Is SL the killer app for convergence?

Yes / No / Why?
I would like to see SL become ubiquitous, but the technology isn't quite there yet. Wouldn't it be cool to have it run on a set-top-box, bundled with your cable access, or embedded in a DVD player, or heck, even on your cellphone?
You can already play different types of media in SL, and best of all, you're not alone - online media regains its social experience aspect, something that always was an important, if somewhat hidden factor in RL media enjoyment.

I play SL on my cellphone:

LMAO @ Starax

Is that a new addition to the wand? if so put me down for a dozen or so

You mean I could check what's in the fridge from the comfort of my living room? Or mow my lawn while watching TV? All thru SL interface? I can see it now, get your house all wired-up with this convergence, then some hacker plants a virus in your PC that turns everything on and off at random.... great!

i volunteer to beta this exciting new technology... soon as it comes out

I dunno. SL as it is seems to be pretty limited.

We can only support a certain amount of memory for scripts, limited bandwith back and forth.

Uh, So like I suppose, having an integration from SLText-Cellphone text might be convienient, but Yahoo already does that....

Hard to say when we still have a poor Physics engine.

whats a killer app?
what's convergence?
why are you speaking in tongues?

Now, no.

A few years, maybe. And hopefully.

Not in 2006, no. There is still a lot to be done. "Convergence" is not simply porting SL to everything, like toasters and fridges... it also means that the application itself needs to integrate into other things we might have on the computer.

This mostly means separating the server from the client using a well-structured API and allowing things like "plug-ins" and safe client-side scripting (as opposed to LSL, which runs on the server) — or better still, integration with existing client-side scripting (VBasic, AppleScript, whatever you fancy).

You'd need to emulate all the features of things like http://3dna.net and do more.

So this would mean that when you'd plug-in an USB pen disk on your computer, a HUD attachment would pop up on the SL client. You could then open its inventory and listen to sound (if it contained sound), view pictures as textures inside (and drag and drop them to other people for sharing), and drag PDFs, HTML, or RTFs on the in-world Gecko browser. Then you could do a "save to local storage" to make backups of those, right-click and select detach on the "HUD Pen Disk" and it could be removed easily... Cell phones and similar things would work similarly, drop a calling card on top of a special area of a HUD attachment, and it would dial a number... or use the Skype engine running as a plug-in... whatever

What is wrong with this picture? Well, actually, we have all the technology and know-how to do that — we just don't have LL's willingness, at least not in 2006, to move towards these concepts.

But i want an SL enabled toaster......




NOW

Maybe, if it ever get to SL being everywhere, that's pretty much the metaverse. Maybe 10 years?

nope, not the killer app for convergence. Nice model-A though

No. Not that I don't think it could be a great desktop or even an IDE for designing DVD interfaces, but not everything needs a 3D, by way of SL, interface. My iPod doesn't need to be 3D, nor does my router.

Of course, five years ago, I wouldn't have thought my router would need a web interface. Eighteen months ago, I would have laughed at the idea of a video iPod. Now I woudn't trade either ability for anything.

I don't think SL itself, alone will be ubiquitous. It might end up being the "new Windows," though. It might be what everything plugs into. Control your TiVO though SL, and watch what it records on a streaming prim. Download your music and podcasts via iTunes, but you use an SL player. I don't know... Maybe.

But, mostly, no, not Second Life.

Im not too hip to the current techno lingo... so would this mean Id eventually be able to hook my vibrating panties to the comp thru USB and theyd get "triggered" by certain events in SL?

Hardly. While SL might possibly be ported to cell phones etc. eventually, that's not what it was designed for. SL seems to me to be too inflexible to handle this well. Maybe by rewriting large parts, but that would take so long that something else would probably catch up anyway.

In order to achieve true convergence you must first have something like IP is to the network world - IP over everything and everything over IP... this would provide easy integration.
But then you also need this integration to be synergetic - more than the sum of its parts, providing a clear advantage to consumers over having everything separated.

Regarding the former, the historical trend in Second Life has been to bring different sorts of media into it - first streaming audio, then streaming video, and soon the World Wide Web - as well as making SL run over different operating systems. It was first ported to the Mac, and recently to Linux.

As for the latter - SL can completely redefine the way in which we consume media, since it not only provides its own brand new type of media - streamed 3D - but also an immersive social world where the media can be experienced by groups simultaneously.
We have virtual theaters showing movies inworld, virtual concert halls with live musicians... as far as I am concerned, SL already is a potential killer app for media convergence. Now we just need a few more hardware and software advances to make a mobile phone powerful enough to run SL properly

The end goal of SL is to become an open standard. If LL truly means this, and if they can pull it off... well, I don't know what would happen, but it would certainly bring an explosion of creativity with all sorts of applications being made that we can't even imagine. Maybe that would include a cell phone client with appropriately trimmed down system requirements. Let's keep in mind that in the Snow Crash metaverse, graphics quality also varied wildly

Wouldn't that be ActiveWorlds instead

Tsk. Troll.

hehe, alright so it's a Model-T

Talk about a PKB moment
<3 Krittar

Let's also not forget that the Metaverse wasn't software, it was the Street Protocol.

But since we're blowing a perfectly good conversation to bring up Stephenson, let's just bypass the Metaverse and go straight to A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. People who've only read one Stephenson book like to whip out THE METAVERSE... Fine, I'll play the game.

The Metaverse was a prototype application that developed over time into the technology that gave birth to A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, as seen in The Diamond Age. A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer was a individual, peer-to-peer system for delivering content to people, acting as an educational platform, and functioning as a multi-purpose computer. You want ubiquitous technology, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is the perfect piece of it. Easy to carry, rugged design, multipurpose, decentralized, and the perfect tool for uplifting the poor, illiterate, third-world masses.

The Metaverse was a plaything of the rich, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer was a tool for social revolution!

STOP USING TEN YEAR OLD METAPHORS TO DISCUSS MODERN TECHNOLOGY!

that was a good book... hundred person nanite orgies to solve computational problems, resulting in the spontaneous combustion of the lucky orgy focus... hehe, Stephenson rocks!

Best toaster ever was a final project of a student at MIT. When you put in a slice of toast and pushed the handle down, it would connect to the internet and get the local forecast for the day. Then select elements inside would heat up more, darkening parts of the toast to show a sun, or a cloud, or a snowflake, etc..

Right now id settle for it running properly on my desktop PC.