A look back at tech's three eras, from Bell Labs to Facebook, and why the metaverse is the fourth, defined by its bifurcation with the physical world
Ben on how software ate the world (mainly through SaaS): Tweets: Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : Interesting thesis from @benthompson that we will increasingly live online and that's what connects various definitions of the Metaverse from crypto to VR worlds. I agree that we should expect that people will only be more online over time. Which means... https://stratechery.com/... Stephen Diehl / @smdiehl : You thought Facebook and ads made the internet suck. Oh boy, just look at what the web3 and crypto bros are trying to build. The Farmvilleification of everything is going to suuuuck. @dsa : @stratechery @benthompson Yours and Zuck's definitions will converge. There's a bifurcation, but the offline segment is shrinking. Just as your time is increasingly spent online, the same is true with your family. Despite physical proximity, you'll spend more time online with them, too. Back to unitary! Ryan Singer / @rjs : A cogent take on the web3 and crypto hype by @benthompson. Less about currency, less about building everything on chain. More about unique digital identifiers in normal software stacks that bind digital personas and assets together. https://stratechery.com/... Richard Lawler / @rjcc : @bryanmenegus I mean who are you going to listen to, all the people who are taking money to say it or everyone else? Bryan / @bryanmenegus : This take is going to age like milk https://twitter.com/... Derek Thompson / @dkthomp : I might even suggest that it's a great trifurcation - save the planet - travel to planets - build digital planets It's not that builders have to choose one to the exclusion of others. But often the debates within tech that I see break down along these lines. Nathan Taylor / @ntaylor963 : Ben Thompson's definition: “the Metaverse is the set of experiences that are completely online” https://stratechery.com/... https://twitter.com/... Andris K. Berzins / @akberzins : Superb post by @stratechery on the #Metaverse, correctly arguing that it will exist in tandem with a physical world that is not going away. Opportunities will exist in both, but only sometimes overlap. https://stratechery.com/... @stratechery : The Great Bifurcation Tracing the evolution of tech's three eras, and why the fourth era — the Metaverse — is defined by its bifurcation with the physical world. https://stratechery.com/... Derek Thompson / @dkthomp : An instant classic from @benthompson that somehow ties together tech history, Web3, the metaverse, and Elon Musk https://stratechery.com/... The tao of tech is bifurcating: “save the physical world” vs “build the digital world.” https://twitter.com/... @jamcnn : This post by @benthompson referring to #metaverse: “If all that matters is digital, why wouldn't you want the most immersive experience possible?” https://stratechery.com/... Mike Daodas / @mdudas : “Where I disagree is with the idea that the physical world and the digital world are increasingly “being overlaid and coming together”... I think the opposite is happening: the physical world and digital world are increasingly bifurcating.” ~ @benthompson https://stratechery.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Ben Thompson's 'Great Bifurcation' essay arrives at peak metaverse season, and it is best read against two pieces of prior coverage: Jason Rubin's 2018 paper to Facebook executives that framed owning the VR market as strategic necessity, and Zuckerberg's own Q&A warning that the metaverse could further splinter shared reality. Thompson's move is taxonomic — Bell Labs, the PC/internet era, and the SaaS-driven 'software eats the world' phase become three eras, with the metaverse as a fourth defined by separating from the physical world.
The reception was immediate and split: Dare Obasanjo amplified the 'people will only be more online' reading, while Stephen Diehl attacked the Web3 variant as the 'Farmvilleification of everything.' What makes the piece worth revisiting is how its two pillars aged — Meta's pivot from metaverse hype to efficiency within a year, and Decentraland's land prices collapsing from ~$45 to $5 per square meter — turning an era-defining claim into a testable one.
First-order effects
- Thompson's framing hands Meta a ready-made historical justification for the VR commitment Rubin's paper set in motion, while forcing commentators like Obasanjo and Diehl to take sides on the core dispute: does digital life bifurcate from the physical world or overlay it?
- By folding crypto, VR worlds, and social platforms into a single 'metaverse' category, the thesis gives Web3 projects like Decentraland a narrative umbrella their underlying economics had not yet earned.
Second-order effects
- Speculative markets priced the thesis in: Decentraland's median land value tracked the hype cycle almost exactly, collapsing once enthusiasm receded — evidence that metaverse-era assets were trading on the narrative rather than usage.
- Meta's own behavior undercut the era claim: a year after the dystopian Super Bowl ad, the company reoriented around efficiency, leaving the 'fourth era' without its most committed corporate champion.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — grand platform theses announced at hype peaks, then repriced within months — the structural lesson is that era transitions are now judged by capital markets in quarters, not decades, which punishes exactly the long-horizon bets a genuine fourth era would require.
- The unresolved bifurcation-versus-overlay question outlives the hype either way: Zuckerberg's warning about splintered shared reality suggests that even if the metaverse label fades, the governance problem of increasingly online life remains the durable issue regulators and platform designers inherit.
The trend: Platform-era theses are now stress-tested by capital and usage within months of publication, making metaverse-style 'era' claims less a roadmap than a live experiment in how far online life can decouple from the physical world.