Virtual worlds like in Snow Crash?
 

Hello all. I'm a hobbyist programmer - and recently I've been reading a fun book called Snow Crash. You've probably heard of this book at some point, since most computer scientists end up reading some Neal Stephenson. In this book, there is the idea of a metaverse, which is similar to the world wide web, except it is three-dimensional and immersive. This world is extendible by the users of it, they can make their own property and avatars(character representing themselves) by programming.

I think this is a fairly neat idea - an immersive world where people can add onto by programming little units that get processed by the servers of the world. My question is - have any of you ever seen software like this? It would be really neat if someone was already working on a project like this - but I am still exploring with google and trying to find some info.

I've found some virtual worlds like Second Life, but nothing seems that amazing so far.

Second Life isn't that amazing only because most of the people that are using it aren't that amazing. It's also still relatively young... so there's not a lot of cool user generated content (much like there wasn't in the early days of The Street protocol).

BUT, yeah, some MMORPGs are potentially pretty close to The Street, but limited by the context of being a game. 2L is probably the best you'll find.