Will SL really take over the world?

Lately all I get is people arguing back and forth whether SL will really take over the world, when, where, and how. Thank you, Philip!
So let's make it official. Do you think SL "will take over the world"?
Why do or dont you believe that?
Some people have long established a parallel between the WWW and SL. Catherine Omega comes to mind as one of the first. Heck, *I* come to my own mind as one of the "second" ones.
We have witnessed an economic growth of 1000%, although the population and land have grown a tad slower than that.
What, in your mind, favors or detracts from SL's ability to "take over the world"?
Do you think we will "soon" have RL businesses showing up in SL? Do you think they will take over it, like it happened with the web? Is this good or bad?

I think SL replacing the WWW is unlikely in our lifetime. People don't adopt change quick enough to replace the WWW. Maybe if everyone house was wired with fiber, like in New Brunswick How long would it take to connect to SL and visit SL Google vs launching IE and using the google toolbar? The price is right, but until it's as fast as IE it'll be hard to convince the average person it's "better" than WWW.

I think SL could take over the game industry. Every game created could be multiplayer and run 100% off the SL client.

Eggy - I think shared 3D spaces will become common, but I don't know if a system designed as a game is going to become the "next web". I'm just not sure what the killer app would be in SL to make it expand like that. If nothing else, it's hard to imagine SL taking off as an internet platform while it's so effectively sealed off from the rest of the net (and my own computer).

Here are the main things I do with the web currently. I e-mail, read news sites, discuss things on forums, find information, buy things and pay bills, and share files. SL, or any other 3D platform, has a chance to replace the web for me when I can do all those things better in its 3D world than through a 2D browser.

To me, SL's main strength is that it's a shared space. But honestly, I don't want to read the New York Times, or find next semester's class schedule, or pay my credit card bill, "with" other people. Even if I wanted to do these things in 3D ( do I?), would I want to do it in a shared space with others? Things like e-mail and discussion forums, that are about communicating with others, seem like a good match with SL. But here we are, on the web, discussing SL, even though we're all SL users.

I hope this doesn't sound down on SL at all. I've just been thinking about your question myself and I'm dumping my still unresolved ideas about it.

Honestly... well it all depends doesnt it

I see at least two dangers do SL currently:
- Muppets
- Microsoft

Muppets: because its based at a university, which remember is how Unix started. Nothing like thousands of students looking for something to write a thesis on to push forward the boundaries of progress.

Microsoft: well, if SL does become big, Microsoft will write their own version. It doesnt take very long (about 6-12 man-months, so for a team of 20, thats like a couple of weeks, not including management and coordination overhead).

Azelda

How about something that SL is already very good at, namely shopping?

The Brits among us know what a terrible experience grocery shopping on a supermarket website can be. If I was an entrepreneurial type, I'd build a supermarket sim, complete with aisles of cornflake packets, scripted trolleys (with three wheels) etc, then work with LL to devise a system where customers could gain easy access to the system.

No, I don't think so. The primary reason is that SL is a private company with all that entails. The web is more like a colony organism. It survives and thrives on two things IMO:

(1) agreed on data handling protocols, etc. (doh);

(2) very little content control, decentralized, fluidity, argh... you know what I mean.

For SL to take over the world it would have to change a lot. When the day comes that I can go out and buy a server, license some software, do the techie geek dance, and hook into SL with no oversight other than am I properly hooked in.. THEN.... yay!!

Now to change the question around a bit. Do I think there will come a day when the User Interface for the WWW looks a lot more like SL? Oh yes. Will the virtual office gets chairs and a desk (and a sexy secretary?).. eventually. The driving factors are already in place: sex and gaming. Sex for the money. Gaming for the tech.

A couple of friends joke around sometimes about "reserving our tanks" for when full sense jacking in becomes possible. We joke, but the UI is tending towards more and more interaction. I don't expect to be able to upload French into my brain any time soon, but I expect a VR setups to become widely available and affordable within the decade.

Surreal

Personally I'd rather have a powerful search tool than to roll through the aisles looking for a product while avoiding other people's carts (trolleys). But maybe other people would like that familiar experience. Looking at real world products does seem like a good use for 3D (advertising). But why put it in a shared space? That's the big question to me. (There are other problems, but maybe they will be addressed some day)

Arrgh!

