Is Second Life A Stepping Stone?

If someone came out with a SL with all the bugs fixed, people would probably pay the same as for any other MMO ($14.95 a month) and leave by the 1000's. It would also keep the griefers out.

EVERY Technological Developement in History has been a Stepping Stone to something More.
TSO was a Stepping stone to SL. The Sims offline and Chat rooms were stepping Stones to TSO, and so on, and so on Back to the Abacus. In ten years Developements in Interfaces, Graphics, and Networking will make More possible within an on line 3D environments, So much so that SL will seem like Donky-Kong By Comparrison. Nothing in the Digital world lasts forever, and i have always known That SL will not Last forever. Something will Come along, Maybe from LL, maybe from a Competitor that will replace it and Everyone will have a new On Line World to complain about.

Angel.

Thankyou all so far for your opinions and thoughts. Nice to have the thread keeping its pace too.

I agree the scope of sl is alot to keep bug free, but there are still bugs which are becoming obvious would be easier to fix if someone at LL bothered to notice.

I agree also with the comments on sl living its life and giving its spirit to another world in future, they gave us a vision and that we cant take away from them. Lets just hope it stays around long enough for a competitor to make a better job of it lol.

This is a frontier that is being populated, civilized and tamed.

Competitors will make brave new mistakes in their efforts not to repeat those made by LL... and their worlds will be *very* different, and, probably far more restrictive and limited than SL. (you know... because freedom results in chaos and problems. )

Either that or they'll likely make the same mistakes LL made and not be a significant advancement in the field.

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There may be only one SecondLife... it's true successors will be very different.

One potential evolution, with the opening of the server code, is that SL becomes one of several "browsers" to a 3D, interactive Web. More is required than just the opening of the server code, since no single company can own the data stream to what is meant to be a public mean. But imagine a resident of Entropia, SL, etc....all roaming onto any server. SL is certainly taking the early steps in that direction, difficult to tell what their ultimate role will be.

There are real life products that use nanotechnology I can't remember the name of products but I know one is a tenis ball. If you search the web on nanobots you find it.
As far 3d browsers relating to Cybertown and some of the early programs using Vrml 97 were trying to develope 3d interenet browswer system over 5 years ago.
For some reason it didn't really catch on except in certain circles.

Unicorns have pointy sharp horns, you could poke your eyes out if you're not careful near one

I agree with Cristos though, it seems like ultimately SL will be more of a far-reaching network. I don't know how content could easily be secured within it though, or how LL would intend to make money except by continuing to provide simulators and/or providing a place to store content. It seems likely it may not reach this point when I think about it, as having a single point of failure could never succeed, especially if it controls things like the L$ and assets, other people would just start to provide their own and it would become hellish.

I stay because I can not only express my creativity, but I can also collaborate with others in this creation.

To be honest, I've been using SL since '05, on three different computers and hardware configs, and I've NEVER felt like the bugs are as horrible as the forum community tends to continually begrudge. Sure it's not perfect, but other than a few 'grid-down' situations, I've had a relatively frustrating free couple of years.

I'm continually inspired by the community. If you know where to look, and where to stay clear of, the sights, sounds, talent, and inspirational content are profound.

Oh, and also I stay because simply put, I'm a 30 year old gaming geek, who's fascinated by VRLM technology...and what better place to practice my 3d modeling skills and design? And I actually make profit...go figure...money certainly is a good reason to keep coming back--it's not my reason, but for some it's key.

I know there are many R&D happening in Japan. Many companies are tring to make a real time useage of it. But as for cyber types well.......don`t count on it from LLABS.

Nice thought!

usagi

cybertown!
now that brings back memories. it was longer than 5 ago years though. i left cybertown in 2000 and they were well into the vrml by then.

I came out of curiosity one snowy day, I don't play computer games or hang out on line. It's entertaining fun, I've met some interesting people, and it's been a better use of leisure time than watching the dreck on TV.. If SL went away, I don't know if I'd venture further into VR. For the time being SL suits me fine. It runs Ok on my Middle of the Road Dell, I only have trouble when SL itself acts up.

SL is a chapter in the evolution of graphically based online virtual worlds, without question. I think it would be foolish to think that SL is the last word in this area, as technology develops quickly when you expand the timeline to 5 or 10 years, and LL doesn't seem to have the resources to keep up with that, I think. But despite the bugs it is a very important chapter in what will, in my view, doubtless one day be a critical aspect of human life and experience: the online, virtual aspect of life.

