Get a life?

I've been working at IBM for three weeks now as part of Extreme Blue where we're working on a project in Second Life, the virtual world which has received much media attention of late. I can't go into the details because it's all top secret suffice to say it involves real and virtual world interaction.

Many people are sceptical of virtual worlds such as Second Life, dismissing them as stupid, for "geeks" and of no real value. Get A First Life is a mock of Second Life and, while I was initially sceptical and there may be some elements of truth in what people say, I don't think we should dismiss virtual worlds (or multiverses) altogether.

The rise of virtual worlds and MMORPGs mimics the rise of the early Internet. It is dominated by a number of proprietary browsers, it is slow and error prone, it's been taken up by the "geeks", and it's been criticised by many. Second Life can be seen like the AOL of the early Internet. Even if the technology at the moment doesn't have a really useful purpose and even if people do stuff just because "it's cool" that doesn't mean to say we should dismiss it. The same was true of the early Internet, people did stuff because they could. The really useful applications, like online shopping, email and video conferencing came along later once people had figured out how to use technology. It also has echoes of the telephone network. Alexander Graham Bell constructed phone lines all around the States without knowing what they would be used for. It was only later that others developed phone calls, faxes and eventually the Internet. And where would we be today without all of this?

I guess the message I'm trying to get across is to not be dismissive of virtual worlds, because if things end up as they are looking likely to then this is just the start, and the 3D Internet will become a big part of everyone's lives.

So what is coming next and where will it end up? Who knows. What's fairly certain is that standards will need to be adopted and, as ever, computers will need to get a lot faster. Whatever happens, it's an exciting time and potentially the start of something massive.