I’ve been really enjoying the book Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. It has the best realized version of the metaverse since Snowcrash.
In reading the book, it really makes one wonder why we haven’t created better instances of virtual worlds in today’s technology environment. The closest thing to the OASIS of Cline’s novel is Second Life, but it still has a lot of shortcomings. It got me wondering what are some of the minimal requirements that could improve upon the virtual world we already have that would make it more valuable in a social and business context. The goal is to make it the type of environment a virtual worker would be logged into in conducting their daily business (coding, writing blog posts, etc). Here are some ideas…
Metaverse as the desktop
One of the biggest shortcomings of of an environment like Second Life is that the environment is an application that competes with all the other applications on my desktop for attention. To build immersive virtual worlds that you can log into and work, the applications need to reside within the met averse. I envision something like VMware for applications to load into objects in the metaverse. A user would be logged into the virtual world and have their web browser, email, twitter, and other applications available to them for interaction.
Distributed Server Environment
I want virtual world instances to reside on servers I own and operate and the ability to allow users and objects permission to enter my instance.
3 Dimensional Security
Current virtual world security instances are locked into concepts of property borders with very little effective granularity. The virtual world needs an ability to create secure rooms (that can’t be pierced by other users). That would allow for more efficient use of virtual spaces in 3 dimensions instead of two.
Beyond the Keyboard
With technologies like Kinect, we need to give interfaces an ability to move beyond the keyboard and include motion and voice commands.
Mobility
Users need the ability to maintain persistent access to virtual worlds through limited interaction via mobile devices. At a minimum that should include the ability to chat or interact with other in-world entities in the same way a cell phone lets you receive a voice of video call when out of the office.
Insurance Backed Assets
It costs $1000.00 to buy a private island in Second Life. How do I insure that asset or the improvements made to the island? How do I back it up in the case Linden Labs fails (distributed server environment solves this)?
So close, yet so far….
At times, I feel like we are on the cusp of a great virtual world breakthrough…then I log into Second Life for an hour and realize how far we have to go. If someone could take the current state of the art and improve it based on these requirements, we might have persistent virtual worlds that we can work and learn within.