How this develops will be interesting to watch, and is hard to predict in advance. I would expect that in part we will be seeing more social networking as an extension of RL. But in part I do think that there is a place -- perhaps a big one -- where people can live virtual lives that are distinct from their own RL, as opposed to an extension of the communication and networking possibilities attached to that RL. This is kind of like the metaverse envisioned by Stephenson's Snow Crash, albeit that was a more simplified vision -- the idea being that the avatar is not limited by the RL user's limitations, but is something crafted by the RL user as she wishes, and can be rather different and freer than the RL user, in many cases.

I'll be sticking around VWs for a while, post-SL as well. I like the potential for the technology, and I pretty much want to be a part of this however it pans out.

With the cubic-rate in which technology (hardware) advances every year, and the ever increasing speeds of upload and download--cable can easily exceed 1mb a second now'adays-- LL will easily rise to the occasion and satisfy all bandwidth and scalability issues.

You think 18K is high for a computer's 3D MARK score? That's nothing. In ten years that score will be off today's charts. They will have to develop another sliding scale for future benchmark tests. I doubt tomorrow's hardware will have trouble with Second Life--no matter how large it becomes, and no matter how pretty she looks.

And as soon as fiber optics take over the populous (10-15 years)--there will be plenty of bandwidth to stream all the information you want.

That's the only part of what you wrote that I would disagree with. From where I am sitting, as someone with quite a bit of experience working in RL in successful RL corporations, LL seems spectacularly poorly run. LL, and in particular its "work ethic", is one of SL's main liabilities, I think, and it's hard for me to believe that there won't be a better run, better managed competitor who will bypass SL simply because their organization is better at getting things done than is LL.

Listen, my main rig is still a Pentium 3 (dualies running at 1ghz each). I have 1 gig of slow SD-ram installed, and a Geforce FX 5600 in place.

With this relatively old hardware, I am still able to run SL with all high settings, and have the frame rates playable (low, but playable). If I were to set my settings all to low, it would be even smoother an experience.

Sure when a sim is filled to the brim with AVs, an event can get choppier than Cape Horn during Tsunami season...but overall, I don't think the 'fun factor' (the most important factor) is diminished enough to warrant a bad review.

I have to agree, having worked a variety of jobs through the years starting with the obligatotory High School fast food job, LL 's business practices are awful, starting with that ridiculous TAO. The prgram could be the bleeding edge thing some envision, but if the business side of the house is shoddy, it won't make it We see it all the time in RL, take a mediocre product, and market it the rightway, gold mine. great concept, poor implementation? A faded memory.

Yes this is my view as well. LL has benefitted greatly by being the first out of the box on this to make a significant splash. Their badly run business side (and yes the TAO is stupid, honestly, because it basically disavows any customer-orientation) will be th plaform's undoing in the medium to long-term, I think, unless that business side changes significantly.

I suspect the 'Tao' is largely misunderstood.

For example, it's a pretty common theme in 'inverted management' - a style much like the Company generally uses which is very typical for the tech industry.

Inverted management meaning: managers basically manage resources that the group needs to get the job done, and motivation comes from the self, not a boss. Un-selfmotivated people are simply fired.

Basically this is how all software engineering management has to work anyway - it's not exactly like hosing down a parking lot or sweeping trash, in terms of how they get the job done.


My take on the 'Tao'...

So the idea is to let self-motivated employees work hard in areas they are good at, rather than pigeonhole them into the 'hired' roles. Generally an engineer will throw himself at something he loves for 80 hours a week, but he won't quite be 'on mission.'

Now that's a bad thing, right? Well, yes and no. Say you need 30 people on a team. All 30 are adequate for the slot they were hired into, but if you shake the box just a liiiittle bit, you'll have 15 superstars if you let the job definitions drift with the consent of those doing them. Not fully on target, but doing 200% more, usually including the targets and then some.

So what of the rest of the people? Well, it varies. Rarely do people truly stick to exactly their job definition anyhow (do you?) so about 10 of the remaining 15 will tend to take over gap areas. These are usually the 'leave desk at 4:59, door swings at 5:00' people. And oddly, they are usually pretty happy - they have their niche, things get done, life goes on.

The remaining five or so... are stuggling, not succeeding and usually trying to find a good place to fit in, and still loosely doing what they were hired for, but badly. Generally a superstar needs team members for this or that tedious thing, and this is where those team members come from.

* * * * *

Alright, you are probably thinking: Desmond, you are a wingnut. This will never work. Ah, actually, it does, and I'd gotten the biggest bonuses in my life managing this way, when I used to work for other people. This is how:

1) The department manager presents the common vision such that people 'get it' groupwide. This isn't easy to do, and it's completely opposite of assigning tasks (leading to micromanagement). You need to be a bit charismatic.

