The Wired

The Wired is an ever developing, evolving virtual world similar to the real world's current internet of the early 2000s. It can be accessed through a Navi. It is an interconnected network, similar to Internet/World Wide Web. It is an advanced form of communication at the center of the story of Serial Experiments Lain.

Description
Any user can access The Wired through a Navi, the equivalent of a computer.

In the series, The Wired is seen as a world where users can share their thoughts, have conversations, play games and socialize. There is a strong presence of Virtual Reality as a more advanced method of access to The Wired (with the help of physical devices comparable to, and even beyond, todays VR devices), allowing the user to project themselves into it and have physical interactions within The Wired and with other users.

Protocol
The Wired is assumed to have run mainly with the Protocol 6. This technology gives the possibility to project yourself into the Wired, to have your own version of yourself in it. The Psyche, a NAVI add-on, is essential to use this function as its fullest.

The Protocols are elaborated by Tachibana General Laboratories.

During the series, we discover the slow establishment of the new protocol, the Protocol 7. The Protocol 7 was tampered by Masami Eiri who embedded the possibility to upload human mind into the Wired.

Virtual Reality
With the use of the Psyche or other advanced technologies, some users have been able to project themselves within The Wired. They can communicate with each other through their persona.

The Wired is representing as a surrealist world most of the time in a black void surrounding. Most of the users aren't able to show their entire physical form, and as a result they take alternative form. A few times during the series, The Wired shows a perfect representation of a place in the real world.

Trivia

 * mebious.co.uk is the only URL explicitly shown in the anime.
 * In the 2003 2D/CGI French animated show Code Lyoko, and its canceled live-action/CGI 2013 sequel, has a virtual world all its own called Lyoko that resides within a very powerful quantum supercomputer, within which harbors a malevolent artificial intelligence/multi-agent system called .X.A.N.A.