Bill Gates Predicted Second Life Addiction in 1996

I don't know whats sadder, the fact Bill Gates predicted it or the fact I have a copy of that book.

It's interesting that you attribute Bill's "foresight" towards SecondLife, but you also have to take into consideration that ActiveWorlds was up and running in 1996 and you could already do all of the things he mentions in there. In that light the quote makes him appear as if he simply hasn't done his research properly...

I've been watching what I believe is MS's move toward a 3D interactive internet for a while. I even went out on a limb about it - http://blog.rebang.com/?p=50

My point is not that he predicted virtual worlds, but that they would have an addictive quality to them.

P2

Or, at least, someone briefs him on it.

K.W.Jeter predicted this in Doctor Adder in 1972, but it didn't get published until 1984, so the credit for the "discovery" of VR addiction goes to...

Vernor Vinge, who predicted this in True Names in 1981, but most people haven't read this and give credit to...

William Gibson, who predicted it again in Neuromancer in 1984. And on and on and on, with people coming up with terms like Virtual AIDS for the loss of muscle tone due to spending all your time in VR.

The story that allegedly inspired Second Life, Snow Crash, came out in 1993. Yep, VR addiction there as well.

David Brin came up with an alternative kind of VR that avoids the problem in NatuLife ® in 1994.

Gates was WAY late.

Also, Dream Park, while using holograms in the "real world" as opposed to outright VR, is also very similar... and also considered addicting! (It's also implied the "home version" of the games the Dream Park fans played were like VR.)

Spot on.

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I don't think it's even a question of "is this a reality" - it's more getting it implemented properly and by whom. I'm of the opinion VRML probably got it right, despite being several years too early.

Time will tell.

When I recall Doctor Adder, the thing that comes to my mind is.... uh, forget it.

Very cool excerpt, Phoenix! As much as Gates rubs me the wrong way, I must admit, he's got a hell of a ghost writer. I wonder if he borrowed stories from Kramer...

-Flip

You've given me an idea for a *great* Lower Body Texture.

and even st:tng had holodeck addictions... i believe poor geordi was featured in an episode or two for it! (though riker probably used up more bandwidth)

do you think he ever heard of sl?

I believe we could use his brain hehe

Barkley, I thought. Different engineer.

Just keep that away from me, thank you very much.

Anyone read Tad Williams' Otherland Series (1996-2001)? Though the series is supposed to be built off the idea of a metaphorical river I have a feeling Tad read at least a few books on that list.

Ask him. I mean ask his av. Well that's assuming that he has one I mean I guess well maybe if he even plays Second Life which is anybody's guess right?

Virtual worlds existed very long ago in science fiction. The Time Lords in Doctor Who invented the Matrix Panopticon, for example. This was in The Deadly Assassin (1975?). I also read an Arthur C. Clarke book from the 1950's which details a future MMORPG set in a series of underground caves.

what about the 1st edition of the book? In 1995. he glossed over the internet and didnt give it much attention. mentioned it 7 times in 300 pagez.

with egg on his face, he released the 2nd edition which parroted stuff other peeps had been sayin about the internet being the future.

billy boys a great biz man but no visonary.

That's some prediction, considering that humans will get addicted to anything remotely enjoyable, and that 3D games/worlds were around well before 1996
Bill Gates is the new Galileo... never had an original thought in his life, constantly stealing other people's ideas, and acquiring great fame by riding on everyone else's shoulders.

Yo, whassup with all the Bill-bashing?

Yeah, I'm a fan of Microsoft products (and not ashamed to admit it) - and yeah, for some strange reason I can't help but admire a student lifting himself up to one of the wealthiest men in the world through good technical skills and even better business acumen.

So I'm biased - but in that excerpt, Bill neither states nor implies that he came up with the idea, or predicted it himself. (Phoenix said that, not Bill). It appears to me that he was doing what a large majority of non-fiction authors do: Take some information that someone else has thought of or discovered - perhaps adding your own slant, perhaps not - and putting it into your book which is going to reach readers that might otherwise not have had access to the original sources.

Most for-public-consumption non-fiction books follow this pattern - and as long as the author does not claim it is his own personal work no-one has a problem. Unless it's "the eeevil M$", eh?

Where have you been for the past 10 years, everyone hates MS.
Bill Gates technical skills involve buying someone's crappy pet project "QDOS - Quick and Dirty Operating System" and marketing it as a production development environment, thereby delaying computing progress by 10 or 20 years, until they finally realized those UNIX people weren't such crackpots after all, and decided to make their own OS more like UNIX.
The last thing Bill coded was a Basic interpreter used in the TRS-80 ROM, I believe, which isn't all that surprising since he never made it past freshman, something that really shows in Microsoft's history of completely braindead software architecture
As for business, the only way they got where they were was by leeching off IBM's success and their endless pool of money, becoming a monopoly by luck rather than merit.
Even their much-touted user-friendliness advantage only came relatively late in the game, when Apple was already doing it, and both of them just leeched off Xerox innovations.

The Altair Basic interpreter, hardly the last thing he coded, but rather one of the first - in collaboration with Paul Allen and Monte Davidoff, is a truly beautiful piece of code.

Try to find the annotated disassembly somewhere - read through it - and then come back with comments on his technical aptitude.

As a software developer/architect myself, I haven't always agreed with MS's architectural decisions (and I absolutely abhor .Net ) but I choose to develop on the Windows platform every chance I get.

Perhaps "leeching off" a successful company's success and money actually is good business acumen - and I never saw IBM complaining - quite the opposite in-fact.

Anyway - I'm starting to feel too preachy - so... I dunno... whatever.

Not surprising since ministers have been preaching how addictive everything is (Since before The internet even) and to throw everything out except a bible.

I wasn't bashing Gates, if he reads Science Fiction that could only be a good thing.

The image of Gates, as someone who made it on his own skill and brilliance, however... that could do with some bashing. Gates the icon, as opposed to Gates the man, is so far out of control that I'm astounded anyone can take "him" seriously. For example... that part about him starting out as a student: if an average person managed to retire where Gates started, they would be doing well.