So how would SL be the next internet??

In one of the other topics, it came up that in order to become the next internet, pricing and so would have to change. There was even a compare to facebook charging 1695 upfront

So I wonder... How many of you really do thing that SL environments are the next internet? A replacement for the World Wide Web? Because really, I don't. Am I getting to old for this shit, or too realistic?

I mean, what do most people do in the World Wide Web? As for the people I know, there are 4 different groups: Social networking, gathering information, playing games, and online chatting.

Now as for social networking, sites like facebooks and myspace are quite well suited. Platforms like Second Life are way too heavy for this purpose.
Gathering information in a SL like enviromentment seems kind of weird. I mean, what added value has an avatar in a 3d world when I want to know the latest stocks, or the latest news? Or to gather information about a paper I have to write? Exactly, none.
Playing games. Well SL is a kind of a game. An advanced one, where people can even make money if they want. And most certainly spend money But here, Sl is only one of the many games you can play, certainly not the future game platform.
Chatting online. Well there you can really find the extra value. Like MSN plusplusplus. You can see the avatar of the person you chat with, hump a few poseballs with them if you are on that level of chatting, share idea's, possibilities are endless.


So no, I do not see SL as the next internet. At most it can grow into the next MSN. But then Microsoft has to buy it Don't get me wrong, I love SL, but I really cannot see the point of view I am questioning here.

Sidenote: This might pretty well be my first resident question here

Greetings, Marcel

There will always be casual virtual interests. Will those always be facilitated by Second Life? No, probably not.

Eventually we will have a 3D Operating System interface that is as many sims as we have space for. It will never be the "internet," it'll lbe the OS.

My 2 cents:

If the rest of the population is like the town I live in, the people I used to work for, then the question would be:

"Whats an Internet?"


LOL! I almost shit a brick when I heard one woman talk about this 'new discovery' of hers called Craigslist.


*Gawd! I hate these people!!!!

A few years ago people thought the same about Newspapers: Why would I turn on a machine connect to the internet go to the newspaper page, wait for it to load and read it when I can have one right on my hands ready to read?
There's a funny picture somewhere with a guy on bed reading newspaper on bed with an old CRT monitor on his laps and a cup of coffee on the top. Now it's a reality, reading newspapers on internet is something very common.

During the 90's web pages were much more simpler: text and a few small pics. Then flash came and heavy videos came and if you compare the 90's WWW with the actual one you will see that is much more heavier and technology then wouldn't handle what we have now.

Now on linux we have 3D desktops, we can rotate our desktop, zoom screen, make a window "alpha", check this: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Yx9FgLr9oTk

Athough I understand your point, now there's a lot of eye candy and heavy stuff and connecting to second life to read a newspaper seems strange, but technology is changing, servers are getting smaller everytime, and internet speeds are increasing while new technologies are being developed.

When I had a dial-up connection it seemed almost impossible to me turn on my machine and see the google home page at the beginning now is an everyday thing.

But now I can imagine a future when we turn on our machines and have an avatar in a 3D enviroment.

Imagine if the Internet as it is today were owned by one single company... Microsoft, IBM, Cisco... (select your favorite one). Now imagine them creating content that only a select few computers or video cards could view. Next, visualize this company constantly runnning into database, performance, redundancy and general stability issues where you often coudln't even get on the internet... and if you were, you couldn't surf between sites. Then imagine that the browsers you use were constantly changing, sometimes in ways you don't like (oops, I guess that happens now

Now imagine if you were no longer able to get free web site space, and hosting your own internet servers is no longer possible. Imagine there being 0 competition in this area, so we are all at the mercy of the pricing decided on by this one company.

Thats a little of what it would be like if SL were the next Internet.

Will never happen as it is today. Ever.

Al Gore would be ashamed of himself if the current Internet worked the way SL does.

Al Gore invented the internet ..

Goreans a dominant RP sect on the 3D internet.


Coincidence?

Terminology: The internet is simply a network of computers, with various protocols for passing data between computers. The web is a protocol system that makes use of the network. There is nothing on the horizon to change either of those.

A do see a very big 3-D future on the internet. I even see it as *the* future. I don't see it being SL though. LL's part is to develope the 3-D system, with protocols to link 3-D systems, so that people and companies can have servers with grids that connect to the world grid (not the SL world grid), just like people and companies have webservers.

There is nothing on the web today, that won't be reproduced in a 3-D environment. We've just seen the first step in bringing webpages into the environment, for instance, and we are about to see the first step of a company (IBM) hosting 3-D environments, that connect to the 3-D world (SL at the moment), for its customers - the first step to grid hosting - the equivalent of web hosting.

I see a future of grid hosts, like we see web hosts today. Rather than webspace of various sizes, they will host parcels and sims for customers, and all connected to the 3-D world.

I see being able to go to my supermarket, walk around the aisles, pick things to buy, and have them delivered to me in RL. I see all kinds of businesses operating in the 3-D world, just as they do on the web.

Even now, we can all create grids using OpenSim, and connect them to other grids. Yesterday I created my first OpenSim sim on my computer. Today I intend to expand it to a small grid. It's just for fun, but it needn't be. I could then connect it to other grids, as others have done, and a small world begins to grow.

These are all early steps in the evolution of the 3-D future I see for the internet. LL is merely the originator, and won't be the controller. They are working with IBM at developing protocols for the linking of grids. All in all, I do see the 3-D environment as being the online future, rather than just a part of it.

