That technologists have long had an addiction to buzzwords that fall into and out of fashion at alarming speed should be news to nobody reading this column. After all, who among us still speaks of Web 3.0, let alone 2.0, or the Fourth Industrial Revolution? The metaverse is surely a contender for shortest lived of all, although let’s not forget that just 18 months ago, the Wall Street Journal proclaimed that the phrase AI “Needs To Go”, and how is that working out? As a (now fairly old) study of the Gartner hype cycle by Icon Technologies pointed out, few of the concepts behind the buzzwords vanish completely; they just keep coming around in a different language and format.

After all, head-mounted displays have been the Next Big Thing since 1991 and, with Apple’s recent announcements, probably not quite written off yet.