Searching for the 3D tipping point
In the long and winding why do we never talk about SL thread a question that lurked around is whether SL is the basis for a 3D version of the web and the meta question of whether such a notion makes any sense. Just below this post we are raising the notion of a global metaverse from the point of view of its social implications, but I want to talk about product and market dominance for a moment.
This got me thinking about whether SL has already reached that tipping point. Sure it has an infinitesimally small number of users compared to the web or mobile phones, but every day we see yet another brand setting up office .
If you view is that SL has certainly not attained status of de facto standard as the ‘3D web’ - how are we to know when something has? What characterizes the tipping point when a n other wizzy 3D tech becomes the 3D tech?
I’ve already posited that brand following is a key factor, so how about these others as a starter for 10:
- User population – fine but what levels are we looking at? It the key number one that is relative to web users?
- Devices – I did not used to be able to get the web on my mobile phone, now it’s essential – without google how else are you going to solve arguments in bars?
- Network Effects & Switching costs – I lump these together as I feel that the simple economics of changing technology is a lot lower than the opportunity gain / loss type of switching cost associated with having / not having a presence on one platform or another.
Alternately is this all just buzz word piffle?
Is a monolithic 3D web something that is just not going to happen - as, why would it? 3D serves niche purposes it’s not like text and hyperlinking which is pretty universal. What we will have is what we have now, a set of point applications that just happen to share one characteristic – that they utilize what appears to be a 3D virtual world that can be navigated by various representations of the user. The optimal state is a set of such applications each of which is optimized for its given use; the only monolith that may exist is possibly a middle ware platform on which many of these are built. Supposing other wise is a mistake akin to assuming that because, say, Word and Excel share characteristics their optimal state is to be the very same application.
It’s now I realize I should have read the meta-verse road map materials :)
To give a view, rather than posing homework questions for you good readers, I’m going to go for kind of a middle road, no I just re-wrote this - I’m going to say that a 3D standard will emerge. That this will come out of a leading piece of middle ware that will critically bring about interface standards, the key two being ID management and ‘portals’ (the 3D version of a hyper link). I do see what appears to be a set of discrete 3D spaces that are optimized for given uses but I see the growth of ID management and credential portability, such that ‘porting’ from one virtual space to another and that some sort of cross-world identity starts to pull over richer and richer information. Here I’m not thinking necessarily of the digital identifiers that e-democracy types talk about, in that I don’t think they need to be rooted in any offline identity, but rather a cluster of pseudonymous IDs, plus of course some usable notion of ‘guest’ / ‘public’ in each space. The ID I assume (even in guest mode) would also carry an optional payload of attributes, and here I’m not thinking that if you are a lvl 60 in one place you would be a lvl X somewhere else; but rather you may be in space A and B and your IDs in each share the characteristic that they present the fact of your presence in that other space (yes I’m musing into X.509 and extensible characteristics type stuff but I don’t really want to get too tech about this).
So in a way I’m undercutting my own question in that we may not have a single product but a convergence around standards as we have now with html and different browsers, my assumption being that client standards will advance so this can be so.
If There and SL could make a start by letting me port between y’all with having to re-log, that would be fine and dandy.
There won't be a general, standard "3D web" before that way of browsing the internet actually offers the users something useful.
The reason that numbers of internet-users have increased is not that there was a "critical mass" of geeks playing around with webpages in their basements. The web gained support because it was useful, something which Second Life has yet to prove.
Posted by: Thomas | Oct 17, 2006 at 16:22
Back to an interconnected VRML set again? OpenID meets VRML?
Man SL bites so hard it makes me gnash my teeth. The hype engine just doesn't know how to be quiet. There dinner could be eaten with a great team. I cannot stand it's Meridan 69 outlook. It makes me think of what would happen if an old Ultima server were left running..oh wait.. that's being done too. ;-)
We are a long ways off before a real standard gets put on the table. The OS's themselves need to get more agile in how it exposes the graphics cores. OS X needs to get it's collective sh*t in line when it comes to it's lacking a DX comparitor. Then the social side we haven't even begun to see the battle for identity.
Will it get there? I am sure someone or sets of people will hack this out with or without the worlds support. It's too neat and geeky on a couple different levels.
Posted by: Andy C | Oct 17, 2006 at 16:38
At the State of Play III Diner Panel, Richard Bartle asked if the panel members would consider a future where individuals make for themselves and their friends smaller online worlds, delivered in a fashion similar to the way personal web pages are today. The implication being these smaller worlds would not be under the thumb of the corporations who currently control the landscape. Using the web as an example, Richard indicated that we are in the CompuServe days of virtual worlds. Before the lofty days of the global metaverse arrive, there are a number of individuals who are doing close to what Richard alluded to - creating smaller virtual worlds delivered via the web. I'm one of them, but there are a number of others and I want to ensure that TerraNova doesn't miss an emerging trend. What we all have in common is that we are members of the Director / Shockwave independant game development community.
Although Shockwave has gone through rough waters in recent years, with an install base of 58% of internet users it's still by far the most common browser plug-in capable of both 3D and multiplayer interaction. Director, the development tool used to make Shockwave applications, is obviously not in the public domain but with no license fees the barrier to entry is very low for independent game designers. With some ISPs offering the Shockwave Multiuser Server as a service, even the requirement of hosting your own server is taken care of. Shockwave is not the answer, but it can be a step along the way towards democratizing virtual worlds. At 4000 players peek concurrency, my game (Sherwood Dungeon) is hardly me and a few friends anymore, but isn't building a world and hoping visitors will show up the dream of independant game developers?
Posted by: Gene Endrody | Oct 17, 2006 at 16:45
There are no open protocols for 3d worlds. Second Life sets the standard for the experience, perhaps, and the user popularity, but not the licensing.
I'd love to spend hours creating things and worlds with second Life's tools. I refuse to, because there are no servers I can run. Despite the nice facade of being "allowed" to retain the intellectual property of my SL creations, the problem is that it's necessary for Linden Lab to "allow" you to do that. Therein lies the problem: you can really only create what they allow you. Want to create property? Pay up.
A 3d world standard must emulate the web if expects to be a standard //like// the web, and that will not happen until such a standard emulates the openness of the web.
Posted by: Nato Welch | Oct 17, 2006 at 17:36
Awesome stuff there Gene...
Posted by: Allen Sligar | Oct 17, 2006 at 17:53
Ren asked: "Is a monolithic 3D web something that is just not going to happen..."
Of course it is. If to do nothing else than to map the real world (or portions thereof) on top of itself in order to present an infinitely flexible data and metadata navigable coordinate system.
Here's an idea that I could do today: A model of a Manhattan art gallery in SL that very closely approximates the actual gallery. The SL space is designed to look like the real space architecturally; very doable. The SL artwork is designed to look like the RL pieces; also very doable. When you buy a piece, you have an option to buy just the SL object for your SL use, or the RL object. The proprietor will contact you for delivery details...
It's opening night for a new show at the Manhattan gallery! At (let's say) ten cities around the globe you arrange for other locations to host "virtual doorways" into your SL gallery. You've sent out invites ahead of time, and you've created avatars to resemble the guests as specifically as possible. At the ten remote locations, you have terminals and flat-screen monitors set up and SL-trained helpers to keep things moving. Your guests log in at the remote locations in Milan, London, Tokyo, etc.... and their avatars are sitting in chairs on the verranda of the NYC gallery. As they get up and wander through the gallery looking at art, they bump into avatars from other cities.
