A lot of parallels to another industry?

Some people around here might remember this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_%28magazine%29

For something like a decade it was *the* thing to read, to keep up with the exploding, quirky field of computing.

Of course, most people in the late 70's didn't have a lot of use for computing. That was the stuff of automatic billing, or spaceships, and beyond that it was just a quirky hobby.

Some of those geek hobbyists didn't simply call each other on the phone, they used something called "e mail" instead.

Obviously, while there were a lot of "neat tricks" and maybe some video games, computing wasn't terribly useful at home; a diversion at best.

Some people wrote programs, and you might have even heard of someone "selling" a program. What a wild idea! And then there was that obscure company Micro Soft trying to sell some kind of Basic programming language.

* * * * *

So now here we are in the same kind of era, but in a different field.

Regular folks don't have much use for all this 3D internet oddness; it's quirky, makes a good news item now and then but is otherwise not part of every day life.

I still have to wonder: are any of the next Micro Softs among us?

Meh. I want to know who's the Eolas.

Interesting topic Desmond.

About 20 years ago the engineering firm I worked for ventured into 3D CAD modeling.
To undertake this high-tech task we had to have top notch computers. So we purchased new 286 machines with huge 40meg hard drives. We even spent the extra $1500 to upgrade from 4 to 8 megs of RAM.

I couldn't wait to brag about the new computers to the few computer savvy friends I had.
They were impressed of course but we all agreed that normal people would never have a need for computers that powerful.

What seems outrageous today will be commonplace before long.

I'm not very tekky but....

We already have Google street views.

I can imagine a digital video camera that records the exact position and direction of each frame - feed the info into a computer and, whizz-bang, an instant 3D replica forms of the place you've just been - without having to build it or texture it yourself!

Uh oh... my front yard is full of physical leafs... all blowing around and differently textured from red to gold right now... watch out for the lag!

I never said there wouldn't be lag!!!

Actually, I was only thinking about static objects. You'd have to be very careful you didn't get like a 5 metre long stretched virtual cat because Tiddles walked past while you were doing the video!

The 3D internet remains stubbornly 2D on my monitor. If SL became stereoscopic, I'd pay to see that. And if it became immersive too, I'd probably pay even more.

i agree des...hubby used to work in computers beginning in the 70's and has said for a long time that his current watch has more power than the entire computing system they used to house in a separate bldg that took tons of a/c to cool. more than one company went under believing that home computers would never catch on so they went another direction....DEC, Wang, etc etc etc.

this whole interactive internet is some pretty exciting stuff to me....even if we are beta testers at best...

Not to mention you might actually have to rake them up!!!

Proper 3D (different input to each eye) is already out there, just not for SL in a good inexpensive format.

"Augmented reality" will likely be the big thing. That's putting things like floating names above real life people, and menu popup windows in front of restaurants. And the ever popular GPS gadgets to find your way.

Augmented reality works by overlaying a graphics display using glasses or some similar gadget on top of the real world you see normally.

Of course. I'm here. Micro Soft was just Bill Gates initially, and I am just me initially. I think the parallel is obvious

In fact, I'm in better standing than Bill Gates was because there isn't anyone else called Phil Deakins, so who I am can't be mistaken, whereas there was another famous Bill Gates from Seattle before the MS one came along. He was better known as Swiftwater Bill of the Klondyke gold rush, except he wasn't a gold rusher - he was a prospector there, along with other prospectors, when the big strike was made, and he became a Klondyke King - one of the few who dug up a fortune in gold.

oo we were just talking about AR inworld!

Check out what people are doing with the iphone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgXzdUb_fug&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBI5HwitBX4&feature=related

jump around the other related videos. Kinda neat.

Anybody else remember Popular Mechanics predicting that by the year 2000 computers would only take up a normal sized residential house? What a technological advancement they were predicting.

I started using computers when I was shown a Radio Shack TRS-80 color computer with a black and white TV and a tape deck. Had to turn the thing on and do something called computer programming in some obscure language called BASIC. Wow.

