On the screen of my overheated computer, I was staring at an endless horizon of sky and water and islands and small buildings, designed to look realistic but giving themselves away with too-sharp ...

A screenshot from the virtual reality world "Second Life." Correspondent A version of this article was published in TIME’s newsletter Into the Metaverse. Subscribe for a weekly guide to the future of ...

FOR MANY, THE “metaverse” — an all-enveloping, all-online world — is a fairly new concept. For the regulars on Second Life, it’s just part of everyday reality. Second Life is an immersive online ...