Some of the avatars are dressed in bright blue blazers and are identified as "live Manhattan hosts." They are both in the NYC club, and logged on to SL. They are there to translate. If you'd like to chat with the artist, who logs in from time to time, too, ask one of them. If you'd like to ask about a particular piece... ask them. They are in both worlds simultaneously.
Now... Next year, the gallery owner has arranged not with 10 various WiFi hotspots, internet cafes and libraries... but with 10 other, similarly sparky galleries. All of them are tricked out to be SL/RL parallel. In SL, the galleries all connect like rooms in a house... your avatar walks from Paris, where you are in RL, to San Francisco. In Paris, you speak to Julien, one of the SL-enabled hosts, and ask him to see, "Which of the galleries is playing live music tonight...." He checks. Madrid. The band is Hypnotic Lance. "Cool!" you exclaim. "Pipe it in!" Through one of the SL machines, the live gallery patrons in Paris listen to the live music from Spain.
So... when you overlay some real life stuff with some SL stuff... you can do some interesting, freaky things. They have to be, I think, things where the visual representation of *something* is important. I don't think that making airline reservations using 3D maps of an airport makes a ton of sense initially... but if it ends up being as fast and easy as hyperlinks, it may be helpful eventually, sure.
Posted by: Andy Havens | Oct 17, 2006 at 17:55
Most technologists know in their hearts that Second Life is, at best, a useful data point on the road to web-native 3D. Linden Labs came just a bit too early and now they have too much momentum to do what is necessary to become the metaverse: open source, open protocols, and open APIs designed for heterogeneous and decentralized networks.
Linden Lab is closed like AOL in 1992 and Second Life is a company town.
Most of the pieces of an open, web native 3D platform are available in various open source projects. We need to glue them together and start iterating.
Posted by: Trevor F. Smith | Oct 17, 2006 at 18:46
Second Life as the place that expands to become the (Web) world? I don't think so. It's not a map; it's a place on the map and shows no signs of being anything different.
My guess is that there will some day be such a thing, however... and it will have been created by Google.
The notion of a "Web site" will swell to encompass both the bare-bones HTML we started with and the full-up virtual worlds. All of these will be considered "places" in the sense that Richard uses to describe virtual worlds -- they'll be ports of call, and some place-connectivity standard promulgated by Google will be the ocean that links all these places together. We'll just be sailors on that ocean.
The one thing that could change this is Microsoft. They know that there is content ("Web sites"), and there are users, and whoever owns the interface between them is king. Google is pushing hard to be the king -- they seem to have some new cool tool every week -- but there's no reason to think Microsoft will allow some upstart to make off with the crown. I don't know what they'll do; I just know to respect Microsoft as a fierce competitor.
That said, my bet is still on Google to create a standardized 3D interface for connecting Web places to each other. And that interface will become The (de facto) Way for allowing users to maintain a unique identity as they navigate from place to place.
--Bart
Posted by: Bart Stewart | Oct 17, 2006 at 20:10
The first post in this thread by Thomas sums it up nicely I think.
A 3d world w/ avatars presents no utility besides entertainment to most people. Most (not all) of these announcements are just cheap PR exercises as far as I can see.
--matt
Posted by: Matt Mihaly | Oct 17, 2006 at 20:41
I agree with Trevor that any kind of web-like virtual world phenomena will be based on an open-source platform with interoperability. I agree with Matt that corporations getting cheap PR by building wacky islands in Second Life that ~100 people poke and then leave is less than relevant to the emergence of a ubiquitous platform for virtual worlds. It's my belief that we're ~10 years from such a thing, as we'll need a lot of iteration first; I don't think anyone can claim to know what that might look like. I also wish people wouldn't talk about 3D all the time; the intrinsic feature of this medium is to do with shared space, not a particular user interface paradigm.
Posted by: Daniel James | Oct 17, 2006 at 21:01
I posted about Web 3.0 which covers this issue at
http://www.personalizemedia.com/index.php/2006/08/27/virtual-worlds-web-30-and-portable-profiles/
I disagree with the last point that a 3D shared space is not relevant. The immersion and contact you get with other avatar/s in a collaborative and social 3D space is far stronger than other generic online social networks IMHO. Having worked and inhabited 3D spaces since 1996 I also think we are at a tipping point and not 10 years away.
I also have an issue with the statement that the media brands that are inhabiting these worlds is not significant. A marketing exercise rather than reaching out to the 10s of avatars that fly in and out - sure - but the fact is they are capturing our imagination and I for one remember when companies starting building 2D websites in the mid 90s and the edus, the 'self proclaimed owners of the web' and tech geeks up in arms about them polluting the pure intraweb with brands and "its all about marketing because they are not really reaching a big audience - of course chicken and egg - build it and they will come, but first you must tell them there is something interesting to come for.
Obviously Second Life will need to completely change its infrastructure to scale for potentially 'millions' rather than 1 million (which it is at now) and around 10 000 concurrent users - but for entertainment, education, professional collaboration and moving our clunky text based 2D web forward I believe this genie is out of the bottle and opening its wings (to mix metaphors)...
Gary Hayes
Posted by: Gary Hayes | Oct 17, 2006 at 22:30
I think the comments that SL and the coming real 3-d internet will have no utility above the internet's ignore a few important factors: sociability, transparency, and utility after creation.
Sociability is the phenomenon that causes people to like something more if they can converse with other people about it as easily as possible. The current internet sociability engines are IM machines, but being able to interact with other people's avatars and send emotes could help the staying power of a 3-D internet, even without being more easily operated.
Transparency is the reason why G(raphical)U(ser)I(nterface)s beat DOS. People like having visual representations of their data, not just lines of text.
For utility after creation... well, i could throw all sorts of idiotic quotes at you about how people thought something was going to be useless until it got big (telephone, internet, etc.), but if it's made, i bet people will find good ways to use it that we couldn't think of now.
I don't think it'll be SL if at least because SL is still perceived as a game, not a tool, but I do think it's as inevitable as a GUI was.
Posted by: Peter S. | Oct 17, 2006 at 23:11
This has quickly become the latest iteration of the Battle of the Bias: those who are true believers in the advent of the 3D web see this as either inevitable or already here. Others haven't bought in to the utility, much less the inevitability of a 3D web, and/or are acutely aware of the persistently unsolved and yet critical social and technical issues required to create one.
For the proponents of what might be called "3D Web Now" there remains little actual data and, as Gary shows above (and in the blog post he referenced) an overabundance of hype (a million users in SL? that's more than double even the most generous counts). The true believers see this ebullience as visionary indicators of a bright future. Others see it as, well, hype that obscures both current reality and near-term probabilities.
What we know is that in the last twenty years, while the Internet has gone from about 500,000 to over a billion users, 3D environments have gone from specialized high-end applications (e.g. SGI's early flight simulator or Evans & Sutherland 3D tools) to being almost ubiquitous -- in very limited, centralized formats. In the last ten years, shared 3D virtual worlds have gone from nothing to millions of users -- but OTOH in their base functionality they've changed very little. They remain highly centralized; those who have attempted to decentralize the nature of the virtual world (notably VRML) have crashed and burned, despite the brave predictions of their true believers.
Second Life is perhaps the most innovative of the current virtual worlds in terms of the end-user's experience, but even it has made incremental (if significant) technological gains on work well in progress over ten years ago. World of Warcraft OTOH is far less innovative technologically and socially, and yet it still commands an audience at least 20x that of Second Life (which one is thus closer to creating a tipping point?).
We also know that while the growth of virtual worlds (3D or not, to Daniel's point) has been rapid in terms of relative growth, but has been almost glacial compared to the growth of the web itself. In the past ten years the web has outpaced virtual world growth by several orders of magnitude. That's not to say virtual world growth hasn't been stunning; it has. But it is a drop in the bucket compared to the pace and ubitquity of growth in the actual use of the web.
