metaverse

[this page, of obvious importance to these sites, will accumulate information as time and need permit]…

The Real Time 3-D Virtual Internet, or Metaverse as Stephenson dubs it, the evolution of a virtual reality based Internet.

An electronic representation of a real world environment, populated by real people and programs (known as bots or deamons). Within such an environment it is possible not only to interact with the scenery as you would in real life, it is also possible to interact with other system users in 3D real time. [metaweb]

And paraphrasing William Gibson : a consensual hallucination…