Philip Rosedale will appear today on Metanomics at 12:00 SLT (PST). Now, there’s lots I’d love to hear from the fearless and wandery founder of Second Life, but I’ll set my standard list aside for a bit: you know, the one that includes things like why is Mono six months late, why did it crash the Grid last night, what were you THINKING when it came to open spaces, that kind of thing.
When Philip hired Mark Kingdon, (M), he promised he was going off to do what he does best: focus on technology, and ideas, and to give presentations that make it onto Ted and stuff like that. So I’m hoping Philip shares some insight into top secret Philip projects. And in that vein, here’s a short list of what I hope he’s thinking about, or working on:
1. Search: This is one of the great frontiers of virtual worlds. I don’t just mean being able to find a hair store or a live music event. I mean something more like a 3D semantic search technology. Or how to code object tags so that they effectively connect themselves to the contextual space in which they’re placed. Or the idea that 3D search may, in the long run, be better than Google. The 3D Web should be able to create a better, more intuitive interface for Web searches, or 3D spaces need to be better translated into 2D search strings. I’d like to hear how he thinks this can be solved.
2. HTML-on a Prim: Again, I don’t mean just the ability to embed a bunch of static Web pages into a 3D environment, although it would be really nice to hear where clickable HTML on a prim is at for Second Life. I’d be interested to hear his thoughts on where this could take us: when Web services can talk to prims (HTTP-in), when those prims are clickable, and when we aren’t limited to a single media stream per parcel because they’re embedded in textures instead: what kinds of use cases will this open up? What does this suggest about ways to adapt legacy content? Does it make sense to use 3D spaces as virtual desktops?
3. Low Bandwidth Options for Immersive Worlds: Philip talks about using platforms like Second Life to facilitate innovation and participation in the global economy in the developing world. But really - doesn’t that take bandwidth? Does he see alternate access paths to platforms like SL? Do our experiences need to be contiguous or does he envision different access types for different bandwidths, viewers, and needs? When you can phone in to a conference in SL, why can’t you also log-in using a thin client? Does he believe in contiguous experiences? Where will the breakthroughs come from? Are they warranted?
4. Chips and Devices: The Lab has talked up Mitch Kapor’s 3D camera a lot. Or there have been experiments with Wii as a control device. What opportunities do alternate interface devices open up for virtual worlds? And on a related note, what does the next generation of chip sets imply for SL and other virtual worlds over the next few years?
5. Urban Renewal: If SL is like a city and the great cities of today are driven by their creative class, then what lessons can we draw from urban management and renewal? Intelligent planners attract the right people and businesses in order to keep a city vibrant. Does Linden Lab plan like this? What other metaphors or related disciplines does Linden Lab draw upon to gain insights? Anthropology? Economics? Does the Lab employ non-coders in seemingly unrelated fields?
OK - well, Pip only has an hour on Metanomics. But maybe we’ll get a sense of where his big brain is focused these days.
You can join Metanomics today by viewing the show on-line, or by visiting one of the event partners.
Well, here’s my list of things to address:
1. Stability
2. Stability
3. Stability
OK, so that’s the same thing three times but honestly, if there were ONE thing that you want ANY product to do it’s WORK! HMTL-on-a-prim? Gee, that would be swell but if it crashes, we’re no closer.
4. More scalable land prices
Want to make everyone a capitalist? Then let them buy their own little plot of land and build on it. And make the tier price go up incrementally, rather than have big jumps - say from $5 to 15$ just by adding an extra 1024m.
5. Prim purchases
Yes, let folks have more prims but paid for. Sure you can push up the prims by buying more land on the same sim, but what if the sim is full? You can’t transfer prim limits from your total land holdings. I have to think that it’s doable - it’s just a big database after all.
6. IP protection
When folks have (a) land and (b) stuff, they become vested. But if that stuff is ripped off, they get discouraged. Maybe we have to consider making sign-on contingent on providing a credit card number. That will discourage folks from simply creating a new alt when they get banned.
7. Better quality graphics
Man, those promos from Nurien using the NVIDIA PhysX engine look sweet! Sure they have no product just yet, but they recently pulled in an extra $15 million in capital so something has to happen soon before the VCs pull the plug.
OK, I feel better now. Of course, there is absolutely no chance that my list will get anywhere close to Philip’s line-of-sight but simply stating what I think is cathartic enough.
I’m with you Sigmund on all of that. Sounds like we need a show with M no?
Sigmund,
With point #5, you mentioned purchasing more prims. Are you referring to an imposed limit of prims in a certain area? If so, do you have any concern that there might be simple limits of possibility in what the SL browser can handle? I know that in Active Worlds people gripe about wanting to be able to use higher poly counts, and yes while higher powered computers can handle more rendering, the browser itself has certain inherent limits that make incredibly high poly objects dangerous. I don’t know if SL has similar limits or not, but that might be why it’s limited now?
Dusan - I like some of your points, and your comment on HTML clears up a couple of questions I had posted in another comment. A while back I noted that SL was going to focus on the users first hour experience, which is something that seems very necessary to me. Your first point, improving “search” would be a great step in that direction. However, I’m not sure many “oldies” would appreciate primary focus being on a few newbies, so I’ll pipe down on why that would be benefitial. Maybe I’m wrong
Jim
When are we going to have a greater choice of media in SL? With so many technologies out there, it will open up a huge raft of potential business in SL.
QuickTime is good, but what about having proper functionality in the player, maybe even action scripts directly linked to the media, for interactivity.
It’s not rocket science.
The ability to be able to communicate between this environment and the outside world, will open the pathway for greater productivity. Something that is already built in from the source in emerging environments. Come on LL get with the programme, if you want to sincerely survive.
The hour flew by! The talk went very well. Beyers and Philip did a great job touching on many many points and issues with the small amount of time they had.
What I think is most important at this point:
When will Philip Rosedale do this again?
Has a one time noobie at one time, i could do with all the help that’s going, it hard to understand all the concepts and all the technie words and still get my head around a 3D world, So for those oldies out there who have forgot what it’s like to be a noobie, here a quote from some one i was trying to teach basic keyboard skills too, “where the any key” this is a responds to a message that that used to pop saying “Press any key to continue” I know thing have move on since then but you get the same feeling when you first join Second Life, it’s a lot to take in for some people, so any help a noobie gets has to be good thing, just remember a noobie is a future business person in sl, and it has knock on effect. Remember to look at a bigger picture.