Taking a short look back and a clear look at the still-unsolved issues that bar the introduction of a 3D virtual-world web (e.g., secure distributed servers that can handle this data and do not expose users to malicious attacks), it is difficult for me to see any foundation for saying we are anywhere near (much less already at) anything like a tipping point for a "3D metaverse." It's easy to dream about this like dreaming about jetpacks, flying cars, and railroads to the moon (all analogies I've used in the past on this blog for this phenomenon), but that does not change the reality of the web, the utility and rate of uptake of 3D environments, or the very real issues faced by those who would create a distributed 3D web environment.
That said, I believe it can be done. It may be done. It might even become popular if there are usage and utility models that appear as novelties to us today (as with color computer displays or having more than 640K RAM, for example). But given what we know, I don't anticipate seeing a significantly greater rate of innovation or social uptake in the next ten years over what we saw in the last. Given that, it'll probably be twenty years or more before this vision is practical and possibly realized. Inflated hopes aside, the tipping point for a de facto technological platform for the 3D metaverse, if there ever is one, will likely be decided by our children. When the main place for arguing about this subject is no longer on a 2D blog, we might be approaching something more than a purely hypothetical tipping point.
Posted by: Mike Sellers | Oct 17, 2006 at 23:31
> Most of the pieces of an open, web native 3D platform are available in various open source projects. We need to glue them together and start iterating.
righto. X3D (son of VRML), H-anim, MPEG-4 -- it's all out there for the taking. Projects like OpenCroquet and others.
What seems to be missing is that without a multi-million$$$ investment in infrastructure and core visuals (even SL was seeded with tons of reasonably good graphics, hype to the contrary) -- it will be very hard for the open-standards approach to build steam. Chicken-egg all over again.
Someone said Compuserve circa 1992. Add AOL & Prodigy -- can I get a witness? The thing about the Web was, it was a very slow growth prior to the 90's, and similarly specialized and fragmented. Games are analogous to business & productivity apps back then, which pushed the graphics necessary for 2D web to make sense.
The hardware is there, it's just a matter of a little software. Once it ignites, it will blow its top just like the Web. Why futz with a 2D interface if 3D is available *and* actually works well enough to be fun & productive?
YMMV
Posted by: d | Oct 18, 2006 at 00:52
sociability
Studies showing people prefer 3D are: ? Besides, your point is that it would help the staying power; that doesn't have anything to do with utility above and beyond the Internet.
transparency
You didn't even use the word "3D". We have plenty of visual representations on the Internet.
utility after creation.
You're right. Lots of great things have come when people didn't realize they'd be useful before their creation. So, your argument here is essentially, what, "It will be more useful than the Internet because it could be"?
If you really think it will be useful, then debating it on a blog is the wrong avenue towards proving it. Make it. People will adopt it if you're right.
Utility is proven by usage.
I have my own ideas on the subject, but just to be nice and fair-minded, I'll put forward one: the 3D web makes new forms of art possible, both as complex as non-text transmedia world-building and as simple as "impossible according to the laws of physics". Of course, images made with programs like POV-Ray and creations in Second Life already fall under the latter category.
But that fundamentally depends upon coarser utility appearing first; unless we're at the stage of our society when we're willing to develop new media for the sake of art. Which we might be...
Posted by: Michael Chui | Oct 18, 2006 at 02:24
People prefer games with avatars and inter-personal communication through physical vessels because it gives a better feel of realism than pure text transmission. That's an assumption, I don't know of any hard data to back it up.
As for Transparency, even though we have plenty of visual representations of the internet, I think that the sort of consumer who likes myspace, facebook, and the other big social networking sites are the same sort of people who would use a 3d representation of the internet for the same reason they use those social networking sites: they give more representation than is necessary for data transmission to make them feel like they know a total stranger better.
Another key part of the 3D rep. of the internet that I'm taking for granted is a shared identity; there would have to be some way to keep avatars identical, or they'd be pointless. This is, I suppose, the brunt of my transparency argument: once this is in place, it becomes much easier to make 3D representations because they have a framework to start from. A face for a stable identity allows you to see the same people in the same haunts, which generally leads to friendships, however shallow. But you're right, that's not confined to a 3D representation of the internet. Could be as easily done for a chatroom which displays users in a certain area of interest.
There are visual representations of the internet, but they don't have shared standards for user representation. That is the crux of the 3d rep. of the internet as I'm defining it; being able to recognize other people and act in a shared 3D world.
The argument for utility after creation is that if the 3D representation gives more options while incorporating the basic framework of the internet (allows the creation of a user-icon and/or 3d representation of your site while allowing all the data traversing of the internet), people will find ways to use that stuff while still using the internet.
In a way, MySpace and social networking provide an example of this phenomenon; there's apparently no reason to use them. The internet's data transmission works without social networking sites and there is little or no direct gain from these sites. Yet if they exist and don't interfere with other internet processes, people seem to use them once they reach a critical mass, and for all sorts of things.
Not really saying I know how to make it useful, just that if it's the next logical step everyone thinks it is it will be useful. Like how a smaller battery is the next step in battery technology, but enables a smart manufacturer to create a whole plethora of new gadgets which were formerly beyond reach.
But for example; if the 3D representation had realistic physics, you could test-drive a car to get a feel for the handling and acceleration, See how clothes fit on a representation of your body, play games of paintball with a representation of a new gun to try it out. The internet has data transmission covered, but it doesn't have things like a real-time discussion between avatars of different people except in chat, and that's limited to text. A 3D representation could allow a scanner to properly render body language from a set of special cameras into a simulated discussion room.
Again, the data is there through the internet, but the application is hard to grasp data and could be eased with a 3D simulation.
Posted by: Peter S. | Oct 18, 2006 at 05:09
The 2D web is basically a producer-consumer technology. Its (accidental) innovation was to literally trivialize the barriers of entry to self-publishing. Anybody with US$100 had a voice that was accessible the non-geeks of the world. It is very much a one to many relationship. The value of the 2D web is greatly enhanced by its persistance and the indexing done by places like Google that help me find the content that I'm interested in.
I don't get any of that from today's 3D clients. Their content for the most part is ephemeral. Sure, my game avatars persist their personal stats and inventories, but the events that occur within virtual worlds are rarely replayed and if so, simply aren't available to casual browsers with the exception of some FRAPS grabs or screenshots. 3D is visceral and immediate, in many cases text simply has much better info density.
IMO, 3d is going to remain mostly a social technology, much like IM. We may see it enhance the 2D web, but I suspect it won't replace it.
Posted by: John K. | Oct 18, 2006 at 09:30
It is very difficult to look into any future by taking a ficed snapshot of the now, John. I agree that current 'virtual worlds' (as opposed to 3D web which suggest 'interface' and 'tech') are not where they will be. They are evolving quickly. The 2D web is to the book as the 'immersive' 3D web is to photo-realistic cinema. With the book you need to utilise high levels of imagination and no ones experience of a book is the same. Compare that to the shared experience of large screen cinema or an immersive space. OK I know that even in those scenarios the experience is not mirrored but it is far, far closer than the textual media. As graphics, connectivity and processing power increase so does the 'suspension' of disbelief in a shared, social space. There has to be an element of shared narrative too. A common story world, I suppose much like life (work, play, money, sex) or blogs (posts, opinions, insight, social network) - a shared space will have common ground, in which will grow common shared data so...
