Davos 2023: Thirty years on, author Neal Stephenson discusses his metaverse vision with Meta

A 3D printed Facebook's new rebrand logo Meta is seen in this illustration taken on November 2, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - The author who first envisioned the metaverse 30 years ago sat down on Wednesday with a top executive from the company investing billions in building it and agreed there were formidable hurdles to bringing it to the masses.

Neal Stephenson, who coined the term in his 1992 novel "Snowcrash", and Chris Cox, the chief product officer at Meta, laid out an array of engineering breakthroughs needed to allow millions of people to move seamlessly through immersive virtual worlds displayed on head-mounted devices.