Neal Stephenson, a famend science-fiction writer and co-founder of Lamina1, a blockchain-based start-up that goals to construct an expansive metaverse, not too long ago mentioned his views on the metaverse with Tim Bradshaw, the FT’s international know-how correspondent. Stephenson’s breakthrough 1992 novel Snow Crash predicted many technological developments, akin to cryptocurrency, Alexa, avatars, virtual-reality goggles, multiplayer on-line video games, and harmful laptop…