Onto to your point that also seems locked in the now. That virtual spaces have no history or generate 'metadata' that can be 'consumed' by others - 'it is just avatar shape and inventory'? In some 'current' online games yes but we are at the beginning. In virtual spaces we are already seeing the ability for social data to be captured and held for search/retrieval :
a) Where we have been
b) Who we have met and
c) What we said to them
d) What we do and how long we do it for
e) What we buy
f) Could even track your mood via emoticons or if you are using audio voice through the space, limited voice to text conversion and so on and so on...
Something like slstats.com, which I am a member, is a very crude start to this. I wear a watch all the time in Second Life and it automatically tracks me, where I go and who I meet. The beginning. We need to innovate and use our imagination of where this will lead. Just as GPS mobile devices are starting to play more of a role in our real lives, it is so much easier to generate data in a naturally 'digital' virtual space. Also everything we currently have on the 2D web can and will be accesible from the virtual space.
Many things in virtual spaces can be afforded by rich, personal data of your activities. Agents could start to suggest actions based on keywords generated in real time from our social chat. Where you would like to go. What you may like to buy. Recommenders start to come into play. Collaborative filters add value to media in-world.
I could go on but back to your line " with the exception of some FRAPS grabs or screenshots. 3D is visceral and immediate" - isn't that true of audio and video? Any media that is not annotated is invisible? Audio and video will always be the poorer cousin to 'hypertext' as data is a layer rather than intrinsic, but a virtual world is a true 'digital matrix' and it is just up to imaginative people to decide 'what' is to be captured - rather nothing is at the moment.
Posted by: Gary Hayes | Oct 18, 2006 at 10:19
Ren, I tried to address this question directly in a series of articles (4 of them interviews with people actively working on it):
http://www.brownianemotion.org/2006/09/20/web-3d-part-1/
I'm happy to add more interviews, perhaps from one or two from the TerraNova crowd. My longer diatribes are on hold in favor of doing actual 3D work for a while.
Posted by: Avi Bar-Zeev | Oct 18, 2006 at 10:33
Let's see if I can put the link in right: part 1
Posted by: Avi Bar-Zeev | Oct 18, 2006 at 11:36
Gary Hayes wrote:
The 2D web is to the book as the 'immersive' 3D web is to photo-realistic cinema. With the book you need to utilise high levels of imagination and no ones experience of a book is the same. Compare that to the shared experience of large screen cinema or an immersive space. OK I know that even in those scenarios the experience is not mirrored but it is far, far closer than the textual media.
Keep in mind, of course, that a movie is also a 2d experience, not a 3d one. Even in a so-called "3d" movie, you can't rotate the camera (your eyes) around something and see the back of it, for instance.
In some 'current' online games yes but we are at the beginning. In virtual spaces we are already seeing the ability for social data to be captured and held for search/retrieval :
a) Where we have been
b) Who we have met and
c) What we said to them
d) What we do and how long we do it for
e) What we buy
f) Could even track your mood via emoticons or if you are using audio voice through the space, limited voice to text conversion and so on and so on...
None of these have anything to do with 3d. They can be implemented in 3d, 2d, or text with equivalent ease. You're kind of making the point that 3d is just an interface choice, not a fundamental attribute of a virtual world.
Something like slstats.com, which I am a member, is a very crude start to this. I wear a watch all the time in Second Life and it automatically tracks me, where I go and who I meet. The beginning.
Sort of a virtual Mark of the Beast? ;) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_of_the_beast#666_as_the_mark_of_commerce
Seriously though, I can't imagine anything less appealing to me than having every action and interaction tracked, though I'll grant that's a personal prejudice (albeit one shared by many people).
--matt
Posted by: Matt Mihaly | Oct 18, 2006 at 12:09
Thanks for the link Avi. Interesting.
Posted by: ren reynolds | Oct 18, 2006 at 16:21
Said it before:
Posted by: Randy Farmer | Oct 18, 2006 at 16:59
Keep in mind, of course, that a movie is also a 2d experience, not a 3d one. Even in a so-called "3d" movie, you can't rotate the camera (your eyes) around something and see the back of it, for instance.
The appropriate analogy he should have used, Matt, is "A 3d performance on stage versus a 2d script."
Now, Peter S. says,
it gives a better feel of realism than pure text transmission
That is different for different people. My preferred medium of communication is asynchronous text. Realism is unnecessary for communication; what needs to be communicated is what I have to say, and that can generally be reliably encoded in textual language. Of course, if I were trying to communicate something else, for instance, my sex appeal... then the 3D web isn't going to help all that much for a long time anyways, and I'm not sure I like the idea of my computer transmitted my pheromones.
There are visual representations of the internet, but they don't have shared standards for user representation. That is the crux of the 3d rep. of the internet as I'm defining it; being able to recognize other people and act in a shared 3D world.
The inherent assumption, here, is that the 3d representation of a person is an integral part of a person's identity. I submit that this is false, on philosophical grounds, and consider myself to be a counterexample.
The argument for utility after creation is that if the 3D representation gives more options while incorporating the basic framework of the internet..., people will find ways to use that stuff while still using the internet.
Like I said: utility is proven by usage.
Your argument, stripped out, is "If something provides more options, people will use it." That's not necessarily true; but I'm not disagreeing. It's the same "argument" you'd use to argue for say... designing the laser.
Posted by: Michael Chui | Oct 18, 2006 at 17:14
I like lasers. ^_^
I prefer text too. But even though we prefer text, it's less realistic than a 3D representation. According to my psychology textbook (Invitation to psychology, Wade, Tavris), people tend to use an availability heuristic instead of reasoning rationally, or 'the tendency to judge by how easy it is to think of examples or instances,' in favor of alternatives with more easily thought of examples.
An argument for a 3D rep. of the internet because people use something they can visualize more than something abstract just because they can visualize it.
While I do think a 3D representation of a person is integral to their identity, I'm not sure you could assert that your 3D representation of yourself is not integral to your identity with any certainty. I don't know how you'd be able to test that, one way or the other.
The point wasn't that a 3D representation is integral to someone's identity, but that people tend to use an avatar they can visualize over one they can't, and if people use it, new reasons for using it will arise.
Are we on topic? I think so.
Posted by: Peter S. | Oct 18, 2006 at 21:11
it's less realistic than a 3D representation
But why is realism a pertinent metric to the utility of the 3d Internet?
I don't know how you'd be able to test that, one way or the other.
I will say that, for the past, oh.. 15 years or so (age: 21), I am reasonably certain I have had similar difficulty to the present to attempts to visualize what I look like. My perception of myself does not include a physical form. I do not know how common this is, and in fact suspect it is uncommon, but it is nevertheless a data point. Then again, introversion is also uncommon (roughly 15%, according to Keirsey) but not insignificant, so I have the case for a study.
But it's a necessary point because I dislike the notion that I might be forced to provide a 3d avatar to represent myself that is necessarily inaccurate because it is too different, and to make changes to it would change my representation to other users. I feel my writings in textual form and my graphics in two-dimensional visual form are far more communicative of who I am than a humanoid creature. If I were forced, I think I would elect to represent myself as a URL.
The point wasn't that a 3D representation is integral to someone's identity
Well, I was running with the assumption that we were talking about utility...
but that people tend to use an avatar they can visualize over one they can't
...not popularity. =P For instance, brand name clothing and accessories are extraordinarily popular. However, their actual utility value does not necessarily extend past comparable generic clothing and accessories, and could conceivably be worse.
Of course, your argument is that with popularity, there can emerge utility.
Posted by: Michael Chui | Oct 18, 2006 at 21:45
Are we actually arguing about whether 3D graphics are "better" than text? My favorite color is periwinkle blue... Geez.