Poor poor Al.

I think this SL will be the future wave of the internetz. Will it be the only way, no.
I can just imagine a more immersed situation than using my little ole laptop. Thinking of halo decks from Star Trek. Why not? I hope I am still kicking when it happens. Think about how wonderful it would be when we are in the last years of our lifes and want to live as we once were.
Just my opinion thou.

Your waiting for the day you can TP your actual physical self into SL?

I don't even see it much of an improvement over 2D Internet shopping. I shop online sometimes for the convenience, but I mostly use it to see what store has what, then I go to the store and get it. I still like to actually see and feel the item a lot of times when buying. But if that isn't the case, picking it off a 2d web page works fine. I honestly can't see myelf pushing a virtual shopping cart, with the one wheel that just keeps spinning, dodging people who are talking into headsets and not paying attention, stopping in the middle of the aisle to where you can't get around...............

Anyway, I'm sure we are headed for a future where you will be able to log into a computer and do practically anything without leaving the house, and meeting a live person. I hope that happens after I'm long gone, to be trthful.

Have you tried shopping for groceries in a website? I've done a few times, and it's very poor - and slow. It would be so much better to walk the aisles, see what I want, and choose it.

No. Food is one thing I prefer to buy in person.

I think there's scope for SL to become more integrated with the web, by making it easier to link in-world objects to websites or to display web pages in-world. I know this can be done already - I've experimented with it.

But when it comes down to it, would an RL person prefer to look up a bus time on the net or log in to SL and send an avatar to a virtual bus station to look for a timetable posted on a wall?

Let's try Amazon instead... walk around the aisles looking for a book but you can't find it, but oh wait, there's one of those helpful little service bots.

"Hello there!"
"I'm looking for 'The Joys of the 3D Web'"
"We have a special offer today on comic books. Would you like to hear more?"
"No, thanks. I'm looking for ..."

(another avie walks up)
"Hai! How u r? U very pretty"
"Thanls, but I'm trying to order a book"
"Ok... book good... we make sex now?"
"Err... no thanks"
(avie orbits you, you crash)

You go back to the Amazon sim, your attachments are up your behind, everything's gray and you move at a snails pace cause the sim is lagged but you're determined to find your book. You eventually find a sales person avie.

"Hi... I think you need a rebake, you're all 'missing image'"
*sighs* "Yes... ok... I'm looking for 'The Joys of the 3D Web'. Do you know where I can find it?"

Sales person opens their in-world 2D browser to look up the name of the book and directs you to the proper aisle where you eventually find a copy of the book after a few extra minutes of searching.

---

How exactly is that better than the current website model of simply typing in the name of a book and clicking "Add to cart"?

I'm getting Deja Vu. I'm sure we've done this thread already. Same cast too.

Yep:

/327/00/236751/1.html

Your performance the last time was so compelling, and the public demand for an encore was just so overwhelming.........

Brenda,
Good to see I am not the only one getting too old for this shit


It might pretty well be that within 10 years we are all steering our little avatar around a virtual store, but I doubt it. I can see added value in pictures, video, and even 3d presentations (like many mobile phone websites already implement). But I cannot see the added value of the shoppingcart Brenda is pushing around.
When I look at 2 websites I am a regular visitor on, what would the added value be:
- Bol.com: I already see the book/record covers, and the content. what good would a prim-like presentation do?
- iTunes.com: Imagine seeing an avarar singing the song I want to buy or so?

On the other hand there are some valuable applications to be thought of:
- Book a seat in a stadium, by walking through it and choose a free spot
- Same for cinema seats

Don't get me wrong, of course it can be done and it has its benefits. But I just don't see it as a replacement for the WWW as we have now, simply because it adds no value for most websites.
The fact IBM invests in it doesn't mean it is going to get very popular to the mainstream public. Who uses Lotus Notes at home or has a Websphere portal server on his system-i at home? But it does mean it is going to have value at some places of the market, and it will.

In my opinion some kind of grid will integrate into the WWW, so that certain parts of the web will be 3D. Sites like google, or wikipedia, will stay 2D though. Simply because they absolutely add no value by going 3D. The search in SL is 2D as well by the way

Greetings Marcel

flirt!

In the future ...

As the internet advances ...

More and more people will buy things from all over the world and have them shipped to their homes ...

Eventually companies will recognize patterns in what people buy, realize trends of whats being shipped where ...

They will come up with a revolutionary idea!

They will estimate demand and *PRE-SHIP* all this stuff and house it in a central location near where people live.

The people wont have to go online but instead go to this place and can buy the stuff right then and there.

They will call it ..

A STORE!

Let's try RL too... walk around the aisles looking for a book but you can't find it, but oh wait, there's one of those unhelpful store staff.

*silent staff*
"Hello, I'm looking for 'The Joys of the 3D Web'"
"Sorry that's not my part of the store"

*you walk up to another member of staff*
"Can I help you?"
"Thanks, I'm trying to order a book"
"Which one are you after"
"'The Joys of the 3D Web'"
"Never heard of it, sorry, would do a search for you, but the damn computer isn't working right now"

Darn! Finally I start a thread of my own and it has already been done. How is that.... I even saw that during the half hour I needed for my last posting, somebody said about the same as I did. Some days I think I'd rather work during office hours, then post....

I can see a 3d system for the internet.. I just can't see Second Life being it. It's entirely too limited by both it's creators and by it's users to be able to function in a reliable way.