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The Scilands panel at SLCC presented three projects, “Second Health - Visiting A London Hospital of the Future” (picture above), “Demystifying Nuclear Power,” and NOAA’s “Second Earth in Second Life.” These innovative projects put Second Life center stage in a vision to design better worlds for tomorrow (see also Maya Realities).

All the panel members are key players in the formation and development of SciLands - “an emerging Second Life continent dedicated to serious applications.” SciLands was only founded in January of this year. But the number of projects has escalated rapidly - now up to 34 islands and members from 3 continents.

From left to right: panel moderator James Dearnley, Loughborough University Dept. of Information Science; Dave Taylor, (SL: Davee Commerce) who leads the UK’s National Physical Laboratory’s (NPL) Second Life activities including Second Health - The Future of Healthcare Communication, and Nanotechnology Island in Second Life; Jeffrey Corbin (SL: Zazen Manbi), research associate at the University of Denver, who is preparing to build a nuclear reactor in Second Life to train the next generation of environmental assessment specialists and to educate people about nuclear power (This project is a collaboration with Robert C. Amme, a research professor of physics at the University of Denver.); Eric Hackathorn (SL: Hackshaven Harford), NOAA, who has designed a public 3-D space to highlight the research NOAA performs, and recently formed a company Maya Realities to explore 3-D virtual world metrics, and Katherine Prawl (SL: Kat Lemieux), co-founder of The International Spaceflight Museum in Second Life.

Government Agencies are doing some very innovative work in Second Life.

This is Dave Taylor’s personal avatar, Davee Commerce. Another of his avatars, named “Innovation Projects” manages Nanotechnology Island, NPL’s pavilion at the International Spaceflight Museum and UK Future Focus, a cross-Government thinktank.

At SLCC, Dave Taylor, Knowledge Transfer Leader in the Quality of Life Division of the UK’s National Physical Laboratory unveiled publicly, for the first time, NPL’s healthcare of the future project for Imperial College London, Second Health.

NPL is a government laboratory and world leading research institute with specialists in a whole range of different skills. Part of their work is to manage knowledge transfer networks which enable scientists, technologists and policy makers to talk about issues of the day.

Dave explained that scientists and technologists are all used to talking to people in the same discipline. But, his interest in SciLands was the opportunity to get different science communities, who are normally in their silos, together “to get a conversation happening across the boundaries of different disciplines because that is where innovation really happens.” For example, “in one technical discipline people may very well have the solutions for problems for another technical discipline. But, they would never know about it because they never speak.”

Second Health

Second Health is a project created by NPL for Imperial College London (ICL) to communicate “complex healthcare messages and illustrate what healthcare of the future could look like.” Dave Taylor introduced Second Health by explaining that most of today’s most pressing social concerns, like healthcare, have underlying technical considerations. And, that the mass media does not always lend itself to the nuances of technical issues. Through a series of recent newspaper headlines he demonstrated how traditional media is unable to communicate the complex issues facing healthcare today.

At the heart of the Second Health project is not only a virtual hospital in Second Life but also a series of machinima (videos made using Second Life) that tell the story of future healthcare to help people understand different pathways of care, and to “develop a better understanding of how they may experience healthcare.”

In the picture above I am watching one of these films in Second Life. These machinima make the virtual health campus accessible to people “wherever they are, and whatever their comfort with digital technology.”

The virtual hospital in Second Life and Second Life avatars were used as the sets and characters in conjunction with real life settings and people to create these films. They are very high quality productions by film maker Dylan Byrne. They are distributed on a range of websites including YouTube, and, in Second Life.

Click on the image to play the video, “Second Health: Emergency and Specialist Care.”

Dave chose a conventional film maker rather than an experienced machinimatographer as he intended to break new ground with these movies. “I also discovered how difficult it is to create normal-looking people in Second Life. Almost all of the store bought avatars and clothes are too exotic to represent patients and staff in the NHS.” When people not used to Second Life see these movies they understand them immediately through the story-telling. “That is exactly what we had to achieve”, says Dave. “They treat them like conventional computer animations they see all the time.”

