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While it's worthwhile to think about the potential impact of the next phase of technological development before it arrives, and the author has presents an interesting perspective, in my opinion he makes a few too many leaps for a compelling argument. The idea of the (still somewhat vaguely defined) Metaverse as a step change, rather than a continuation of previous developments, seems at odds with the line drawn back through the internet and the printing press back to religions and ancient monuments in the earlier part of the book. As another example, while ways to track and exchange value across metaverses and with the real world, I've yet to see a strong case for blockchain technology being the only, or indeed a particularly good, solution for this. Overall, some useful speculation and food for thought, but its long-term relevance remains to be seen.

In chapter 7, Narula includes both Amazon and Apple as "paragons of the new data economy" (alongside Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft). This seems to suggest a lack of appreciation of the degree to which the success of those two companies is tied to the physical world, even beyond everything involved in running data centres that's common to all five. For them, the cloud isn't someone else's computer.

Some great stories, a number of which read very much like firsts treatments of what would become the Sprawl books. Also interested to be reminded of the future of the early Eighties; Soviets and payphones and cassettes sit side by side with cybernetic eyes and the matrix.

I’ve been on a bit of a William Gibson kick recently; having re-read The Peripheral and Neuromancer, I moved on to the rest of the Spawl trilogy (which I’d not read before) and then onto this collection of earlier short stories. Not quite as fully-formed as his later work, but entertaining in its own right and fascinating to see the start of some threads.