How does SL move beyond a private online service?

In all this talk of the metaverse, what it is, what it isn't, the one thing that is obvious is ultimately, it won't be the product of one company. Just as there is no central company for the web itself, the future vision for a virtual world like SL (since I am sick of the overused metaverse term - it's right up there with metrosexual) has to be decentralized for it to truly become global and ubiquitous, and for it to have the relevance that the web does.

Long before you had the web, private online services such as AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve - even smaller local BBS services had elements of what would later become parts of the web. AOL was arguably the most influential (and the only one to have survived intact, though its popularity and relevance are waning). Many of the concepts introduced or perfected on its service are mainstays of online life.

How does SL move from an AOL-like centralized model with one controlling company to a broader, distributed, decentralized one? Is it even possible? I know, people will point to open source projects and the like, but they face some major hurdles as well. Can something like SL truly be decentralized with no company driving it? What about security? Dispute resolution and griefing? What about a virtual economy? Does that go out the window in favor of real world ecommerce? What does this decentralized SL look like and why would LL want that?

The first move has to be opening up the code that makes it work.

After all, taking your example of the web, HTML isn't a proprietary code, is it?

But somehow I can't see LL doing that. Not after the financial and human investment in the development...

The only other chance I can see is if LL develops code that allows distributed sims - which has been hinted at - and continues to act as a portal, thus preserving some sort of cashflow to compensate for their investment, while leaving the major hardware, maintenance and bandwidth costs to third parties.

But that's not really what you are talking about, is it?

I think that the decentralized meataverse [sic] looks like the internet. Put another way, aside from builds, what can you do in SL that isn't already covered by some internet service? Thinking out loud, SL capability vs. RL capability:

1. chat :: IM, IRC
   
2. crafting animations, vItems, etc. :: work for Pixar, make freeware, sell t-shirts
   
3. make vehicles :: work for Grumann or Ford
   
4. clothing design :: clothing design
   
5. terraforming :: Army Corps of Engineers
   
6. make SL e-commerce site :: Amazon
   
7. fly :: be born on Krypton
   

Obviously not exhaustive, but you get the the idea.

The difference between the left hand side and the right hand side is that the left hand side is entertainment and hobbyish while the right side is work. Given this, and I don't wish to make people apopleptic, but SL is a game, not a metaverse. "Tis more immersive than much else, but I don't see a whole lot of difference. Put another way, people making real incomes via SL are doing the same sort of work that they might do in a non-virtual space.

Has SL created new markets for things like vClothes? Sure. Is this a difference in kind or just degree? Dunno.

I think the basis could be a B2B model that allows communities and companies to develop their own 'offgrid' presence. The option to intergrate into the 'main grid' would be optional, a literal 'back-garden-gate to access the big field'

One of the current barriers to entry, is the fact that the front end of SL is so, well, SL. The idea would be to allow people the creation of their own 'non-brand-SL' front end that utilised the same functionality of the current system. SL and LL would still be present, it would be the 'common carrier' under the guise of Linden Labs inside (intel)

1) The advantage would be that the community/company would be able to have their surnames, and clusters of sims; developing a sense of real 'place' for thats community. Island sims, would be more like Continent Sims (100+).

2) External content and momentum would be generated by niche groups - imagine if Startrek.com's million+ members could be inspired to create their own closed community? Of course, with the option we could all visit if you observed their rules and uniforms (would they make us all wear red shirts?).

3) This would also go a long way to help in the 'commercial content' discussion, this was recently raised in a few discussions.

4) New Contintent Sims, could even come to our current sim structure to source products/service. Heck, this could be the dream a lot of ppl have to work SL fulltime!

just ideas....

Oh, and you need to get Google to design the asset server

Interoperability with other companies' 3D worlds?

In order for Secondlife to go metaversal, LL needs to let people host their own environments; in LAN setting if they cannot afford the bandwidth, and online if they can. People may find that even on a broadband cable connection or Fios connection they can only host 1-5 visitors instead of 20 or so. Many SL'ers, myself included, would be entirely happy with that. At first, this quasi-metaverse would be a loosely connected web of independant pocket worlds, and many of them would be password protected in order to protect privacy or bandwidth costs; however, as the overall consumer-level bandwidth increases over the next 5 years, people will be able to gradually open up their private universes to the masses; even if a privately operated grid can never host as many people as the main Linden grid.

1. Let people host their own grids, either offline (LAN) or online, and work out the QOS details of how to afford the bandwidth themselves.

