Technology as space between us is a general trend, not just in Second Life. Our phones, laptops, iPods, videogame consoles, web portals and applications, and the latest-and-greatest are all becoming increasingly significant compared to the actual people around us, or on the other end of the line or 'cloud.' And the infrastructure necessary to keep us all connected by the skin of our nodes is astounding - it's a beast of its own. Second Life alone uses 20,000 computers to host its virtual world, supporting 250K daily active users; Google required roughly 500K servers in 2006, and the Internet is comprised of over a whopping 1.4 billion computers (well, internet users).
Virtual objects are also growing in importance relative to tangible ones. Beyond Second Life's 100M user-generated objects :::how many man-made products do you think exist on this earth?:::, there is a burgeoning market of virtual gifts. The only company I'm aware of developing a robust publisher and consumer platform is Viximo although there are other players in this space including TwoFish, PlaySpan, LiveGamer, and Virtual Greats.
Are we going to eventually live in a virtual utopia? Will we eventually prefer our 'second' lives over our primary one because it's more maleable? "Utopia's historically never scaled," claims Phil Rosedale. I agree that virtual reality won't be ideal and paragons transient. However, that shouldn't detract from its increasing significance on our lives and our inevitable reliance upon it largely due to our desire to:
- compete (even if we're not striving for Paragon status)
- satiate our unquenchable thirst for more knowledge, and
- quell our boredom with or defy laws of 'reality'.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Share Your Thoughts