No moment in technology history has ever been more exciting or dangerous than now. The Internet is like a new computer running a flashy, exciting demo. We have been entranced by this demo for fifteen years. But now it is time to get to work, and make the Internet do what we want it to.
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Pushing the multi-mega-ton jumbo jet of human thought-style backwards a few inches, back in the direction of dream logic, might be the Internet’s greatest accomplishment. The best is yet to be.
Consider a few of Gelernter’s calls to action and ideas, and then go read it yourself, and extrapolate your view of the Web’s future with what you’ve learned in a virtual world:
George Clinton would say “think, it ain’t illegal yet!” but George was about more than talking:
“Flash Light” is one of the all-time great dance songs, but that only begins to describe its brilliance. It starts with the solid but unobtrusive drumming of Bootsy, allowing the other instruments to stand out. It’s anchored by the shining guitar riff of Catfish Collins, one of the greatest examples of rhythm guitar ever. And it stars Bernie Worrell, who propels the song with an addictive bass-keyboard line while keeping us engaged on the high end with tasty synth explorations. The song on the surface sounds like a simple chant song, but one can hear the battle being raged between life and death here…can Starchild make Sir Nose dance? As depicted on the album cover, he shoots the Bop Gun at him, and Sir Nose must yield. `There’s nothing that the proper attitude won’t render funkable`, and so it happens. Openness overcomes fear, as `everyone’s got a little light under the sun.` And the `ha-da-da-dee-da da-da hava da da`, (based on a Jewish Bar Mitvah chant) is one of their most engaging chants.
This album seriously challenges Mothership Connection as P.Funk’s best overall album, taking previously established ideas to new and exciting levels. It proves that it is possible to create something popular that is still challenging, exciting and revelatory, both on the lyrical and musical levels. Try and find it on vinyl, because it included a comic book detailing Starchild’s battle with Sir Nose done by Overton Lloyd, as well as a huge poster.
With a new web-enabled Second Life viewer, Avatar, Alice In Wonderland and the continuing wave of 3D movies, perhaps 2010 will be the year we make contact with our virtual selves.
This past Thursday, July 16th was the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11 which journeyed to the moon enabling humans to set foot there for the first time. Although few people get to go, many benefit from the spinoffs. Regardless of one’s philosophic or political perspective, landing on the moon was quite a unique accomplishment in human history - only 12 people have ever walked on the moon. This is a very tiny fraction of a tenth of 1 percent of the people living today and an imperceptible slice of the 10′s of billions of humans who have ever lived on Earth.
Many people have already seen the commercials with excerpts from the “We choose to go to the moon” speech by President Kennedy (video here) or news accounts. If you haven’t done so already, you may enjoy an interesting cybertrip over to We Choose The Moon(best seen over a really high speed connection) where there’s a real-time simulation of the Apollo 11 mission. At the We Choose The Moon site you can follow precisely the activities of the Apollo 11 mission. When you go there you will see a continuously updated map of the flight path and a 3-D simulation of the actual spacecraft. At the same time you will hear the actual conversation between the astronauts and mission control. When I first looked, the mission was half-way through Stage 6 – nearly 115,000 miles from Earth and I could hear Buzz Aldrin singing and talking to folks from mission control. Today as I write, Apollo 11 is approaching Stage 7, over 200,000 miles away and there’s only static in the background although a transcript of conversation shows that the flight crew just went to sleep.
