I have a book about VRML that gathers dust on my bookshelf. Back in 1996 I was talking to a few VRML believers who showed me some 3D chat rooms and explained that this was the future. They certainly looked cool, but they never worked quite right, and in the end, it really was just a chat room with 3D images. Five years later and not much has changed. People are still talking about VRML and 3D chat rooms and how they look nice, but grow tiresome after a little while. I never really understood why I needed to chat with a 3D avatar of a floating fish.