The increasing richness of memorial media is a powerful by-product of accelerating change in technology, information and communication. In five years time, both broad public-facing and private 3d memorial media has a good chance of taking off, gradually catalyzing a shift in the way we interact with history and our dearly departed.
How do we properly remember and honor the dead? Our cultural answer to this question has changed over the millennia alongside with the invention of memory-enhancing technologies such as symbols, spoken language, writing, photography, video, digital information and the web.
Now the trend continues as powerful new disruptors such as social media, semantic search, virtual worlds and mirror worlds allow us to assemble, aggregate and interact with information about the dearly departed in surprising new ways.
On the most basic level, crowd-edited text-based structures like Wikipedia have already catalyzed an explosion of biographical data capture and made possible a growing niche of specialized human memorial websites.
Similarly, account-driven portals like Geanealogy.com’s Virtual Cemetery Project, MyCemetery, and World Gardens have been growing in popularity and each lay claim to being “The World’s First Online Memorial and Virtual Cemetery” or such.
In the physical world, progressive cemetery Hollywood Forever, which boasts the densest concentration of celebrity gravesites, has sparked a media memorial trend by displaying actors’ hilight reels beside their tombs. (Yes, for a pretty steep price you too can purchase your very own Lifestories Kiosk.)
Chris Sherman over at Virtual
World News noted yesterday that there are so many virtual world
start-ups in stealth-mode that he’s lost count.
“They range in focus from virtual goods and economies to
lifelogging to 2d and 3d virtual world destinations to platforms
and tools companies and more,” points out Sherman, the producer of
the steadily growing Virtual Worlds conference
series.
Not only are myriad start-ups getting into the virtual frenzy,
so are corporate giants like
Google.
All this activity nicely reinforces a DFC estimate that virtual world
revenues will reach 6 billion $ annually by 2012.
Even with the slowing growth of Second Life, it’s easy to
imagine that between Spore, MetaPlace, Multiverse, Club Penguin, Google, Microsoft,
Sony and all of the little guys, it won’t be all that hard to hit
that 6 billion $ target.
Check back tomorrow for an in-depth interview with Jerry
Paffendorf, co-founder of Wello Horld, one of the stealth
start-ups mentioned by Sherman.
The following is a summary of the key moments that
transpired during the U.S. House Subcommittee on Telecommunications
and the Internet hearing on Virtual Worlds held April 1, 2008. This
marked the first ever simulcast of a Congressional hearing into a
virtual world – a truly historic moment.
Spanning the positive uses of virtual worlds (entrepreneurial,
non-profit, educational, and other purposes) as well as the
security implications (terrorism, child protection, privacy and
illegal activities) the first-of-its-kind hearing finally came to a
close at 11:15 AM this morning after nearly two full hours of
position statements and riveting Q&A.
Subcommittee members’ opening speeches covered general
statistics, implications, applications and potential futures of
virtual worlds. Subcommittee Chairman Ed Markey of Massachusetts
(pictured second) noted that virtual worlds often permit people to
do things that are often impossible in real life, thus empowering
individuals and that virtual worlds are at the cutting edge of web
2.0 applications. As per the future of virtual worlds, the Chairman
said that virtual worlds are steadily becoming more commonplace and
therefore policymakers will have to continue to monitor them as
they grow further while upgrading national infrastructure to foster
the positive utilities of such worlds.
Congressman Stearns of Florida (pictured third) cited an
interesting statistic in his opening remarks, that 40% of men and
50% of women see virtual friends as equal or better than their
real-life friends. He found this a bit unsettling, and elucidated
his concern for sexual predators and con-men inevitably finding
their way into virtual worlds, as they did the internet.
Congresswoman Harman of California echoed many of the same
positive implications of virtual worlds, but seemed most concerned
with the use of virtual worlds by Islamic militants, noting that a
“clear-eyed understanding is essential” in helping fight this new
wave of “transient terrorism.”
Recently Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute created
an artificial intelligence program to run within the platform of
Second Life. The researchers are studying the interactions that
occur with real people through
their avatars. The RPI students created
the program to maneuver the avatar and understand some fairly
straight forward questions, asked in English.
Operators of Second Life don’t seem concerned about
synthetic agents lurking in their world. John Lester, Boston
operations manager for Linden Lab, said the San Francisco-based
company sees a fascinating opportunity for AI to evolve. “I think
the real future for this is when people take these AI-controlled
avatars and let them free in ‘Second Life,’” Lester said, ” ... let
them randomly walk the grid.”
With AI characters within a grid of tens of thousands of active
users the social experimentation is nearly limitless. Social
scientists can examine certain behaviors and even provoke them
through the AI interface. Most interesting is if the AI can
recognize and then smoothly translate languages the program could
create cultural bridges and even examine cultural behavior
proclivities.
This is a shot that was definitely not heard around the “real
world”.
A company named Vollee has at last enabled fluid access
to 3D virtual worlds, namely Second Life, via a mobile phone.