Although I’m talking about the Apollo 11 being in orbit today that’s obviously not true - we know where Apollo 11 is. The command module is at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. – not 200,000 miles from Earth. And we know the crew is not on board. The rest of Apollo 11 has just recently been photographed on the moon. Still, people all over the world are experiencing Apollo 11 all over again – as though they’ve travelled back in time. Or perhaps as though folks from 1969 had travelled forward in time. Now it’s just a simulation but previously discussed here on the MJ, detailed simulations can be very persuasive – even to the point of becoming indistinguishable from reality. If that seems a bit far-fetched consider how much detail will be captured for the next moon landing a decade from now. Quite a bit of data, audio and video will be streamed live over the interplanetary internet just recently deployed on the International Space Station. What isn’t streamed live will be digitized and accessible for future browsing and use. By 2050, people observing a 40-year anniversary will likely have radically advanced, bionic interfaces which allow for compelling ways to relive the experience. That’s a very long way from the simple “lunar lander” simulations we ran on calculators when I was an engineering student or even the more sophisticated orbital lander programs we ran when I was an engineer at Hughes Space and Communications. However, with Second Life and an HP41-C X running on my iPhone, it’s not quite as far from where we are today
The Second Life open source movement is producing tangible results:
Out of the box, the OpenSim can be used to create a Second Life like environment, able to run in a standalone mode or connected to other OpenSim instances through built in grid technology. It can also easily be extended to produce more specialized 3D interactive applications.Main Page – OpenSim
Non-Player Characters or what I’ve called Next Generation Avatars will be required to maintain a strong business presence in the meshverse. More and more folks are picking up on this:
It takes more than a presence to make money on Second Life, van Zyl said. Too many companies have offices or storefronts on Second Life but don’t staff them, he said. “When you walk into this virtual reality there should be a person who greets you and directs you where you need to go,” he said. “It’s absolutely vital that there is human interaction.”
But van Zyl knows that having someone available 24 hours a day to greet residents on Second Life is a tall order for many small firms. That’s why Simuality, together with a Netherlands company, provides trained avatar receptionists for clients. In the case of Khuri’s law practice, van Zyl expects to provide an avatar who can answer questions about the type of legal work provided and understand the preliminary paperwork clients need to complete.
August 18, 2007 at 6:50 pm
· Filed under Second Life
From a comment on my recent Coldwell Banker post, I got pointed here to the location of the house that was mentioned. Overall this is a really nice business environment – well done by the folks at code4software.com. There are a lot of things to do that fit the context. Gotta come back during business hours to talk to the staff. posted by Khemical Stonecutter on Ranchero using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]
Update 02/03/02008: this post has set off a chain of others over the six months since it first appeared and will mostly likely continue to so I’m adding this search link. Pay special attention to the China connection as well as the view from a Facebook investor.
At the end of this post are links to several entries where I’ve covered this from various perspectives. Here I want to touch briefly on scenarios driving the convergence between virtual and tangible property(both places and objects). It would be nice to go into much greater detail but I can’t give away everything – besides, I’m very busy getting ready
If you track the key money statistics in Second Life, it’s clear that entrepreneurs keep finding ways to put their finger on what’s valuable
As evidence that business in Second Life is beginning to take off, Rosedale said 830 residents are making more than $1,000 per month, and that number has doubled in the last 6 months. There are more than $1.3 million per day worth of interpersonal transactions.
A new generation of virtual land speculators and developers along the lines of IwantOneOfThose.com will emerge from the eBay and Amazon communities as the corporations integrate their infrastructures – new uses of virtual currencies will play a huge role here. Over the past year Amazon has been very busy in this regard – check out Life2Life. Tangible marketplaces like swap meets are a very old form of social network that can’t be completely replaced by text and image.
Some call it 3d Printing or Desktop Manufacturing but what Harvard Business Review called Personal Manufacturing Units, is an emerging trend that’s connecting the tangible world of consumers, manufacturers, suppliers, and engineers with the virtual world. Check out Siemens innovative presence in Second Life, then envision a mashup with efforts like Dassault’s Publicis and Supplier Source or Adobe’s Acrobat 3D. There’s also a play here for retail locations like Kinko’s.
Speaking of retail locations, rather than relying exclusively on it’s own island, it’s not too hard to imagine an Adidas working out a deal with an outfit like FootLocker to promote it’s wares in world. FootLocker has employees with time on their hands when tangible traffic is low.
