In Snow Crash , a science fiction novel published in 1992, Neal Stephenson envisioned a future in which people lived in a bleak, grim physical world, but it was possible for them to "jack in" through a computer network to the Metaverse, a virtual cyberworld that was much more dramatic and glamorous than the "real" world. As it turned out, online technology developed in a different direction than Stephenson imagined.