Column: 'Blogged Out: Snow Crash Mountain'

In today's edition of blogged out, Gamasutra's original news report that looks at the world of developer blogging and the conversations being had with the community at large, regular columnist Jim Rossignol scours the internet for discussion on the content of the 'metaverse,' as touched on in this introduction: "Science fiction author Neal Stephenson's fictional concept of the 'metaverse' has been adopted as updated concept for the new articulations of cyberspace - for the 3D realm which encompasses everything the web is now, and where everyone could potentially be represented by their personalised avatars in a virtual information space. The Metaverse Roadmap conference was intended to take a look at what this 3D web might entail, asking questions about the relationship between game worlds, business, 3D web apps and the general flow of online information, while at the same time collecting the usual suspect of luminaries up to enable them to articulate their thoughts on what this metaverse thing might actually be. Stephenson's fictional construct has been used to articulate numerous ideas about where the web is going (including an interesting question from Ed Castronova about why there isn't an academic virtual world in which regulated, non-commercial research can be conducted), but it has also become a unique field of battle." You can read the full Gamasutra column for more insight on the state of the metaverse today (no registration required, please feel free to link to this column from external web sites).