Second Life and the Future

Hi folks,

I would imagine on very rare occasions bits of whats I am saying could have popped up, but this is the whole deal wrapped up if that is the case.

I have been using SecondLife for about 3 or 4 months now and quite frankly it is astonishingly good, by far the best virtual world technology to date. Despite this it is also quite a liberal approach given the cross-platform clients, retaining intellictual property rights on objects, very little dependancies on other packages (I can't stand how 'There' requires Internet Explorer).

With this said, I would like to cast your minds as to how this may look in the future... SecondLife is not going to be the only players... unlike the 'eBay control of auctions' people like Yahoo, Google, eBay and Microsoft are not going to let SecondLife become big enough that there is no room for competition and just give up. You can be guaranteed they will be working on something by now, either that or working out some cocomimy 'deal' with Linden Labs which won't last.

I see the technology of SecondLife as something that has been built with so much room for expansion, so much vision and openness to the community that this has to be 3D-IRC. What I mean by that, is that this is the next stage of ordinary communication on a computer AFTER instant messaging... people have been trying to give 'faces' to ways of communicating for years! and instead of tacking it on the end of something old SecondLife has done it from the outset.

Given all this... I see three possible futures...

1) Linden Labs continue as they have been and we end up seeing things like 'Google Planet, Windows Live Terrain, Yahoo! Touch, and Virtual Skype' and then people will be forced to choose which one to use (or in the case of Microsoft probably will have the choice made for them) and then communities will forever be split apart.

2) Linden Labs continue as they have been and we will find that other people update such things as VRML and we see a new community effort to create an open protocol for virtual worlds all over again like we did in the 90's. Most likely to be something relavivly crude compared to SL it will probably be enough to be packaged with Linux distros, and a very quick and easy install on Windows for all to use just like IRC... Making SL seem like more effort than it's worth.

3) Linden Labs can stop either of these two from occuring by taking the initiative now and experimenting with an even more opened up version of SL. Not nessecarly make SL open source (but I won't say no) but a way of letting the community look at more non-critical code to help with updates and fixes, possibly multiple servers and servers which anyone can create. With a proper protocol established (think sl://myworld.me.com) and a proper client reader for it... Linden will be at the helm of something great and can prevent competitors having a good reason to re-invent the wheel when they can use what already exists.

Now I realise that SL is a closed system for a good reason, SL in many ways is business... fun -- sure... but business. Keeping the client closed source and having only one server ensures that only one body has control over the quality of what you get. This won't help matters when other companies become interested... I believe an 'off-shoot' experimental SL client for use similar to that of IRC (many servers, more open, see above) would be in Lindens best interests.

p.s. Two other bits for consideration not directly related...

1) Can we have 'lands' (e.g. Morris) linked to IRC channels? e.e. on an IRC client it would show as ' <Cyorxamp> [123,232.23] Hello there! '... you'd have to log into the IRC server with your residents creditentials but at least you'd be able to talk to your friends on a PC that has a hard time with SL or if your in a rush... the chat inside SL is so similar to IRC that I think this could be worth it.

2) Just like when you view some 'media' on wikipedia it tells you what license is in use on what your viewing... can SL have something similar with it? You create an object and you can apply a license to it if you so wish? I personally would like to see more objects 'open' instead of us all feeding off each other for business in a purely ficticious world

p.s. p.s. Sorry about any spelling

Sinclair More
(RL: Steven Maddox)

www.cyorxamp.info

I agree with what you're saying. SL is not open enough, and it's sad that you can't create anything outside of the game except for mostly graphics. It's limited to certain technologies like quicktime, and doesn't allow for much expansion. Understandably, this is for compatability among all platforms, but the open source community has a lot to offer to Linden Labs.

I see Microsoft and google coming out with a system that is up 100% of the time and doesn't go down every freaking week for 5 hours for updates. Their downtime since I signed up 8 days ago has been an astonishing 6%. And that's not including their rolling server reboots from yesterday, or the asset server going nuts the other day. 94% uptime is UNACCEPTABLE, and any other company out there will be able to achieve a much higher uptime, and much higher reliability than I'd say that SL is achieving. To me, it is this one thing that would cause me to sell out.

So, that said, opening up to the open source community could cause SL to have an advantage over a microsoft or google product. Otherwise, if Microsoft becomes a player, and they implement .net technologies into that, it's all over for SL. I have heard that SL has plans to allow the ability for use of .net languages, but who knows how quick they'll be on that. Plus, then Microsoft would most likely package it with their next version of windows and combine it into their Live services so that everyone who uses msn messenger will get advertising for it.

SL needs to act fast to keep this from happening.

I understand Phillip's vision of the metaverse...the 3D web he wants to build. I even find it a wonderful vision and feel it has merit. It may happen. But...I also feel it is very, very early in the process, and I do not see the transition from the current internet model to a new one (3D or otherwise) as coming any time soon.

As such, while I do feel companies like Microsoft, Google, etc will be eying this experiment closely and even toying with their own concepts in this direction...I doubt any major capital will be expended in making this happen just yet by any of them.

But...regardless of if SL becomes a model or harbinger of a future 3D metaverse or not, competition is a good thing. If someone else can come along and do the metaverse better than Phillip and LL, then hopefully that is just what will happen. I hope for the best product from the best creator. I am practical that way. I love SL, but if it can not change, adapt and compete as the metaverse actually grows into existance, it will be replaced by someone else. This is basic business practice, and also reflected in nature.

I happily do my part to support the concept, and those who are working to make it happen at this time (LL and Phillip), but like Phillip (hopefully anyway), my loyalty is to the concept, not the vehicle of it. Long live the metaverse.

I'd like to see the SL client itself become more like the decks in Snow Crash, where you have local storage (limited to stuff you have full rights over) and the ability to run far more powerful local applications. It would actually be fairly easy to map arbitrary applications to a special local texture (like the media texture) in Mac OS X or Linux, and probably not that hard to do it in Windows, though interaction with them would probably require an explicit focus and switching to a "work mode" where the application is more like a HUD object than an in-world one.

That would still be tremendously useful, though, particularly for objects you just want status from, even without the "work mode". Of course other people wouldn't see these apps, or would see their own apps on the "application textures" if you picked a common one, but of course that's got advantages as well as disadvantages.