from BBC NEWS

A very real future for virtual worlds

…

“Virtual worlds are inherently comprehensible to us in a way that the web is not,” said Mr Rosedale. “They look like the world we already know and take advantage of our ability to remember and organise.”

“Information is presented there in a way that matches our memories and experiences,” he said. “Your and my ability to remember the words we use and the information we talk about is much higher if it’s presented as a room or space around us.”

Equally important, he said, was the visibility or presence that being in a virtual world bestows on its users.

By contrast, he said, when visiting a website people are anonymous and invisible.

Shopping on Amazon might be much easier and enjoyable if you could turn to one of the other 10,000 or so people on the site at the same time as you and ask about what they were buying, get recommendations and swap good or bad experiences.

via

This actually worries me. I’ve been meaning to jump back in SL for a while now. But why should I bother if the vision they’re aiming for is basically The Matrix? A slight better take on RL. Why the hell would i want some n00b asking me about a book in Amazon?! That’s their big vision? That’s their pitch. C’mon!

(Ok – so maybe if SL like mined your Facebook profile to get your social network – and selectively asked you if your friend was looking at a book you’d read or something)

What people want is a reality they can mess with. And that’s the promise of SL in letting people play with Prims and build whatever they want. (According to my still limited understanding). They don’t want a Virtual Starbucks, they want to make their own version of WoW or woteva. And that’s the key word: whatever. Empower the users to build more crazy stuff, like this crooked house:

The presence part though, that’s a good-un. Online presence is getting important i think. Or, useful and practical, anyway.
And identity too.

This requires more thought. And playing.

You know you can twitter from SL…