Google (GOOG) has shut down Lively, a service where people log on to chat and explore 3D virtual spaces, after a few short months. The MBAs of Silicon Valley have a pat phrase for the arrival of a competitor on the scene: They say it “validates their space.” What does it say, then, that Lively is gone? It means that Second Life, the best known of these unreal universes, is doomed, too.

The notion of a metaverse has long fascinated geeks. The idea of “avatars”–three-dimensional representations of the self rendered in pixels, often fantastical or surreal in nature–wandering through a computer-generated environment has been explored in the science fiction novels of Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, and Bruce Sterling, among others. The Matrix trilogy introduced the idea at multiplexes from coast to coast.

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