The metaverse is a complex topic. This emerging multisensory iteration of the web is a concept that has been heavily discussed by tech industry leaders, Satya Nadella of Microsoft as well as Mark Zuckerberg of Meta (formerly known as Facebook). Now, everyone’s talking about this infinitely promising future of online. Those who wouldn’t want to be left out and would like to get a deeper understanding of the metaverse should consider reading these books.
1. Into the Metaverse – A weekly newsletter by Time magazine that guides readers to the future of the internet.
2. The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything – In the tradition of popular books The Second Machine Age and Superintelligence comes the first book of Matthew Ball, CEO of EpyllionCo and the former global head of strategy for Amazon Studios, on the next internet.
3. Ready Player One – A 2011 science fiction story and the debut novel of American author Ernest Cline. It follows the narrative of Wade Watts on his search for an Easter egg in a worldwide virtual reality game.
4. The Metaverse: Prepare Now For the Next Big Thing! – Learn why and how we should prepare for a new digital renaissance and what it means in terms of job opportunities, investments, and new business models, in this practical primer written by Terry Winters.
5. METAVERSE: A Beginner's Guide to The New Digital Revolution. How To Invest In Cryptocurrency, NFT, Blockchain Gaming, And Other Digital Arts Of The Future – Discover the possible applications, how to create identity in the metaverse, augmented and virtual reality, investing in cryptocurrencies and NFTs, and more in this book by Kevin Allen.
6. Snow Crash – This is the science fiction novel by the American writer Neal Stephenson in 1992 where the term metaverse was coined. Parallel to the dystopic real world is the metaverse, where people communicate and entertain themselves through their “avatars.”
7. The Metaverse Canon: Reading Guide – A collection of existing online articles about the metaverse and its wide scope, from games to economy, NFTs to the blockchain, etc., curated by writer Jon Radoff.
8. Rainbows End – Augmented reality is dominant in this science fiction thriller by Hugo Award winner Vernor Vinge, set in a place and time as exciting and strange as any far-future world: San Diego, California, 2025.
9. The Fourth Transformation: How Augmented Reality & Artificial Intelligence Will Change Everything–The book co-authored by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel predicts that after 10 years or so, our digital lives will no longer revolve around smartphones, but on devices that look like ordinary eyeglasses that have settings for Virtual and Augmented Reality. What you see and what is computer generated will be mixed so tightly together that we won’t really be able to tell what is real and what is an illusion.
10. Virtual Worlds and Metaverse Platforms: New Communication and Identity Paradigms – This study by Nelson Zagalo (University of Minho, Portugal), Leonel Morgado (University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Quinta de Prados, Portugal), and Ana Boa-Ventura (The University of Texas at Austin, USA), presents foundational research, models, case studies, as well as research results that scholars can port to their environments to evolve their own research processes and studies.