I remember back in the early days of the Web, when people were complaining about "graphic heavy" websites and sites with "too much" style and "lots of" design. All you need is text and links and, if there's a good reason (diagrams, porn) a few pictures. All that other stuff? Crap that just clogs bandwidth. Now? We've got people loading homemade machanima (and can anyone tell me how to pronounce that? it's in my head, but I've never heard it spoken...) onto YouTube that totally cracks me up, but leaves 94% of my office-mates completely dry. My point? One man's useless garbage is another man's Andy Warhol. Welcome to the Long Tail.
Bandwidth plus metadata = utility. Why would I want a 3D representation of any thing, place, person, non-place, imaginary critter or anything-at-all on the Web where I could connect it up with other users? If the tools were easy enough and the bandwidth was there and the metadata was connected to it? For the love of all that's holy about gaming... come on people! Read that last sentence again... Don't any of you like Legos?
Imagine the biggest Lego set you possibly can think of. Now attach it to my biggest Lego set. And the Lego sets of 10 million of our closest friends. All of whom have described their various constructions in ways such that connecting them becomes easy and logical and fun. And not just sets of blocks, but actions that can be applied to them.
"Here's my model train set. It has every car from the classic Oriental Express line, modeled down to a pretty fantastic level of detail. Free for use. Because I like trains."
"Here's my 3D poker simulation."
Well... What have we here? Now I can merge these two and play poker on the Orient Express! Isn't that fun. Now... hook that up to an MMO about the Old West where every piece of 3D that's tagged with a metadata flag for the years between 1820 and 1889 "gets in," and things start clicking.
You get the point, right? OK... So now hook that up to a project where somebody with some actual creedenshuls verifies whether your assets match for historical accuracy. The same 3D schwag that's used to play in your Wild West sim can be used to recreate what your home town looked like the year it was founded in 1885. And you can then work with the Chamber of Commerce on a project to do an online overlay of "Yesterday and Today" where people can do a walk-through of the town and see where current stores are now, and what was there before. That's interesting stuff to lots of people, I think. We call it "history."
And while you can certainly describe what your town looked like 120 years ago, and looking at maps and pictures is cool, walking an avatar down a street that you know in real life today and being able to navigate it in the past... seeing how it changed and how people lived differently. That would be a real educational tool. And many parts of that tool could, conceivably, be built elsewhere, as assets in other disparate "games" or applications, if they were reusable or open. Just like, now, I pick up lots of my graphics, blog-code, etc. on the Web for free.
Will text go away? I don't think so. I don't think paper will go away for a very, very long time. But people also like to explore things and places in visceral ways. 3D lets you do that. I can travel through a model home as if I'm walking around in it instead of just looking at pictures. I can practice several commuting routes to work. I can move desks and office furniture around my building to see what works where. I can try it with new 3D office furniture that Staples has just uploaded to their site.
All kinds of stuff. Useful? You bet. Is much of it replicable with other tech? Sure. But you can also replicate email with letters and stamps. Just takes lots longer.
Posted by: Andy Havens | Oct 18, 2006 at 22:00
Google had search long before it had AdSense. VHS wasn't as good as Betamax, but won the format war. Utility follows popularity. Entrepreneurs need a market.
As to your being forced to have an avatar, you could always just exist as an e-mail address, or a ghost of some sort. Same as people can still operate without using the internet at all, you'd be a bit limited without an avatar but not crippled.
Andy's ideas parallel mine, though mine tend more toward entertainment than his. Historical simulations are all well and good, but I'd prefer a Wild West shootout to a tour.
Of course, most of that stuff could be done without a strict 3D representation of the internet, but would be made much easier by the protocols which could create the 3Dnet. Various virtual worlds is a phenomenon which already exists, interoperability does not.
Posted by: Peter S. | Oct 18, 2006 at 22:23
"Mah - shi - nih - mah."
It's not just about whether 3d makes sense for the content, it's also about who can run 3d and who can navigate it. Don't confuse machinima (which are movies) with actual 3d. Also don't for a minute think that the average user knows how to navigate a 3d space. They don't. Mouselook is not a skill most people have.
The "3d web" needs to run on your mom's outdated video card and in a browser, and needs to be point and click. Think Bejeweled, not WoW.
Posted by: Raph | Oct 18, 2006 at 22:41
Also don't for a minute think that the average user knows how to navigate a 3d space. They don't.
Heh. I still have trouble navigating Second Life. Admittedly, I haven't practiced much. I prefer the "hold one key down and watch" method.
you could always just exist as an e-mail address
*deadpan* A textual one?
Same as people can still operate without using the internet at all, you'd be a bit limited without an avatar but not crippled.
Yes, but on the Internet, you can do things like this ("To get to know me write [email address provided] rather than google witch-hunting me")
What would be the 3d equivalent? Besides, you know... pulling up a textual/2-dimensional description that once again demands, "Why is 3d better when 2d is what makes it work?" A funny hat?
VHS wasn't as good as Betamax, but won the format war.
No. The VHS v. Betamax format war was a contest between popularity v. quality. Depending on how you define utility, this is either an example of no relationship between popularity and utility, or an example of popularity decreasing utility. The QWERTY keyboard is the standard keyboard today; it is not the optimal arrangement of keys. It was deliberately sub-optimized to slow typists down.
Entrepreneurs need a market.
Entrepreneurship such as that of which you speak creates a market. They provide utility and thus gain popularity.
Re-read Randy Farmer's comment; then do some searching to familiarize yourself with who he is. And ask yourself, then, why the 3d web still isn't here.
Keep in mind that I'm disagreeing with you because you're going over the top, not because you're headed in the wrong direction. It's very well and good to say, "We can colonize Mars, then the Andromeda Galaxy!" I totally agree. Hell yes. But how about we try for a space elevator first? A Lunar colony, perhaps? Or maybe just reliable manned spaceflight for normal passengers with the safety level of modern airplanes?
At least I can tell you what the utility of that is: gene dispersion. Looking at Second Life and World of Warcraft and saying, "Look! It's the 3d web!" is akin to looking at the Shuttle, then saying, "Look! We're going to colonize the stars!"
There is a road that needs to be found and walked. If an individual disagrees with the mainstream sentiment, then he should act as a maverick and prove he's right. Which is why I say that if you believe in the 3d web, then you should build it. And market it. Find a way. And walk it.
Posted by: Michael Chui | Oct 19, 2006 at 03:50
I've come to see that among the biggest obstacles to the Web 2.0 or 3pointD virtual world web is the tekkies who made Web 1.0. They think it will go the same way, and get hysterical if you question their received wisdom as to dot.com hysteria, tipping point, applications. They sneer and call what many of us in games and worlds call "3D" as merely only 2-d representation 3-d because they imagine only holograms will be 3-D -- but we know 2-D is the sims; 3-D is SL or There.
Look, there's the bus to Poughkeepsie, and then there's Poughkeepsie -- and then there's the train to Manhattan. Who remembers the bus once you get to Poughkeepsie? And after you leave Poughkeepsie, who looks back? I never understand the crazed sectarianism of open-sourcerers -- why do they think we're going to want to come and hang in a rinky-dink home-brewed basement dungeon of their improvision? The means of transportation might be open source or might become owned by something enormous like Google but the towns will have to have the character that only smaller entities can give them -- and that doesn't mean merely home-brews but places where home-brewing is merely made possible as an extension.
The 3D web will belong not to open source, but to companies who will have to keep the worlds subscription-based or licensed or charge for land/server space even if initial entry is free or low-cost because they won't be able to function as the socialist utopias the open-sourcerers wish, they'll have to be able to pay programmers and pay for server time.
