Over on the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal, attorney and author Benjamin Duranske writes a quick summation and opinion piece on how the 3D Internet - virtual worlds (VWs) and 3D models - is quickly taking hold in day-to-day life, and will soon change the nature of human communications.
Duranske opens his piece describing the recent “Ponzi scheme” that occurred in Second Life, which was followed by Linden Lab’s banking ban, and how, despite the fact that people lost real money, there was no legal recourse for those who had been scammed.
This is a small tipping point for Duranske, as he then outlines how virtual worlds are seeping into mainstream consciousness, reviewing all of the big players who’ve gotten their feet wet in VWs. He cites the fact that, despite a slumping economy, $345 million was poured into VW startups in the first half of 2008 alone. Gartner Research predicts that 80% of all Internet users will have a virtual presence by 2011. Bandwidth speeds are increasing, DSL penetration is growing, and the allure of 3D models for advertisers and corporations is an easy fit, he writes.
Duranske’s facts lead, logically, to this conclusion:
If current trends hold, the Internet will evolve into a 3D space, and virtual worlds will become an integral part of human communication. Real life will never be the same.
“Real life will never be the same….”
…for those of us affluent enough to own computers (or consoles) with graphics systems onboard powerful enough to access these new worlds.
Just when we’re at the point where anyone can buy a net-capable computer for a couple of hundred $/£/€ we’re back to the old twin-track?
Isn’t technology ironic?
Aren’t you getting tired of that Gartner quote without anyone ever wondering why 80% of the internet population would be in virtual worlds, in what way (jut an account, actively using, visiting occasionally?) - I know I am.
If I were a research agency right now, I’d make some ridiculous ‘prediction’ like “the 3D internet will have more hours spend than the 2D internet in 2013″. The free links/publicity couldn’t be better and when it gets to 2013, just rephrase: ‘hours spend in the gaming/entertainment industry of the 2D internet VS 3D internet’.
This piece of Duranske’s is disgraceful. It waves all the usual silly magic wands in terribly misleading ways, making it seem like there are really “1.2 million people” actively involved in SL (the number of people who actually spent a dollar or more is 380,000 in the last 30 days), making it seem like 3-D worlds are “inevitable” or something “all these people are going to do” just because he needs a provactive topic for an op-ed piece and swagger around with completely fake claims that nobody at the WSJ is in a position to check. 3D worlds as distinct from games have terribly little marketshare by contrast (Wow has more than 12 million, Habbo has zillions, etc.).
Just because interesting things happen to people in VWs and they are a certain niche and market doesn’t mean the entire world will be overthrown by them. This is just premise that Duranske waves around as “indispensable” to would-be clients.
And worst of all, Duranske perpetuates these scare-mongering stories of the “Ponzi scheme” of Ginkos. I’ve exhaustively countered that just because something that behaves more like a credit union or a high-yield investment plan for 3 years before it acquires fraudulent characteristics is not something you can characterize as a “Ponzi”.
People get bilked by investors all the time. Buyer beware. Look at all those people who bought at Bear Stearns. Real life is littered with bad investments where no crime is found and where no one is prosecuted. You’d have to have more elaborate law to make this a crime. That doesn’t mean that real theft occurred as a moral violation; it did. But real theft in real life that is beyond morality and goes into legal violation simply has to have more criteria to it.
Rather than constantly fakely trying this case in the media and making wild Internet lawyer claims about it, Duranske should have really attempted prosecution of that case or others if he really thought it was justiciable. I don’t think he’d be able to. All those hookers and skaters and whatnot put money in thinking they’d get high yields and *were notified of the risks that they might not get their money back at all in clearly written notecards in every terminal*. Pointing out these facts should not be grounds to declare me as some Ponzi booster, which Duranske does over and over again; it should be grounds for caution to all people not to trust Internet lawyers any more than they trust Internet bankers.