2. Come up with social definitions to describe the variety of experiences one is likely to encounter in these new areas. "PG" and "M" just don't cut it. I want to know if I'm allowed to be a Nazi skinhead in one, or if I'll need to defend myself with a scripted arsenal of weaponry in another, or if I'll be punished for copyright violations in a third. Assume that a percentage of people will use this technology for the least socially-redeeming behavior possible, and maintain a 3rd-party (well I guess it'd be 1st-party) ranking/rating of these new grids so that people can go to the areas that interest them, and avoid the ones that do not.

3. Implement a degrees-of-separation feature like a buddy list so that people can search for new areas to visit, and that operators of grids can limit their areas to people that they know (or leave them open to the public, if they choose).

seriously!

You shouldn't descriminate against people because of train fetishes.

By licensing sotware. AOL worked best as an ISP when there were five ways to get online. AOL survives today because it's moved from being an ISP into a cable provider, adopting all the infrastructure that TimeWarner and Turner had established before them. Second Life works great because it's the only one of it's kind right now. In the future, Second Life is going to have to adopt a new paradigm with a built-in infrastructure if it wants to last.

I keep pointing to open source -- and let me clear something up... There's a difference in GNU, BSD, or GPL licensing your software and opening the code up to developers. I don't think (anymore anyway, I'll have to check my old posts to see when/if my opinion changed) Second Life should loose their code along the lines of Linux and Emacs. I just think they should give developers more access to the code, so developers can do stuff with the client. Anyhow...

I keep pointing to open source, a client API, and a fully working XML-RPC system because such things would give developers more possibilities to build these infrastructures. Compare something like MSN Terraserver and Google Maps? Why do so few people play with Terraserver, yet so many play with Google Maps? The obvious answer is that no one likes "teh ebil" Microsoft, but I think it's because Google Maps is more "open" for developers. A lop of what Google Maps did before the API was JavaScript based -- AJAX as the kids say -- which meant hackers could get into the code, publish their findings, and then others could build upon that.

Second Life is MSN Terraserver right now. It's a fabulous technology that's hidden behind the client, running on the big, bad "grid" right now. Sure, we know what the Lex/Yacc files look like for LSL, but that's not much more than knowing what Terraserver's SOAP envelopes should look like. It doesn't offer any more ability than what the service gives you.

Second Life needs an infrastructure. While they can't likely afford to go out and buy Sony Online Entertainment to get one, they can have one handed to them much like Google has so many tools and code bits given to them for free: simply by giving developers the means to play around with the system beyond what's intended.

No, but neither can Microsoft, Apple, Google, or Nintendo. As a company, Linden Lab doesn't need to dissolve into a decentralized entity. What it needs to do is give people -- users, developers, etc. -- a reason to keep using it. Yahoo recently bought Konfabulator because they saw that one aspect of the future of the Internet is going to be desktop widgets that read RSS and Atom feeds, giving you stock quotes, etc. so you don't have to load a browser and go grab that manually. Apple recently put a Podcast reader/grabber into iTunes because they realized that if they wanted people to keep using their MP3 client, and by extension their MP3 store and MP3 players, they needed to better accomodate people who listened to Podcasts.

Neither Yahoo nor Apple said, "Well, things have progressed beyond our initial business model, we fold." What they both said is, "Hey, people want to get information in various ways, let's accomodate that better so people will use our stuff." Linden Lab doesn't do this, and they need to start. They don't need to decentralize wholly, they need to realize, "Hey, the Internet is already decentralized, we'd better make sure people want to keep connecting with us."

It comes down to that. Right now people use Second Life because it's the best way to sell virtual land, sell virtual items, dress up as a Furry, run around as a Tiny, make superhero costumes, and have avatars that carry around big, stylized hammers. When something else comes along that offers the same thing, Second Life needs features that will keep people from just migrating because of better graphics. They need to act like Yahoo and iTunes, and start thinking about ways to let people in Second Life connect to the world outside. If a new service comes along that, and it will let me both read blogs in-world and carry around a stylized hammer, I'm more inclined to leave Second Life because I want to read blogs in-world. However, if SL offered me the ability now to read blogs and carry a hammer, even if the other service offered the same features, I'd be inclined to stay with SL because I was comfortable here.

There's a reason people get Microsoft's latest OS, there's a reason people still use Windows 98, and there's a reason people still play ActiveWorlds: because those do what people need them to do. Linden Lab really, really needs to sit down and say, "In five years, will Second Life still do what people need it to do?"

