Interesting that the latest theories keep tending toward the idea that what we see, isolated galaxies, linked by gravity in long chains, could very well be independent universes, and these could be interspersed with universes we can't see ~ black matter/black energy, and all of that encapsulated in a macro-universe that holds all of 'em.
I have to disagree with you on that. The universes of which Linde and Kaku are speaking are not visible to us, nor are they composed of dark matter contained in the visible portion of our universe. They're speaking of completely separate universes lying outside the inflationary bubble that we inhabit.
BTW, I didn't know about Farmer's 'pocket universes' stories. Alan Guth, one of the co-discoverers of inflationary cosmology, speaks of 'pocket universes' when describing separate cosmic bubbles.
BTW, when cosmologists refer to "pocket universes" they are usually familiar with Philip Farmer's use of the term ~ all interesting stories ~ I'm not exactly sure who Farmer got his science from, but he knew how to spin a yarn.
Take another look at Billy Pilgrim, the character in several of Kurt Vonnegut's stories. Recall, quickly, that for a long time Kurt and Phil were big buddies ~ until Phil wrote a story for Billy himself.
There you discover a theory of "time" that suggests multi-dimensionality for time in pretty much the same manner as Farmer's pocket universes are expanded out from the point of origin.
As I was saying, and you might not have picked up on it, the current most speculative theories of the Universe's structure are getting closer to some ideas worked out in literature in the 1960s and 1970s by two Indiana writers.
If you haven't read Farmer's stories, here's your chance for some provocative thought.
Then, if true, our universe consists of more than one inflationary bubble. Uni means one. Whatever exists is part of our universe.
The rest sounds like semantics, yes?