Fortnite virtual concerts are the latest sign of how the world is enjoying a ‘meta’ moment – one that has its origins in ancient Greek Ariana Grande’s virtual concerts, held recently within the video game _Fortnite_, have had excitable tech enthusiasts talking anew about the imminence of the “metaverse”. The ancient Greek _meta_ means “with” or “after”. The title of Aristotle’s _Metaphysics_, given by an editor after his death, means simply “the books that come after the ones on physics”, but “meta” in English came to acquire a sense first of “going beyond” – so “metaphysics” acquired a potentially supernatural sense – and then also of self-referentiality, in compounds such as “metatheatrical” or “metafictional”. (It’s all gone a bit meta.) Continue reading...
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