I don’t want to remember 100 passcodes. And I recently blogged on this….and blogged…and blogged…..and 4,000 words later came to the same conclusion as Edutechy who also had a nice simple diagram and a name (Virtual World VD) to explain the whole thing:
Edutechy also bypassed a lengthy sidebar on interoperability, identity, reality and all that obscure stuff and put it rather simply:
“I’m just sick and tired of entering all of the same data, and building the same types of avatars on each system. If these systems and concepts are to grow, then we need standards governing them…”
I propose the same, only in a wordier way:
“And I’ve also invested in a contract, one in which I’ve made do with the information I have access to, and the domain experience I’ve gained. And I want to know that if my ability to move from space to space is made possible, that the contract is either honored or that its made clear to me what’s changed, whether there are new rights or rights lost, information collected or different policies deployed.”
OK, well, lesson learned – keep it simple, and perhaps propose a catchy name. (SLim is in?)
Now, I part company on the idea of a single repository of data, but I agree on the portability of that data and its ownership by the user. In order to describe what I’m thinking I’ll have to write another 4,000 words so I’ll leave it for now.
sweet. makes sense to me. meta-ava-data? metatar? avadata? identadata?
I think this would be a tip of the iceberg of the kinds of structures that we could build that are nicely secure and privatized but can interact with systems to render them to our needs at a given time.
Beyond wallets and wardrobes, but to our worldview and knowledge perhaps stored in personalized ontologies. A repository of our non-biological knowledge and virtual experiences and memories.
Well it WILL be nice (and we are working on some part of it). Do you realize that it will be a SEPARATE service? I mean it MUST be a separate service then.
There are some hurdles on the way of adoption and there’s relatively little understanding so far how to overcome them.
I think your sentiment applies greatly as we move from gaming to enterprise solutions. One of the things we are most focused on at Nortel with our recent entry into the virtual world space (http://www.projectchainsaw.com/blog) is the idea of identities being verifiable and presence meaning more than just an out of the office setting.
Great blog!
ROFL – it’s not that I’ve ignored interoperability, identity, or reality… I just make an assumption that if we continue to focus on today’s reality – we’ll never reach interoperability at the simple level I’ve described. All of these should be as transparent as walking into a room and flipping the light switch on! I’m going to assume that a not-so-warm glow will begin to shine from my Compact Fluorescent Light bulb. I don’t care how it happened; I only expect it to happen without any more effort than I’ve applied.
Consequently, amongst my peers in the eLearning social arena, VD was vehemently rejected for something more trendy and marketable – My VD concept will now be known as “Oi!”…
Hehe – I only meant you bypassed it in the long windy wordy that I covered it in what ended up being a rambly blog of my own that came to a similar conclusion. I still love the line about only wanting to enter a “clean, lit room” – and it’s more than just one log-in, it’s making sure I can see the walls and the back exits and understand the spaces I enter, so I think we’re in agreement – except of course we’d be using energy-efficient lights no?