Tech companies are racing toward new frontiers involving immersive virtual reality worlds that some experts fear could exacerbate existing problems as Congress lags behind the sector’s rapid developments.
The emerging technologies will further test lawmakers, who are still grappling with addressing tech-enabled dangers such as online misinformation and disinformation, data theft and loss of privacy that plague people’s computers and smartphones.
Facebook and Instagram parent Meta, Microsoft, graphics processing company Nvidia and game platform company Roblox are among the major tech companies that are working to build the metaverse, a term first coined by Neal Stephenson in his science fiction novel “Snow Crash.” The term refers to shared, virtual worlds that parallel the real world.