You know how you don't like train fetishists? I'm the same way about people who call the SL economy "virtual." SL's economy is a subset of the world economy. Stop saying it's virtual. People -- users and SL -- need to stop treating it like a "virtual" item, and talk about it like it's real. Think about it like it's real. How would Paypal work if they treated electronic funds like a "virtual" thing. I know you've made money from SL, so you know it's not all "virtual," but that's a big problem Linden Lab and Second Life has right now.

People -- Linden Lab and users -- see Second Life as this thing completely seperate from the Internet. I fully believe that Linden Lab sees Second Life as this little island off by itself, with a couple of bridges called GOM and SecondLife.com that connect it to the Internet; at least that's how they act. And as long as they see it like that, security issues and dispute resolutions aren't going to be taken any more seriously than someone losing a powerful item in World of Warcraft.

Philip once told me that thinking of SL as a game or a tool was limiting what it could be, and that SL was a world. I think just the opposite from watching the blog-o-sphere, Podcasts, and such. Thinking of SL as a world unto itself limits you from asking questions like, "How can I use this to communicate?" or "What new ideas can I come up with if I connect SL with the web?" Linden Lab needs to either stop thinking of Second Life as a world unto itself or it needs to start a new service that better connects a second grid to the rest of Internet. Second Life could easily stay like it is until the heat death of the universe, but Linden Lab will not grow as a company if SL, as a world, is their only vision.

I heard a speaker from PopTech2004 a while back -- thanks to iTunes -- talking about how to survive, people have to connect with each other. The people who fail to connect ultimately get depresed and die. Linden Lab needs to start thinking more about how they can connect with other people better, how they can let their users connect better.

Going back to AOL, part of what they did to survive as an ISP was letting AOL users connect to people outside of AOL. You could use AIM to chat with non-AOL'ers. You could email people outside of AOL. You could visit non-AOL webpages. AOL users could read newsgroups. If Second Life is going to mature, it has to connect the same way. Linden Lab has to take security and the like into consideration, but they cannot let those become excuses for an insular world.

I don't think it looks much different. It's still a virtual landscape, we'll probably still be using the first Havok engine, but the lag time might be a bit worse. You have islands that run off 128k uplinks, some will be on old P3 Linux boxes at colleges, people will have websites that offer varying flavors of clients, and you'll be able to be in-world and in #secondlife in the same client. I think, much like the Internet now, it'll be what you don't see that's the change. You don't see all the IM's between people, you don't read all the Podcasts on the net, you don't visit every blog in the world, but all of those exist, and all of those affect the life, longevity, and strength of the Internet.

HTML isn't proprietary, but it is a standard. You can invent your own TAGS but don't expect browsers to render it. There are certainly no secrets hidden in LSL, just check out the Wiki. Likewise, Java is proprietary and it hasn't slowed it's adoption (except for the hardline FSF folks).

However, Web browsers, the client software that renders the underlying HTML were very proprietary with the explosion of the web. There was also plenty of proprietary web servers before Apache (Open Source) put most of them out of business.

I've spent a lot of time with Open Source software, and was a volunteer at the Free Software Foundation for a while. Open Source is not the magic bullet here. There are many virtues of Open Source, but just Open Sourcing the current SL client will do little more than what happened when Netscape Navigator was Open Sourced... namely 2 years of being on the technological fringe and a complete re-write of the codebase.

Open Sourcing the underlying SL protocol seems like a difficult task, but ultimately if LL is interested in 3rd party developers creating unique SL server and client solutions this will have to be done.

Rather than thinking of the future of the Metaverse as the web, why not think of it like P2P. Napster (the good one) provided a central directory for users interested in sharing music, and many other P2P project have succeeded in decentralizing that directory since. You can set your pc up to be a file server on a gnutella network but your still on one common network, one that could indeed introduce micropayments.

However, the Grokster decision must have really thrown a wrench into the distributed SL plan. Currently LL can remove content from the world when they get a cease and desist or other DMCA request. That task becomes much more difficult in a decentralized (either web'esque or P2P) architecture. I think this is the first hurdle to leap. One wonders if Sir Tim Berners-Lee would be thrown in jail, had he invented the web in 2005.

In my opinion, the best way would be to establish a second program known as "Second Lite," which would use the existing Second Life client and connect PCs as sims in a peer-to-peer format.


