

A metaphor, for instance, is literally an act of carrying (phora) something beyond (meta).

It derives from the Greek μετά, which encompasses a wide array of meanings, such as "with", "after", "alongside", "on top of" and "beyond". (Meta is not the first company to appropriate a preposition I can no longer think of the German über without thinking of taking a ride somewhere.) One may wonder whether this consideration factored into Meta’s rebranding process – that the origin of the concept with which they’ve made themselves synonymous is so distinctly tinged with sci-fi ominousness, and the spectre of worldwide corporatocracy.īut the prefix itself, meta-, was originally an innocent preposition. Reality is dominated by malevolent mega-corporations who have privatised every sector of human life, and the Metaverse is fraught with danger, intrigue and corruption. The term metaverse was coined by Neil Stephenson in his 1992 novel Snow Crash, a speculative epic whose action takes place in two parallel worlds – primary, physical "Reality", and the online, virtual "Metaverse" existing alongside it. The unseen 'slow violence' that affects millions.Social cryptomnesia: How societies steal ideas.Generational amnesia: The memory loss that harms the planet.Indeed, much ink (or rather, many a pixel) has recently been spilled over precisely this question – what is a metaverse? And is it a good thing?īut let's explore these questions by asking a more fundamental, and lexical one (a meta-question, if you will): what does the expression meta mean, and what does it symbolise? And what does that have to do with Facebook's new name and vision? Worlds such as this already exist, with games like Minecraft, Roblox and Second Life, which to varying degrees merit the name of "metaverse", depending on whom you ask and how it’s being defined. Meta’s metaverse will apparently entail augmented, virtual and mixed reality technologies, to effectuate an immersive online experience – an " embodied internet", where users are not just scrolling, posting and commenting, but interacting in a fully-realised computer-generated world. Send us feedback about these examples.In the wake of Facebook's recent rebranding, we've been hearing a lot about the word meta.įreed from its usual role in English as a prefix in words like "metaphor", "metastasise" and "metamorphosis", it now stands alone as a proper noun, the new name of a social media monolith with the self-declared purpose of ushering its users into the "metaverse". These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'metaphysics.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. CNN, But even the most rarefied metaphysics at TSMC rest on a tangible substrate: silicon. 2021 Smith was a fascinating but mysterious figure - a mystic who was part of the secret occultist society the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which borrowed ideas from Kabbalah and freemasonry for its own spiritual belief system centered on magic and metaphysics. 2023 The album isn’t all soothing Yoda metaphysics. Scott Bradfield, The New Republic, 7 Apr. 2020 The Gnomons devote themselves equally to metaphysics and to the pointless disputes and exacerbations of day-to-day operations. Merve Emre, The New York Review of Books, 16 Jan.

2022 At eighteen, Leibniz had decided that the highest effort of philosophy would be to construct a language of metaphysics that could perfect the extension of human thought with no less precision or glory than the telescope had perfected the extension of the human eye. WIRED, 24 July 2023 Like Wolfe, who shaped the metaphysics of Book of the New Sun around his own Catholic views, Palmer would incorporate her own hodgepodge of theological and intellectual influences-a divine plan shaped by a historian's view of how society actually progresses. 2023 But Nolan misses the deeper metaphysics undergirding the drama. Narayana Montúfar, Women's Health, 14 Aug. Recent Examples on the Web Ninth House The ninth house is the philosophical house, ruling over religion, metaphysics, and higher education.
