Stephenson said there are two main things that people get wrong, in his view, when they talk about the metaverse these days.

One mistake people make, Stephenson said, is "to talk about a metaverse, or multiple metaverses, which I think is wrong, that's always a signal to me that somebody doesn't get it." In Stephenson's view, there's one metaverse, like the one internet, and companies creating closed metaverse environs aren't getting it.

Another mistake people make is "to assume that it's always about using goggles, which is a reasonable assumption," Stephenson said. "I mean, that's how it is in the book and in other depictions of virtual reality and fiction. It seemed like a logical assumption at the time that that would be the the output device. But that's not what happened. What happened is that everyone is accessing these 3D worlds through through two-dimensional flat rectangles on flat screens. And that works really well. In some ways, it works better than using goggles, for various reasons."