As part of its ongoing series of reports on the future of the internet, the Pew Research Center has recently released a report titled "The Metaverse in 2040". As is usual with this series, the Pew researchers invited a wide range of people (disclosure: including myself) to reflect on several questions, and basically have compiled and organized these responses, and extracted some key themes, views and predictions; the report also quotes extensively from the responses Pew received. The report can be found here:

The Metaverse in 2040 | Pew Research Center

Experts are split about the likely evolution of a truly immersive “metaverse.” They expect that augmented- and mixed-reality enhancements will become more useful in people’s daily lives. Many worry that current online problems may be magnified if Web3 development is led by those who built today’s dominant web platforms.

The use of the term "Metaverse" in the report title is unfortunate, in my view, as the report really deals very broadly with the prospective evolution of immersive environments and user interfaces and various types of AR and VR technologies and how this connects up with today's online experiences. I'd urge you to have a look at the page above to get a sense of the scope of the Pew study.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI