Virtual worlds in 2013 & 2048

Wont that be fun when viruses and worms can transverse from and to our pc's instead of stupid birds. When do you think avatars will start puking and getting zits?

2013: President Clinton declares a "war on grief" after a virtual 911. Hunt is on for the nefarious bandit known as "plastic duck."
2048: RoboPhilip created.

Your very description sounds antiseptic to me. Void of individuality, personal choice, and conformist. Even the most optimistic visions I've seen sound very "meh". A bunch of beige people in the world, all wearing the same clothes, probably with ugly shoes, all doing the same thing, never leaving their homes,sitting infornt of a TV screen, never touching another human.........

*If you can your washing over here, I can do it for you. I'll be doing the laundry later today.

Assuming the real world isn't changed in some drastic way, my guesses are:

2013 - Virtual worlds will basically be recognisable as developments of what we see today. By then I'd expect that there will be at least one on-line world with graphics as good as Gran Torismo 4 - real photo realism (or should that be 'film realism'). Avatars too will be photo-realistic. People and organisations will probably have 3D webspace by then but it won't totally replace 2D. For instance, if you want bus timetable, it will always be easier to get one on-screen than to visit a virtual bus station and wander round until you find one on the wall!

However, depending upon how 3D worlds affect society, I could imagine some sort of censorship being introduced, like limiting the realism of avatars or whatever.

2048 - By then we will probably to be able to create virtual beings that can think and act for themselves. So you'd log in to SL or whatever to meet your avatar rather than take control of them. The avatar might be in a bad mood and tell you to go away!!

Nanomachines are supposed to make us beautiful. If the Grey Goo doesnt get to us first. We already travel in tubes however in Second Life. The internet's a 'series of tubes'!

Virtual bus station. Now THAT will be the bane of human existence.

In 2013 Either things will be the same or worse.
The worse:
It might out of need to make SL only accessible for those with most expensive high
end computers.
Linden Labs to gained needed capitol to continue will be pushing more high end products
and only allow those who are doing business in SL who've bought special business
joining fees that cost the of year fees of island plus percentage of total lindens you earned.
Prices for every thing will go up.
A lot of residents will be furious and leave.
Leaving only the extreme wealthy, the truly addicted who have money to pay the high fees.
By 2048 Linden Labs will be no more, new technology and new types of virtual worlds will
emerge but only for those who can afford the technology.
The best:
In 2013 billions of residents in SL will be playing, Linden Labs will profit highly from those
in community who voluntarily improved SL for free.
Thousands of brightest and smartest residents will be making enough L to support themselves in real world.
Including myself, with my vast resources though I create non-profit company that helps creative, bright but often forgotten residents of the world become self-supporting, thus
improving their lives.
Worst: I will be Api risk flagged because I am transgendered, lose all that I earned and my non-profit business will go bankrupt in sense of utter failure FD Spark will
commit sucide and never be heard from again.
In 2048, Things will improve, my art and the memory of what I tried to do will still be here
and was a catalyst for change.
Worse, No one will remember and everything will be same.

Charles Stross recently wrote a novel called "Halting State", about a virtual world bank robbery, but being 2018, has as much impact as cleaning out Citibank today. Im still reading his novel Accelerando while trying to avoid a brain bleed, but i look forward to reading it. Stross is always a fun read--often a single page has so much info the book has to be put down.

http://www.amazon.com/Halting-State-Charles-Stross/dp/0441014984

Accelerando is also released via Creative Commons (so its free)
http://www.accelerando.org/ highly recommended for anyone who wants to see the wildest vision of the near future.

Stross spoke in Second Life a couple weeks ago, but it was during office hours, so i missed it.

I think the interest of IBM, Sun, etc in Second Life is by that 2013 mark to allow for collaboration of offices, i.e. have the Bangalore guys working right next to you in Sunnyvale or wherever. Put on your spec's and join the meeting in Dubai, throw up a sub-virtual-virtual environment of your virtual machines running other virtual machines inside a virtual environment, etc

The real money is in utilitarianism. Wherever MSOffice will be in 2013 (thats a horrible thought). They want to find a way to get the Chief Officer's into second life. Linkedin got them into social networks... well see

In 2013, both Mono and Physical Avatar will have their sixth "coming along nicely" anniversaries. And scripts will still be unable to rotate an unseated avatar, nor interact with clothing and skins. But Havoc 4 will be re-introduced to the main grid, after the two preceding roll-backs, with only a temporary restriction of 4m on maximum prim dimensions.

By 2048, the incidence of alpha-sorting error will be reduced by as much as 20% under ideal conditions.

My prediction:

Virtual worlds will, likely, bifurcate, as Second Life communities are tending to now. On the one hand you will have ones used primarily as an extension of real-life socialisation; on the other hand you will have ones used primarily for gaming and role-play.

The ideas that, for example, driving a snowmobile in a virtual world has any thrill value outside from a potential racing game it implements; or that a person may adopt an empowered role with regard to other real people in a virtual world (ie, the halfway house between RP and RL interaction); will become universally recognized as marketing hype. To believe them will be as ridiculous as believing that drinking Red Bull will really give you wings.

Second Life will continue to exist and to support both of the bifurcated sides n a similar way to now. If Second Life is defeated it will only be by a similar world with equal flexibility but reduced technical issues.

Adult material on Second Life will either remain the same or be wiped out entirely by legal wrangling. If it is wiped out entirely it will immediately migrate to unofficial OpenSim hosting.

Role-playing areas will begin more strongly to resemble traditional online RPGs, with scripted experience systems and most importantly NPCs. LL or another host will add official support for "bot" avatars that can be scripted in-world in LSL or an LSL variant, which will be used as NPCs.

LL or another host will develop a program which, given a webcam photo of yourself in appropriate conditions and "click on your nose" style guide points provided by the user, creates an avatar from the RL you. It will become de facto amongst the RL social communities.

Hopefully vehicles will be able to cross postcode boundries without crashing

War stimulates Goverments to innovation certainly , but not the the general population

They are now doing this within their own companies. Been going on for 10 years for atleast IBM i know for a fact. IBM workers work or have been working with in their own homes for 12 years now. but mixing the companies well

by 2013:
Google will rule them all


sidenote: war only benefits the rich, as they are the only ones who make a profit from it.
have you ever wondered why there is always some sort of war during a depression/recession?

exploration trumps war for technical advancement of the general populace

Africa will be one big desert. All the animals will be extinct or living in zoos. We'll only be able to "interact" with them via a virtual Africa. The global population will be 15-20 billion and we'll all be eating rice. Beef will be outrageously expensive because range lands will have been converted to farms; only the super rich will be able to eat meat on a regular basis. We'll all be speaking either English or Chinese. Mega-houses will be converted into multi-family apartment buildings. Britney Spears will release her 10th "come-back" album. Petroleum based vehicles will be extinct. Iraq and Iran will still be a big pain in the ass. Americans will be either a) an average of 295 pounds or b) lots thinner because the vast amount of food will no longer be available.

While researchers at LL and other virtual worlds are working on fixes, updates and new features, there'll be other tekkies elsewhere looking at all the current virtual worlds and what their strengths and shortcomings are. Armed with that knowledge they'll be involved in work on the next generation of virtual worlds. If SL is "Lycos" and Kaneva is "HotBot", then someone somewhere is probably working on the "Google" of virtual worlds - and I don't necessarily mean Google themselves!

Many innovators don't last long-term, being overtaken by newcomers who improve on the original ideas. But LL can take heart that Daimler-Benz is still with us, and Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz built the very first automobiles!