Check out the video of their new service, currently in Beta:
While this product won’t matter to 99.9% of us (barring the SL
addicted) in the short term, it’s a big milestone for the broader
evolution of the web.
As such, we can use it to extrapolate what changes an
increasingly interactive 3D web might gradually enable:
Perhaps we’ll visit real-time representations of stores from
hundreds of miles away or more efficiently navigate shops in real
space, or more easily find jobs that allow us to work from afar, or
surf 3D social networks to see what our friends are currently doing
and where, or hop into virtual games tied into real-life locations
when we’re bored, or search the web in 3D and 2D as well as through
text and semantic search, etc.
The main point is that as we endeavor to simulate the near term
future of other domains like health, business, transporation, etc.
it’s important to consider the impact of new products like Vollee
so that we don’t miss the larger, more disruptive products and
events just over the horizon.
Virtual worlds are created by us – so why limit ourselves to
reality? We could create entirely new realities. By realising that
we are free of the rules of real life, the doors are open to
incredible new possibilities. In many ways, virtual worlds already
provide us with glimpses of alternate realities. Its time we took
notice of these instrumental differences. In the future, we may decide that a virtual existence, a
life inside a fully immersive computer game where our every desire
is fulfilled, is a more appealing option than the real world we
currently inhabit. Many people have presented the idea that we are
already in such a virtual reality, but I don’t believe this is
possible. This is because virtual worlds provide us with many
possibilities that the real world does not, so why have they not
been “programmed” into the real world we know?
Since the early 21st century, the residents of the virtual world
Second Life have been working hard to recreate real life as
accurately as possible. Despite the virtual platform giving
occupants the ability to fly and teleport, they still prefer to
meticulously create staircases to walk their avatar up and down. At
discos, people require the coolest dance animations and best
looking clothes. In meetings, virtual characters sit down to rest
their virtual legs. It seems the confines of reality provide a
comfortable and familiar environment.
But virtual worlds are created by us – so why limit ourselves to
reality? We could create entirely new realities. By realising that
we are free of the rules of real life, the doors are open to
incredible new possibilities. In many ways, virtual worlds already
provide us with glimpses of alternate realities. Its time we took
notice of these instrumental differences. (cont.)
Included in the latest Second Life (SL) code
update is a feature that at long last allows in-world designers
and programmers to incorporate html on objects. In other words, users will finally be allowed to import web
content into the virtual world.
This comes as a relief to the many SL developers and futurists
who’ve been clamoring for this for years, paving the way for myriad
mash-ups and new forms of hybrid content.
Just imagine decorating your SL mansion with images found on the
web, setting your avatar to display your Linked In profile when attending a
networking event, organizing a wall of your favorite web feeds, or
setting up just about any conceivable array of of web content. All
of it linked and fully click-able. The collaborative, networking
and entertainment possibilities are truly endless.
Thanks to these new steps, all of this will soon be possible on
the increasingly popular platform, thus opening wide a whole new
world of possibilities.
Also part of the new release is more physically accurate
atmospheric rendering and lighting resulting in “vastly improved
realistic water with reflections and glimmer” and ”’Glow” as a new
object attribute.
It seems that in these times of economic decline, people don’t want to forgo the luxuries that they’ve grown accustomed to over the years, so are choosing to indulge themselves in a virtual manner instead. There’s certainly a lot to be said for staying home surrounded by cheap entertainment compared with going out and being ripped off and mugged. Could this be the future? As Virtual Reality improves, we’ll be finding it replacing more and more of the “Real Life” things we currently take for granted.
Why travel on dangerous, expensive, and environmentally unfriendly airlines when you can immerse yourself in a Virtual holiday? Google Earth and Google Street, not to mention other “virtual sightseeing” options have recently taken a lot of big steps towards this. Although virtual reality interfaces have a long way to go before we can experience all the delights of a trip to somewhere beautiful, in the next few years it will be possible to walk down a foreign street on your computer screen, with the realism of a TV documentary. You’ll be able to go into a real shop, select a real item from a real shelf, and make real purchases from the shops on this street, to be delivered to your door. In Second Life, you can already wander around the accurately recreated streets of Dublin and other major cities. Primitive as it is now, we’ll soon be taking it for granted.
In the very distant future, personal nano-fabrication devices could allow us to recreate the exact tastes and textures of foods available anywhere on Earth. And if not, computer interfaces to our brains will merely simulate the feelings and tastes of eating these exotic cuisines. Whether as part of a virtual reality interface or not, the ability to remotely indulge our senses will surely come from somewhere.
Making friends in virtual worlds is pretty hit-or-miss. Unless
you’re at a specific event, you have no idea what kind of person
you’re bound to bump into. To make matters worse, approaching someone requires a bit
of bravery. Interacting from behind a computer screens helps, but
virtual worlds are so life-like that talking to someone out of the
blue takes some level of courage. Dare ask someone their real name?
Blasphemy!
