partners have explored the virtual and 3D future of the World Wide Web in a first-ofits- kind cross-industry public foresight project, the Metaverse Roadmap (MVR). We use the term Metaverse in a way that includes and builds upon Neal Stephenson’s coinage in the cyberpunk science fiction novel, Snow Crash, which envisioned a future broadly reshaped by virtual and 3D technologies.
The MVR has “near-term” anticipation horizon of ten years (to 2017), a “longer-term” speculation horizon of twenty years (to 2025), and a charter to discover early indicators of significant developments ahead.
Seeking diverse points of view, our process included an invitational Metaverse Roadmap Summit, public and expert surveys, a few workshops and roundtables at major U.S. conferences, social meetups, and
a public wiki. Many helpful people from the IT, virtual worlds, professional, academic, futurist, and lay communities contributed ideas to the MVR."

Co-authors: John Smart (Acceleration Studies Foundation), Jamais Cascio (Open the Future), Jerry Paffendorf (The Electric Sheep Company)