This would:

1) Offer a true "offline" building option (assuming LL is brave enough to allow local content which, realistically, isn't all that bad to debug IMO)

2) Allow LL to begin developing the standards mentioned in several of Philip's "visionary posts"

3) Offer a testing pool for certain ideas that would otherwise blow up on the testing/main grid

4) Give LL added advertising space for Second Life. "Like this and want more? Try the real grid for -"


Anyway, it's just a pipedream I've had. I feel that, if LL were able to move in this direction, we might both preserve the main grid for those enmeshed in it AND allow for the standards and technology to be advanced. Given LL's finite resources, however, I doubt a second application will happen.



The right thing here would be to campaign for awareness of the problem. People are too ready to leap at tool creators when someone does Something Bad with them. Realistically, one must acknowledge where the problem lies - with the person commiting the act, not the actual service or tool.

Rockstar's GTA: San Andreas is a good example of this. Had the "Hot Coffee" patch been party to industrious hackers alone, Rockstar would have been home free. But since it was proven that the company released the content themselves and left it out there to be stumbled upon, suddenly the Media and every rabid lawyer in the United States registered them as fresh meat.

Is Second Life party to the actual infringement going on in their software?
No, unless you're fishing for technicalities and outliers that aren't too cohesive.

Can they do anything about it that they're not already doing?
Not really.

As long as that remains, I'd say they're pretty clean from a legal perspective. Sure, a lawyer could file suit tomorrow and drain money from them, but I doubt anyone short of Harvey Birdman would be able to make a case that wins.

Right on. I also think LL is doing this when they travel around the country speaking at conferences about user created content. If they can teach enough people about the virtues of user created content, people won't confuse them with music services promoting P2P piracy.

I've said it before and I'll say it again -- licensing.

maybe LL just needs to draft a standard stream protocol and let 3rd parties develop their own metaverse software as long as it communicates in the same medium and can share objects...

This topic died much more quickly than normal. Has everyone abandoned hope?

Advertise sex alot more, appeal to greed even more, and make it fun to kill everyone.

More to the point, I'm not sure many people *care.*

Talk about hypocritical. I'm saying something here and I don't give a darn if ppl like it or not.

Ppl have been told what they can say and do in these forums for as long as I can remember now. One group is hell bent on running SL one way, their way. Today just now I read a post asking how can SL move forward. Well I will waste no time in my answer:

It cannot, and it will not until ppl are able to express their opinions freely. So check the snide replies at the door and think of what is best for SL for a change. That will go a long, long way the metaverse forming.

There is no way in hell I'm going to shut my mouth when those who are holding the metaverse, SL and frankly LL back start asking "What's wrong, what can I do."

The answer is obvious, look in the mirror, and change what you see.

Cat

/me ignores, mutes and negs cat then puts thousands of invisible prims out on her island but is really just kidding ha ha

What you say is true Cat, but I think Jeffrey's dead on. Most of the population, even the involved forum crowd, couldn't care less if LL succeeds or not. We're all just playing the game knowing that something similar, but better, will come along in time, and we'll all migrate to it.

Second Life will fade into the background with a stirling reputation as the first of it's kind. But it'll follow the standard video game lifecycle because the players are conditioned to go through the motions of playing and moving on that have evolved over the past twenty years.

But I suppose you're right too. Far be it from us to question them for our own selfish reasons. We should just not care as well and melt into the masses. I am trying. I just hate giving up on something so promising.

Agreed. I got a little too self-righteous on this point earlier, and was met with more or less a similar nonchalant response.

Wonder what things will be like five years from now. If it were up to me, I'd be planning for "what will the Next Big Thing be like?" right now.

Some thoughts here:
http://secondtense.blogspot.com/2005/08/metaverse-world-community.html

Hiro, while we disagree more often than not, that is an excellent article. Gold star.

Internet..


Not everything will be "connected", but there will be areas that are.

Imagine the SL map getting 1000 times bigger than it is.. how would you navigate? Search and teleport only?

Indeed one should look at the ways SL already looks like the internet.

However you can be on any internet account and get into your e-mail. In some ways having one account in SL is a boon and a danger.

Could you fire up a generic AV from a coffee shop and get into your secured home with the right password?

Could it be more like the internet?

Should it be more like the internet?

SLHTML?

It's quite easy to go from SL and click on a link to a website.. then from there to Flash website. . then jump to a java applet.

I'd hope 3D world could be moved between so easily... but actually working together means agreeing on a few standards in building and scripting.

-Blueman