The rest of us will want to log on to spaces where at least the makers have bothered to put out some recognizable contiguous geographical space and some water and trees, not refracting fractal Moebius strips.
Eventually, Linden Lab will have to outsource community management to entities like anshechung.com because they are too unrealistic about people relations.
The bus and train might be opensourced but the the most-used or best destinations are unlikely to be.
If the 3d web takes longer to get here than the 2-D web, what of it? It's more complicated.
You all are complexifying the navigation of SL needlessly. Indeed, its makers and its first-tier helpers drawn from the beta-era base complexify it needlessly. The reason it is really growing so fast is that more ordinary people find it easier to use, even with its still-existing wonkiness than even DIY websites to build using templates. Imagine!
Ren, there is a way to port between There and SL. It's called "The Internet", just like you leave Poughkeepsie by buying a ticket and getting on the bus to Manhattan, you don't expect not to buy a ticket or be transported instantaneously.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | Oct 19, 2006 at 08:59
You all are complexifying the navigation of SL needlessly.
This can be proven in a very straight-forward manner, even if expensive and slowly. It's simple. Set up a couple computer centers across the nation in reasonably urban locales, like New York, San Fran, etc. Pay people an incentive to get in. X number of acres in SL free, a L$ equivalent, a USD equivalent, couple months of WoW, whatever. Ensure that they have web-surfing experience, but minimal 3d navigation experience. Then ask them to perform a series of tasks that require substantial navigation, without requiring knowledge beyond navigation. For instance, if you tell them to go on a quest in WoW, tell them to walk over to that guy over there and click on him. His task is to walk over there.
Get a sufficient sample size and you can generalize to the entire population. LL should probably have the ability to fund such a study, and they probably should. If nothing else, it's publicity on an individual scale; use SL as the test interface and walk them through downloading it. Guarantee that 10% of users will stick.
Posted by: Michael Chui | Oct 19, 2006 at 11:06
Why should someone enter an imaginary 3D world to buy a pair of shoes when the 2D web works better? It's faster, easier and uses a simpler conceptual model. For many years to come, the 2D web will also have better graphics and be more portable.
The 3D web would totally dominate the 2D web in some applications such as driving directions, sporting events, real estate sales, and WikiHow articles like http://www.wikihow.com/Effectively-Ride-a-Skateboard.
The main problem is importing useful real world data into a virtual world -- especially near real-time 3D data. All of the 3D world engines perform well enough right now. They just don't have any information that interests most people.
Posted by: Ken Fox | Oct 19, 2006 at 11:15
The 3D web would totally dominate the 2D web in some applications such as driving directions
I disagree. The metaphor of the map is entirely too powerful and capable, and I do not think it would do very much. However, 3d would be far more effective in displaying physical spaces that are not roads, such as floorplans (which I've personally done in X3D).
Posted by: Michael Chui | Oct 19, 2006 at 11:25
VHS wasn't as good as Betamax, but won the format war. Utility follows popularity.
One of the critical factors that caused VHS to win over Betamax was Sony's financial and technical control over the format. If you wanted to build Betamax hardware, you had to license it from Sony for a significant sum of money. VHS was not controlled by any single manufacturer and had either much lower licensing fees or none at all. This lesson just doesn't seem to sink in.
The metaphor of the map is entirely too powerful and capable, and I do not think it would do very much.
Perhaps not dominate, but it's an interesting concept. There are many (many) people that cannot read a map. For the most part they rely on landmarks to navigate.
Still the example is evolutionary or even complementary more than one that would be a convincing argument that people would shift to 3D browsing en masse. Color, graphical UI's and sound were all technologies that eventually people adopted into the standard desktop. Broad acceptance or at least the absence of strong opposition didn't occur until the underlying technologies were ubiquitous. Eventually this will happen with 3d hardware. But I've yet to see an application of 3D that would have me abandon my 2d applications. Reproducing them inside a 3d client doesn't count, that's just emulation.
Posted by: John K. | Oct 19, 2006 at 12:01
The tipping point will arrive when the killer app for 3D web arrives. So far we only have interesting "experiments".
Also we mostly grew up with the 2D perspective; it's comfortable. While this is changing, it will be a while before 3D becomes the dominant online perspective.
What will the killer app for 3D web be?
Frank
Posted by: magicback (Frank) | Oct 19, 2006 at 13:16
Prokofy Neva: I've come to see that among the biggest obstacles to the Web 2.0 or 3pointD virtual world web is the tekkies who made Web 1.0. They think it will go the same way, and get hysterical if you question their received wisdom as to dot.com hysteria, tipping point, applications.
And from my point of view, I think the biggest obstacle to Web 2.0 and 3.D virtual world web is the failure to recognize that they are extensions of concepts and prototypes that go back 20, 30, and even 50 years. ("Google Office" reminds me soo much of the '96 CSCL conference that it's not even funny.)
And another frustration is with the dominance of a technological view of innovation rather than a socio-technical view of innovation. The both the industrial and the information revolutions didn't happen just because of new inventions, they also required some radical redesign of social labor relations. (Which is frequently misunderstood about the luddites.) Given copious evidence that technology alone does not change squat, I find skepticism regarding technology cheeleading to be well advised.
I suspect a bigger challenge to a 3.D virtual world web is going to be ubquitous computing and communication systems. As much as there is talk about avatars and spaces, the number of people with photo-enabled mobile phones and using webcams these days dwarfs virtual worlds by an order of magnitude. So a question that comes up now and will be more critical in the near future, is why should I go to a "virtual world" when I can bring my friends into the room I currently inhabit with my mobile communications device? Why should I have to navigate a space to get information when my GPS and RFID-enabled information device can deliver to my current location? I do think that the popularity of 3D spaces will continue to grow. However, the "page" has about 300 years of history behind it and will be hard to displace.
Ken Fox: Why should someone enter an imaginary 3D world to buy a pair of shoes when the 2D web works better?
Personally, this is one case where neither works "better" at least for me. I have rather picky and odd feet so whenever I buy shoes, I have to depend on at least three senses that are not represented through computer interfaces: balance, kinesis, and tactile. Brick and mortar is likely to continue to be important for those reasons, and also because shopping is an key social ritual for many people.
Posted by: KirkJobSluder | Oct 19, 2006 at 13:27
magickback (Frank): What will the killer app for 3D web be?
Gaming doesn't count?
Perhaps part of the problem is thinking about the 3D "web" at all. The WWW is designed around hypertext and document models. So the 3D "web" strikes me as a mixed metaphor.
Posted by: KirkJobSluder | Oct 19, 2006 at 13:45
I love this discussion. I had it before in several former lives, back when the printing press was invented and the monks were all "why do farmers need to know how to read?" and when radio came out and teachers everywhere bemoaned that "nobody needs to have printed materials read to them," and then when TV came out and it was the end of the world, and then when telephones would end civil discourse and then when cell phones would end polite social society. Ditto for trains, airplanes and autos. Ditto for Xerox machines, personal computers, person cameras (both analog and digital) and fast food.
At each stage of any new interesting medium, of commerce, communication or creativity, there is a period where we try to figure out how to put "old wine in new vessels." How do we print very complex, scrolly-looking old Bibles using this new moveable type? How do we read print on the radio? Film plays? Put TV shows on the Web? And then, eventually, we figure out how the new medium best expresses its own power.
Blogs? Who'd heard of 'em 10 years ago. But they are a power to be reckoned with today, eh? Podcasts? Google? YouTube? eBay? Facebook? MySpace? Wikipedia? All very new, very "Webby" uses of the Web, as opposed to shoveling your printed brochures, text and images, up on a screen and calling it a site.