The SL platform would be a great environment for:

Online Shopping
Virtual Classrooms
Business Meetings and Conferences
Counciling (support, rehabilitation, therapy)
Project organization and updates
Virtual Libraries
and umm..Virtual Match-making/dating/sex (make a version that is anatomically correct with built in animations)

The web will definitely move toward a more 3D interface, but there will always be a need for thr speed of text-style lists and easy info lookups without a cumbersome front end.

Are you kidding me?!? My ex-wife is from Bathurst, NB (the rectum of the world if, indeed, the world has one), and I always viewed New Brunswick as still living in the 19th century. I haven't been back there in many, many years, so things may have progressed a bit.

In fact, not meaning to hijack this thread, but that reminds me of a funny story. Whenever we used to visit my ex-inlaws, my kids would go nuts because Ma-mere and Pa-pere (good Acadian folk) only had 3 over-the-air channels, all filled with static, and one of them in French (which my kids don't speak).

We finally talked them into getting cable, and I was talking with my father-in-law on the phone and asked him how he liked it. He told me, in his thick Acadian accent, how Ma-mere really liked the country music channel, but he was puzzled by this one channel. Referring to Much Music (Canada's equivalent to MTV), he says, "they have this one channel that is nothing but negroes dancing".

I about busted a nut, keeping myself from breaking out in laughter.

- Ace

Possible Scenario:

SL becomes the AOL of VR-online worlds, then some competitor comes by and eats SL's lunch for them, eclipsing their userbase numbers.

Another:

SL dominates the VR-online space, but falters from keeping the possiblity of user-run sims (in totality, with code) a reality, until someone comes along and again, eats their lunch for them.

Finally:

SL grows and evolves in a direction of open publishing/content like the WWW did, which involves opening up all the code (for interopability of user sims at least), and becoming more transparent than they are right now.

Which path? We'll see.

Cad, you're such a hermit!

The trouble with supermarket shopping on the web using powerful search tools is that they're very clunky and inflexible. You almost never get what you ordered, but get the "nearest substitute" instead (which often isnt even close).

I imagine using something like SL would be as flexible as running a real store. When your warehouse runs out of cornflakes your virtual shelf-stacker can just go and grab it off the shelf.

Oh, and if it wasn't in a shared space, then you wouldn't be able to peer into anyone else's trolley and laugh at them for buying seven one-person TV dinners and a case of cheap German wine.

Yes, Philip will institute a SL draft.

We will be isued heavily scripted RL small arms.

recieve training online in Jessie.

Get cool "COBRA-esque" uniforms.

Deploy to your local ISP and await further orders.

(yeah like getting most of us to our ISP with small arms would take much convincing) =P

Nope, not kidding. NBTel put in the first all digitial switching network in North America and the first province-wide fiber optic network. They did this in the early 90's and then quickly because the "call center captial" of North America. I never said it was cheap. The cost of fiber is prohibitve for residential use. But fiber/cable hybrids that delivered 10mbits both ways became very popular. Their backbone though, is 100% fiber.

Actually, microsoft already tried their own metaverse software, but canceled the project due to lack of intrest at the time.

Holy crap, what a great idea! You could pick your items, the SL objects email your results to the grocery store, you pay in either linden dollars or Euros, and then they deliver your groceries to your house!!!

e-commerce could get EXTREMELY FREAKING SWEET in SL.

LF

Nah - SL won't be taking over the world anytime soon.


Innovative start-up companies either remain as such and provide their products to a niche market - or they attract middle/end stage venture capitol and become more seasoned companies - still using training wheels.

If all goes well, they start to earning a profit (net/net) via their successful business plan, and then begin to return the investments of the venture capitol firms.

Once that happens, they get to swim in the business-ocean with all the other creatures - big lumbering whales, sleekly fast sharks, bottom feeders, sun fish, moon-rays - and then reality sets in.

Learn to swim successfully in the ocean, provide good customer service, stabilize the Gird and continue to do what you do best.

Oh, and forget conquering worlds.

IF this ever happens, I'm moving to linux, and I hope by that time there will be an SL Port for *unix sytems.

Sorry kids, the chocolate ice cream is no transfer... You'll have to get your own.

in RL lag could be a legit excuse as to why you dont have pants.

yes yes yes

Yes SL will eventually take over and James will be a predominate factor. <snicker>