This morning Virtual Worlds News
reported the launch of a London-based social network for the
metaverse called Myrl. Created in
an effort to allow users to “worldshop,” as founder and
CEO Francesco D’Orazio put it, Myrl
intends to knock down the barriers that make virtual worlds so
exclusive from one another.
Even in its early stages, Myrl has much to offer when trying to
find like-minded users/avatars. Think of it as Facebook for the
Metaverse – you can post pics, share favorite places and slurls,
promote your virtual start-up, make friends, and even earn “Karma”
points the more you interact with others. According to
TechCrunch UK, Myrl currently supports users from Second Life
and There.com, but plans to continually expand and create
relationships with numerous other virtual worlds.
This social network and others of its kind will surely result in
a more seamless metaverse experience for all – and allow those of
us with shy avatars to finally make some friends. :)
- - Interested in virtual worlds? Don’t miss this year’s annual
Virtual
Worlds Conference from April 3-4 in New York City for a host of
interesting keynotes, demos, networking events and more. Email
marisa@memebox.com for info on how to get a discount on conference
tix.
Millions of users log on to virtual worlds, such as the highly sophisticated and popular Second Life and the user-friendly Lively every day, positioning virtual worlds to become the future of internet browsing.
A recent Rezzable poll asking “Which virtual world will rule one year from now?” concluded with an overwhelming vote for the already popular Second Life, while Google’s new platform Lively came in a distant second; other platforms barely made the chart.
Second Life is the most developed platform right now, with almost 15 million total residents. By far the most stable and capable of the flock, SL has become a meeting place for many adults, especially appealing to gamers, artists, and entrepreneurs.
According to self-reported data, Second Life users are primarily male, with an average age of 33. Features of SL that set it apart from other Virtual Worlds include sophisticated avatar customization, the ability purchase land, and a large and thriving economy. Linden dollars allow users to create, market, and sell virtual products and services, a feature similar to that of World of Warcraft – which has kept WoW users shelling out the big bucks for years. There are currently over L$ 5 billion in supply, with an exchange rate of approximately L$ 250 to the US Dollar.
User generated content (UGC) is probably the most important feature keeping SL at the top of the list. The Second Life platform allows for creative users to design an infinite variety of content (i.e. objects, clothing, buildings, real life recreations, virtual businesses, etc.).
Note: Make sure the movie loads fully before watching. I am trying to upload it to YouTube, but the feature is still buggy as Xtra Normal is in beta.
Using the new Xtra Normal platform, the above video took just 30 minutes to produce. This forward-step in super-user-friendly machinima brings us just a little closer to a scenario that I like to call The Toon Point, the time when virtual-world-generated video equals the average quality of a Saturday morning cartoon created in 2005. (Why 2005? Because that’s roughly when I began thinking about the notion of a Toon Point.)
Ever since my days in the West Hollywood Metaverse House, as my buddy and former roommate Jerry Paffendorf likes to call it, I’ve been a fan of virtual worlds and looking forward to The Toon Point. Due to their ability to incorporate and network other communication technologies, the potential of virtual worlds as an Interactive Communication Technology is simply astounding, and is reflected in their rapid diffusion patterns.
By helping us to climb the stairs of abstraction, user-friendly immersive data visualization (ie, geospatial data mapping) is poised to become one of the more significant near-term drivers of accelerating human inteligence and economics. Leading the charge is the small but robust company Green Phosphor, core participants in the progressive and under-recognized Second Life DataViz Group, which is laying down the foundations for Matrix-esque search: "I need guns, lots of guns."
Color me impressed by Green Phosphor's newest release, Glasshouse (demo vid below - don't worry, better graphics are on the way), which converts raw binary data into interactive 3d models. As indicated by the hire of a molecular biologist as Chief Scientist, the company is gearing up to monetize by applying this technology to the medical domains such as genomics and drug discovery.
As CEO Ben Lindquist points out, "The immersive 3d environment creates an entirely new paradigm for business intelligence and process modelling." More specifically, I'd argue that it marks a Meta-System Transition, or topsight leap, in our ability to process then interact with a variety of systems.
How do we properly remember and honor the dead? Our cultural answer to this question has changed over the millennia alongside with the invention of memory-enhancing technologies such as symbols, spoken language, writing, photography, video, digital information and the web.
In the future, we may decide that a virtual existence, a
life inside a fully immersive computer game where our every desire
is fulfilled, is a more appealing option than the real world we
currently inhabit. Many people have presented the idea that we are
already in such a virtual reality, but I don’t believe this is
possible. This is because virtual worlds provide us with many
possibilities that the real world does not, so why have they not
been “programmed” into the real world we know?
words, users will finally be allowed to import web
content into the virtual world.
To make matters worse, approaching someone requires a bit
of bravery. Interacting from behind a computer screens helps, but
virtual worlds are so life-like that talking to someone out of the
blue takes some level of courage. Dare ask someone their real name?
Blasphemy!
A recent Rezzable