2) You let the superstars define themselves, and declare their areas. It's a bit political, yes. Who gets to pick what projects? Well, those that 'backed up their bs' engineeringwise in the past have dibs, as determined by you the manager.

3) Now the key point. You let each person tell everyone, in words, in front of you and the whole damn department what is gonna get done and when. Once a week, and write it down. There isn't an engineer alive that dared give a nonagressive schedule to me in over ten years. Guess what happens next week: you guessed it - they get to go over that same list and say which things they actually *finished*. No 'almosts' allowed - FINISHED, buried, done.

So... how can this possibly work, when there are tasks unassumed? At the end of the day, you'll have some tedious, dirty, I-dun-wanna-do-it kinda jobs left over for people to do. Assign them. Unmercifully. To the people who aren't as self-motivated to declare an area and run with it.

Eventually what happens is you'll get hires and fires, and the job categories will shuffle a bit. Not a big deal. Reassign some titles and job definitions with common consent, and things fall into place.

* * * * *

Now you are thinking, but, Desmond, you KNOW there are problems, yes?

Well, sure. Because the above recipe works for the engineering team, not customer service. That's been the big disconnect. The Company was managed 'tech' style under Philip, and that is only now changing.

Incidentally, I tend to disagree with Ordinal (respectfully) and agree with Philip that if they didn't charge at the task of Second Life headlong, it never would have happened.

Why? The reason is rather technical itself. Because there was no way one could write a 'spec' for the grid to be built to - there was no understanding of Second Life aggregate behaviour of 2007, in 2003 or earlier.

It was a conversation between the Company and the Consumer all along, and it's still going on. You had to start, *knowing* that you'd get off track, and *knowing* you would have to recover.

Think of it this way: what will concurrency be in Sept 2010? How many servers? What laws will affect things - taxation, adult verification? What pricing, and when will competition come? How many to hire? Ah, and if you predict wrongly by more than 20% you'll burn millions of dollars of development, either by nature of insufficiency or useless overcapacity. Better to have a clumsy but self-correcting mechanism, than adherence to a spec written prior to understanding the task - by definition you'll revisit 'square one' multiple times.

* * * * *

Incidentally, for anyone starting a business, ever wonder what the #1 resource is? It's not money. It's not a patented technology. It's not good 'starters' early on or good 'sustainers' later. It's a good executive team from day one, or you are doomed. As measured in growth and marketshare.

Every company has problems. By definition, without problems, one doesn't need management - nothing to manage! Right now, the Company in general has the 'right problem' - the growth problem. Out of all the problems in business, that's the problem to have. Did they print too many $L or land? Did we see a contraction recently? Good. That means the Company is testing things, and has sounded out the market. A very good sign.

I wouldn't get too wrapped up in the 'Tao' - it's clearly meant for in-house engineering purposes. And with 70% of the engineering resources tied up in sustaining engineering, it may mean the freedom to work on 'bug A' instead of 'bug B' rather than contemplation of fractal navel netherspaces.

Just my take on things.

Desmond, you rock. Nicely put. You're a scholar and a gentleman.

QFT! I hope someone links to your post anytime folks start busting on 'The Tao' in the future. I've been in a tech work station organized very similarly and it was the only possible way the company I was with could grow from 1000 to 10,000 effectively in a very small number of years.

True, it doesn't work as well with people who consider their employment 'just a job', but in a 'Tao' environment, they end up pushing brooms or vanished.

QFT indeed. More traditional business models seem to force team members to spend more time, energy and creativity developing and protecting their own positions in the hierarchy than actually contributing to any mutuals goals of the organization.

If the billing deptment keeps screwing up and not notifing cc holders and issues. Again the stepping stone will be a very dangious place for people to push off of to gain knowage being able to play here.

I'm curious how you can blame the fact that your CC company does not have a way for you to edit your own fraud protection, on LL?
And, I would like to know what you think LL can do about the policies of another company?

There are plenty of issues that LL should be brought to task for, I don't think we need to lay the Credit Cards companies failure in customer service on their steps

Using the same credit card for 3 years? will tell you that ........

well there are more then enough issues LLABS needs to address. But it use to be the e-mailed you when issues occured with your payment. But not anymore. I had to look at my account page to see a bright red - amount next to it. And from what CS is telling me it did not effect all cc users. it was a falure on their side and they just told me. Now If i was a user on sl i would agree with you. But frankly i can`t being here for 3 year same information and the lack of explain why cc failure happened and expect us to monitor the accounts ourself without and fee back from the billing people just tells me there is not strenght in the making sure accont holders or cc using cc on sl. I don`t knowhow long you been on sl but billing is not even close to being as good as it was in the past.

The so-called 'Tao' may work fine for you engineering and software types, but it sucks for customer service, to be honest.