Second Life and the Vision Thing

Category internet, Gaming | Permalink | 25. February 2007

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I’m wrong. A lot. I fully admit it. I’m not an especially deep thinker, and I can’t predict the future for shit. Like everyone else, I was hoping for flying cars by now. Not to mention robots, though I suppose the longer we have to wait on that one, the better.

Hell, when I first heard about text-messaging, I scoffed. Scoffed, I tell you! I even remember whennish and whereabouts I was: walking down the Embarcadero in 2000 with my supervisor at CNET, a fellow who was much more on top of cutting-edge technology than myself.

He was telling me about something called text-messaging, which was either just introduced in America or was about to be, but was all the rage overseas. I was five stubborn years away from even considering a cell phone, and text-messaging sounded like the most impractical thing ever. Words on a cell phone screen? And typing them via the number pad? Puh-leeze. As if.

The obvious punchline is that I’m now a text-messaging addict. A junkie. A filthy carpal-thumbed 160-character whore, I am. I got my first cell phone in October 2005 for use during a well-intended if poorly-attended book tour. (If you ever want to read to six rows of empty folding chairs near the Canadian border, drive to Bellingham, Washington. Builds character.) Empirically speaking I would still be alive right now, but emotionally I suspect the trip would have killed me if not for text-messaging. Waking up to messages from my girlfriend Vash made waking up seem worth the effort at all, and furiously thumbtyping back and forth with a friend during a particularly rough patch somewhere between Portland and Seattle was an excellent outlet.

When I started using the World Wide Web in late 1995, I didn’t see how it could be used to make money.

I lack vision, is what I’m saying.

Philip Rosedale, the CEO of Linden Lab, sees things so well he sometimes see things that aren’t there:
IBM’s Wladawsky-Berger suggests that the magic of the original Internet and Web has distracted users from an important question: “We never said: ‘Where are the people?’ ” he says.

Now, Wladawsky-Berger and other powerful Internet players are starting to see Second Life as a better, people-centric way to navigate the Net. It might be a leap like when the Mosaic browser first brought graphics to the Internet. Eventually, Internet users might go to Amazon through Second Life instead of through a browser, walking into the Amazon store and interacting with shoppers and clerks.
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Thanks: www.medialoper.com

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