Allegations of illegal gambling, reports of online orgies, and even an active investigation in Europe of sexual abuse and misconduct seem to have overshadowed the tamer daily goings-on in the virtual ...

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 version of this article was published in TIME’s newsletter Into the Metaverse. Subscribe for a weekly guide to the future of the Internet. In 2007, Second Life founder Philip Rosedale made a bold ...