6.26.2007
The World Wide Web will soon be absorbed...
The World Wide Web will soon be absorbed into the World Wide Sim: an environment combining elements of Second Life and Google Earth:
Second Earth
From the article:
Second Earth
From the article:
- Second Life, which started out four years ago as a 1-square-kilometer patch with 500 residents, has grown into almost 600 square kilometers of territory spread over three minicontinents, with 6.9 million registered users and 30,000 to 40,000 residents online at any moment. It's a world with birdsong, rippling water, shopping malls, property taxes, and realistic physics. And life inside is almost as varied as it is outside. "I help out new citizens, I rent some houses on some spare land I have, I socialize," says a longtime Second Lifer whose avatar goes by the name Alan Cyr. "I dance far better than I do in real life. I watch sunsets and sunrises, go swimming, exploring, riding my Second Life Segway. I do a lot of random stuff"...
As these two trends continue from opposite directions, it's natural to ask what will happen when Second Life and Google Earth, or services like them, actually meet. Because meet they will, whether or not their owners are the ones driving their integration. Both Google and Linden Lab grant access to their existing 3-D platforms through tools that let outside programmers build their own auxiliary applications, or "mashups." And many computer professionals think the idea of a "Second Earth" mashup is so cool that it's inevitable, whether or not it will offer any immediate way to make money. "As long as somebody can find some really strong personal gratification out of doing it, then there is a driver to make it happen," says Jamais Cascio, a consultant who cofounded the futurist website WorldChanging.com and helps organizations plan for technological change.
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Oh, brother. There's about as much chance of this happening as there is me retiring early.
There's a huge difference between navigating 2D web pages and the buggy, sluggish 3D environments of Second Life. Second Life is an enormous time waster, the web is an enormous time waster with automatic bill paying.
There's a huge difference between navigating 2D web pages and the buggy, sluggish 3D environments of Second Life. Second Life is an enormous time waster, the web is an enormous time waster with automatic bill paying.
# posted by 
: 8:21 PM, June 25, 2007
: 8:21 PM, June 25, 2007
That "6.9 million figure" is the number of accounts ever registered. Many of those are duplicate accounts, or those of people who never actually participated, or only did for a day. The number of regular users is a tiny fraction.
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# posted by : 8:00 AM, June 30, 2007
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