Then the first computer I owned was a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A that was a discontinued model, my parents bought it for $50 at the local Navy Exchange, as a Christmas gift. A whopping 16K of built-in memory on this thing. Yee-ha.

Next summer I worked all summer picking strawberries, and bought a Commodore 64. Oh I'm in the big-time now, it's got 64K of total memory! And ooooh I got a disk drive for it too! Had a 300 baud modem I bought, so I could use the telephone with this thing too, that was cool. I started calling up computer bulletin boards locally with that, what a concept that was. When I wasn't playing Racing Destruction Set, which on more than one occasion took the phone off the hook and kept it tied up while I was playing it. OOPS.

Then a friend came over one day with a 1200 baud modem in tow and showed me that thing. Wow was that blazingly fast, it had that text just screaming in on the monitor (yes, a dedicated monitor now, not a TV set!)

Compare that with moving up to a Macintosh later with a 14.4K modem, then dealing with Windows 3.1, Windows 95, etc., modems doing 26K, 56K, DSL...... Been a lot of fun watching things change over the years.

Second Life, to me, is another part of the technological progression, and I believe it will, together with other similar (yes, and better) systems, become more mainstream as time goes by. Strap yourselves in and hang on, it's likely to be an exciting ride!

It's going to be a very exciting ride.


Just imagine, when all of the SL types make it "big" in the real world...



*slips into a dream and sees the news headlines...*


"Phil's Low Prim REAL Furniture ~ no assembly required! Like Ikea but with less parts!"

"With the new strict copyright laws of 2020, Stroker copyrights sex itself, goes for IPO"

"United States deficit is now $L 100000000000000000, Linden Research prints more."

"Kim Jong Il joins the grid, test fires some angry animations and threatens to nuke Ahern."

Rose-coloured glasses!

Is your partner old and ugly?
Wear these glasses and see them as young and beautiful!

(A bit like) avatar imposters in SL, there could be people imposters in RL.



Ear implants!

Someone's whiney voice makes your teeth grate?
Voice altering tech in this ear implant makes them sound sexy!

I remember what happened to Byte magazine. They quit printing source code listings, turned away from the geeks, and pretty soon the articles were nothing more than occasional distractions from the ads. For a while. They apparently didn't realize you couldn't sell ads without readers. And you need content to get the readers.

Lesson there for Linden Lab.

Good old Byte magazine. I enjoyed reading Chaos Manor.

I did at the start. When Jerry's "Mad Friend Maclean" died and nobody was correcting his gaffes it quickly lost its attraction for me.

That's brilliant, Conifer.

Computerised beer goggles?

Ok, so, have you ever wondered why there are more librarians in SL than you can shake a stick at? (If you haven't noticed, SL is crammed with librarians -- and with libraries.)

Well, I'm not a librarian, but I'm in the "book biz," so I know a few SL librarians.

Apparently, library and information science people are still kicking themselves for not seeing that the internet was going to be the new "big thing" back in the late 80s and early 90s; as a result, they failed to get in on the ground floor, and the tool didn't develop quite the way they thought it should.

Determined not to make the same mistake again, librarians have decided that virtual worlds are the "next" internet, and they are here in force to make sure that IT, at least, develops their way. Or so I have been told.

So there you are. Just ask a librarian.

Was just thinking today how awesome librarians are - honest.

If they pledge to help form the future of virtual worlds we can all count ourselves lucky.

As for the next big development from virtual worlds, so much will depend upon what can be implemented.

I had an idea aaages ago for tv on demand but couldn't figure out how to implement it; youtube sidestepped the copyright and other nuisances and just let anyone upload anything. Bingo. Lol

Sometimes simple/illegal wins over complicated and proper.

considering the success and gomming of slx and the fact that everyone loves talking about 2d apps on a prim, i reckon the whole 3d thing is merely eye-candy. there are no future microsofts in this biz. and if there were it sure as hell wouldnt be linden lab.

Oh I think if someone made a family-friendly way to teleconference using avatars and made it only that, it would have instant success. Not everyone loves web cam.

talk pa through an install of sl, find out his hardware actually does run sl, then teach him how to chat with me... over the phone?!?
i wouldnt even dream of trying.