And what the heck is a "3D Web" anyway? That's like saying a movie is "Recorded Theatre" or that books are "Visible Words." That tinkin dinna fash. If (when) we have some kind of more useable, shareable, mashable, modable, 3D environment, it won't -- I guar-on-tee -- look and feel like the Web. It won't be "Web 3.0," and gash that term just burns my drawers. It will be 3D, and it may use the Web... but a car is surely a horseless carriage, and yet we don't call it that much anymore, eh? Or trains the iron horse.
I'm not a starr-eyed idealist, here. It won't happen in a year or two. And I don't necessarily think it will happen on Second Life. Or even on Google, necessarily. Right now, if you put a gun to my head and made me bet, I'd bet on Redmond. See: XBox Live plus free public development kits plus the only company that is working on games that will translate from PCs and consoles.
But the *best* system/interface in the world is the one that works the way customers will use. Do you even need graphic maps for driving directions? Nope. Turn here, go 2 miles, look for this street, go 3 miles, turn right. Ba-da-bing. But 2D maps are helpful. A 3D map that will let you fly through the route first and see, "Ah. That place next to the Shell Station. Right." That would be helpful, too.
Let us also remember that this "3D thang" will also be running, most probably, "behind and alongside" various 2D interfaces, with video and audio in-line as well. I've got a very 2D HUD in SL and WoW, for example. It's helpful. In my car, which I drive in RL, my dashboard is pretty much a 2D HUD, eh.
Also, @Raph, who said: "The "3d web" needs to run on your mom's outdated video card..." Does it amuse you, or anyone, as much as me that anyone's mom has a video card at all? And that it's been around and in a PC long enough to be outdated? The fact that this statement is made and understood to be true means that the cycle time is so reduced as to be, on a cultural scale, almost nil. We, of the technoscenti, are unsatisfied if something doesn't change every couple of months. But if WoW can get 7 million users, when the last itteration of a major 3D VW couldn't quite top a million... I'm pretty confident that in less than 5 years, mom's video card will be WoW compliant. And that in 10 it won't be an issue.
Posted by: Andy Havens | Oct 19, 2006 at 14:47
Of course the hardware distribution will catch up. Vista alone is going to push a lot of higher-end video capabilities onto every desktop over the next few years.
The navigation ability will take a bit longer -- that's a generational shift. I have zero doubt that those who are teens today will all have the skills to navigate a fully 3d space. Right now, however, it's not common at all among adults (we think it is because of the circles we move in).
I'm a total believer in the idea that these are capabilities that can and should be extended to everyone. I am just a skeptic about the universality of the 3d metaphor, and about the emphasis on "3d web." If we said "spatial web" I'd probably nod in agreement and move on. :)
Posted by: Raph | Oct 19, 2006 at 15:08
Andy Havens wrote:
I love this discussion. I had it before in several former lives, back when the printing press was invented and the monks were all "why do farmers need to know how to read?" and when radio came out and teachers everywhere bemoaned that "nobody needs to have printed materials read to them," and then when TV came out and it was the end of the world, and then when telephones would end civil discourse and then when cell phones would end polite social society. Ditto for trains, airplanes and autos. Ditto for Xerox machines, personal computers, person cameras (both analog and digital) and fast food.
I hear this line of argument a lot from cheerleaders (though you don't come across as one) and it's got no value. For every example you include there, I can probably find you 10 things that had technological cheerleaders that didn't work out. Any technology can be "argued" for in this fashion, and the great thing for the cheerleaders is that the argument is utterly devoid of content. There's no way to argue back because it's not actually putting forth a cogent argument - just appearing to. It's the same "argument" VRML cheerleaders used too, incidentally, along with every quack who has ever invented something he believes is of simply indispensible use to the world's population.
But the *best* system/interface in the world is the one that works the way customers will use. Do you even need graphic maps for driving directions? Nope. Turn here, go 2 miles, look for this street, go 3 miles, turn right. Ba-da-bing. But 2D maps are helpful. A 3D map that will let you fly through the route first and see, "Ah. That place next to the Shell Station. Right." That would be helpful, too.
Why do you even need a 3d map for that? The GPS (which I have named Miranda) in my Lexus shows me that there is a Shell Station next to my route (along with whatever restaurants are there, etc) and it's completely 2d. In fact, 3d would just unnecessarily complicate things, as when I'm driving, the third dimension just doesn't matter much.
I agree with the thrust of what you're saying though: 3D will be a component of the net, used in certain circumstances when useful, and not when not useful. Of course, that's already the case. When I want to play certain types of games, I log into a 3d environment. When I want to communicate efficiently asychronously, I use something like a blog or forums or email.
--matt
Posted by: Matt Mihaly | Oct 19, 2006 at 15:11
Does anyone else find it somewhat ironic that while Linden's cheerleaders go on about a monolithic 3D web, Linden itself does the opposite and ensures that their own virtual worlds are completely separated? (Ie their main grid and their teen grid.)
--matt
Posted by: Matt Mihaly | Oct 19, 2006 at 15:20
A 3D web won't go mainstream until someone creates compelling content.
If sports helped sell big screen televisions, maybe it can sell the 3D web too. Here's a pretty easy idea.
Motion capture players in pro football games. Let fans run around the virtual field as umpires. Give prizes to fans calling the most correct plays/penalties/etc. Allow players to create virtual stadiums with many games going on at once. Hyperlink statistics and merchandise to the players. Surround the fields with full-on advertising.
This mixes the "alone together" strength of virtual worlds with pro sport fantasy play. It's a totally unique form of entertainment that can't be replicated in either traditional media or the physical world.
Posted by: Ken Fox | Oct 19, 2006 at 15:54
I am guilty of using an example which couldn't have been better calculated to inflame my audience and which I didn't know enough about to use correctly. I hereby rescind all claims to know anything about that situation and fervently apologize for my ignorance.
Went and learned about Randy Farmer. 3D web is an improvement of the level of shared experiences and realism of the Internet. The only problem solved by our idea of 3D web is implicit: I can't see all the information in as realistic a manner as I could.
Web 3D is just a step toward realism in information transmission, a continuation of the tendencies by which Information is sorted into concepts, concepts into words, words into books, books into pictures, pictures into movies, movies into video games, video games into Virtual Worlds, virtual worlds into Virtual World, which is the 3D web.
Not all books make the transition from book to video game, but it is a logical progression because people like their entertainment in formats closer to what they perceive as realistic, and a single shared 3D experience is as realistic as it gets.
I'm on the biased side for 3D web as an improvement to the internet just because my mental picture is so gosh-darned interesting. But it's a logical progression to think that just as books incorporated pictures, the internet will incorporate a more video game-like component.
I agree with Andy: I don't think that the 3D web will be anything like the internet. But I do think that something which has the features we're discussing will come into being, just like someone could have made an educated guess that someday books would be made into a visual/auditory experience.
I also agree with Michael Chui: I can't think of a reason why, in pure utility purposes, a 3D web is better than the internet as-is.
But I can't really think of a reason why a video game is better than a book in utility purposes. The type of information which could be stored in a 3D web is entirely different than that of a book: could you make a book of World of Warcraft? You could make a book about world of warcraft, but the game is better for entertainment purposes and has much more shared experiential value than the book would.
The value of any Role-Playing game is that you can step into the world of the book and learn, from some basic rules laid by the book, some of the possible experiences that world has to offer with other people. RPGs have informational value (how else do you learn how easy it really is to die to a red dragon than to step into a character, live a short but fulfilling life, and THEN get slaughtered). But the value of an RPG is not that it's efficient, but that it's thorough.
That's the allure of a 3D web: a virtual world which encompasses the entire internet allows people to have shared experiences in a way the Internet as-is never could.
Posted by: Peter S. | Oct 19, 2006 at 16:19
Andy Havens: Blogs? Who'd heard of 'em 10 years ago. But they are a power to be reckoned with today, eh? Podcasts? Google? YouTube? eBay? Facebook? MySpace? Wikipedia? All very new, very "Webby" uses of the Web, as opposed to shoveling your printed brochures, text and images, up on a screen and calling it a site.
Which is another thing that bothers me about "New Web" or "Web 2.0" rhetoric. It puts the cart before the horse and sets up this straw man of the "old web" as just digitized "printed brochures."
The fact of the matter is, the web came out of developments in CSCL/W that go back to the 70s. Pretty quickly after HTML and HTTP came CGI and quickly after that people started working with dynamic and collaborative content, as well as HTML interfaces into older messaging systems and protocols.
The primary revolution was that HTML/HTTP/CGI provided a public domain interface for building these services as client-server systems. Before, you used text terminal connection to mainframes or proprietary protocols.
Just as an example, many of the technologies you name-drop date back to the start of widespread web adoption. HTML 2.0 was published in '94. Ebay started in '95. The WikiWikiWeb in '94. Google was a late-comer to the web indexes in '98 with AltaVista and Lycos already on the scene. Social networking systems with personal profiles predate '89 when I first became involved. At the same time, there was a rich AV trading underground through bitnet, usenet and on pay systems like compuserve. Sequential online journals were certainly around with the first web pages, although some people did the same thing with bulletin boards and email lists before then.
I'm not seeing much in the way of new ideas. (The Google Maps API, now that's cool.) What I am seeing is a slide over the adoption hump for technologies that had previously been the domain of early adopters. Just looking at the numbers on WoW and SL compared to older systems needs to take into account mainstream adoption of DSL and Cable for example.
Posted by: KirkJobSluder | Oct 19, 2006 at 17:19
> Prokofy Neva wrote
Ren, there is a way to port between There and SL. It's called "The Internet", just like you leave Poughkeepsie by buying a ticket and getting on the bus to Manhattan, you don't expect not to buy a ticket or be transported instantaneously.
Actually I have an Oyster card. I can get on any transport system in London with it, on some smart card readers (erm, it’s a smart card) it automatically updates my on-card balance (it’s e-money basically) and it holds ID credentials – thus big brother can no doubt track my movement, for which I get 50p discount on the bus. I never need to by any tickets.
What I mean by portaling is this very simple movement from one to another, which is single sign on technology basically but there needs to be some standards on a base level of ID.
Posted by: ren reynolds | Oct 19, 2006 at 17:23
Peter S. Not all books make the transition from book to video game, but it is a logical progression because people like their entertainment in formats closer to what they perceive as realistic, and a single shared 3D experience is as realistic as it gets.
[snark on]Which of course, is why Beethoven and Monet are amazingly popular. Because entertainment is about shared realistic experience.[/snark off]
I think people like books, and often read books based on games, for very different reasons that people play games. One reason is the written word can be full of art and pleasing.
Second, novels provide depth into the internal psychology of characters that would be tedious to watch or play in cinema. Moby Dick and A Wizard of Earthsea contain entire chapters of a protagonist lost in thought, sitting in a boat, in the middle of nowhere.
Third, one of the joys of reading a novel (or watching a movie) is not having any control over what happens to the characters. The entire point of Moby Dick is that everyone but Ishmael dies. I don't think such a scenario would go over well in a game.
Perhaps another factor is that new media often revitalizes older media. It's not as if writers and visual artists stood still with the development of the newspaper, cinema, or television.
Posted by: KirkJobSluder | Oct 19, 2006 at 18:29
@KirkJobSluder: You're making my point for me. There are very few technical reasons why the Wikipedia couldn't have come out in 1990. There are very few technical reasons why we couldn't have had Google 10 years earlier, and guess what that would have meant for the adoption curve of the Web for many users, micro-advertising, etc. My point is not that the technology is new in this great, grand "Web 2.0" land, but that a certain "mas y mass" of people start to "get" the things that you can really do, and start doing them in ways that are more truly appropriate to the technology. When you only have early adopters on board, you only have early-adoption solutions to early-adopttion issues. The other folks use the new-tech in old-tech ways; shovel-ware, brochure-ware on the Web. The early adopters are using the Web to do truly unique things. Everybody else is saying, "I get it... it's like a book on line. I get it, it's like a store front. I get it, it's like my poster, but people in other countries can see it." Etc. Etc. The "I get it" is all compared to previous media and tasks.
The frustration that Kirk, and may others who've been Webbing for 15+ years are feeling in this "Web 2.0" environment, is because a lot of what is being said, has been said by these pioneers for a very long time. But the "2.0" stuff is, in many cases, just the big chunk of the Bell Curve catching up with the early adopters.
Right now, we've got some early adopters in 3D land. They are going to be the ones, in many cases, who figure out the best ways to bring "old world" stuff into the new world. Which is Step 1. Great. We're playing D&D in a virtual land. We're using computers to roll the dice. Terrific. We're doing old things in new ways. We need to do that. Some new things, though, are starting to happen with 3D in places like Second Life and WoW, because of the number of people playing, and because we're getting people who are saying, "Hunh... there is no analog for this in the real world. This is really funky, new stuff. I wonder what will happen if I do *this*." And they push the big red button."
Lots of the dot-bomb failures were the result of people trying to do dumb-ass, old stuff "on the Web," under the assumption that because it was "on the Web" it would instantly be cheaper, faster, better, sexier, taller, svelter, etc. We all know now that that was wrong. So now, with Web 2.0isms running rampant... we're seeing much more caution. Really, we are. Even with the big money being spent on properties like YouTube and del.icio.us, it ain't nothin' like the overevaluation of Pets.com and all that crap.
So... simulcast sports in 3D. Another neat idea.
Matt... you don't want a 3D map. Frankly, neither do I. But some people might, eh? And why does a map that looks just like the real thing help some people? Because it establishes familiarity. And you could use it for neat things like urban planning (which has many 3D elements).
I'm not really a cheerleader for a 3D Web, per se. But as I look forward at the past (yes, that's what I meant to say), I see that every technology that advances a new *way* to communicate -- not simply a new version of a tool (beta vs. VHS, stereo vs. mono, etc.) -- has been accepted. We have never said, "No," to more pixels, more data, more conversations, more text, more sounds, more pictures, more movies, mas y mas ya mas y mas. And 3D has one more D than 2D. Betting against "more" is just, I think, a bad bet.
The question then becomes what, where and when, and how do we (and I mean us in this forum, of course, who are all smarter than everyone else) take best advantage, rule the universe, and keep control of the rogue fembots and killer bees?
Posted by: Andy Havens | Oct 19, 2006 at 19:32
Andy wrote (in part):
Love it, Andy. This is exactly right -- there has to be a somewhat serendipitous, practical fit between new technologies and changing circumstance before these kinds of transformations through in-the-moment improvisation can take place.
I recommend, in this vein, Edward Tenner's works, as well as Carolyn Marvin's wonderful book (not that it's likely many folks around here haven't found these).
Posted by: Thomas Malaby | Oct 19, 2006 at 20:10
The killer app is education and Google will compete, but they'll do it by buying out Second Life.
Posted by: blaze | Oct 20, 2006 at 00:17