But, unlike regular computer animation, the virtual hospital in Second Life lives on and is open for people to visit. It is in the SciLands and has it’s own orientation experience. The virtual hospital campus in Second Life provides an immersive 3D learning experience that allows people to explore health care of the future in a collaborative environment where they can meet and talk to other people and share their experiences on the spot. The movies start automatically whenever an avatar comes close, so that people new to Second Life don’t have to search around for where to click to play.

The future hospital in Second Life does not represent any single hospital or plan but is a vision of what hospitals could be like. It is built to Imperial College’s specification based on recommendations in the UK National Health Care Service London Framework for Action report which details how Professor Sir Ara Darzi believes London’s healthcare needs to change over the next ten years. Professor Ara Darzi, who is now Parliamentary Under Secretary for Health in the UK and a member of the House of Lords is now leading the reform of the National Health Service.

However, ICL and NPL are testing the effectiveness of Second Life as a medium for conveying complex healthcare delivery messages and essential healthcare information to care givers, doctors and the public. “In the future we expect to provide healthcare services in the metaverse.”

Dave Taylor said:

Our challenge was to help people understand what it might be like to visit a London health campus in the near future, before building work has even begun. By inviting them into a virtual hospital, we can communicate directly with future patients. We are not testing the London review’s specific recommendations, although the hospital is built on the principles that Sir Ara Darzi developed - that will be done at the local level through public consultations.

What we are interested in doing is understanding and measuring exactly how well this kind of technology communicates these technical ideas to the public and whether it can be used for public consultation, or even for the delivery of health services in the future.

This is Minna Runo the avatar of Ani Simon-Hart a Knowledge Transfer Delivery Specialist at NPL working with Dave. I met her on Second Health when I dropped in to take some photos.

Interview With Dave Taylor at SLCC

At breakfast, Sunday morning at SLCC, I had the opportunity to ask Dave some questions. We began with how he got into Second Life.

I got into Second Life when I realized what a powerful collaboration and social networking environment it was. And, in general what a great way it was to disseminate information to people who don’t know to come to your web site and look for it there.

In 2005, I discovered there was a group planning an International Space Flight Museum - a virtual museum that couldn’t exist in the real world and I thought wow! NPL does a lot of development, testing and knowledge transfer work for the real world space industries. There must also be people who are interested in space in Second Life. So I knew who I wanted to talk to when I first logged in. And, because I found them within half an hour, I thought this is the best networking environment ever! And, it has proved to be the case because a lot of people I am working with today I would never have met in the real world, wouldn’t have mixed with them. And, there are many new projects that are coming out of that meeting. The SciLands is one such project.

NPL was the first real world organization to rent space on the International Space Flight Museum. And we were there the day they launched. So I have watched the growth of interest in the space industry right from the start.

And, I discovered, and this is what went on with the Web too in 1994, you couldn’t really understand what is going on unless you are there. And just being there as an observer isn’t enough to understand what all the affordances of a new media are. I knew that from the Web. And, it is certainly true of Second Life. Now knowing what is going on means you have got to be a participant, you have to be practically doing stuff.

Dave’s first effort on Second Life was an exhibition for TRUTHS, NPL’s proposed low cost Earth Observation satellite - and calibration laboratory in space that can help gather fundamental climate change data 10 times as accurately as any other instrument.

And, I discovered from people that blogged about it that people had actually understood the science I had been explaining. And, it was about a very important issue which I feel very strongly about and a lot of people at NPL feel very strongly about and are doing a lot of work on - that is improving the data behind climate models, and therefore be able to make much more accurate and certain predictions about what is going to happen to the climate under a number of different scenarios.

Dave pointed out how his early experiments in Second Life quickly showed him what a great environment Second Life is for getting across the complex technical issues across to people who care about the social issues behind science. He uses Second Life metric analysis tools of Maya Realites to show the “stickiness” of various aspects of these Second Life projects. Dave is one of the founders of SciLands - and this provides serious users a supportive environment with orientation help, a networking environment with like minded people, weekly meetings, and shared resources such as lecture theatres and an auditorium that can seat 200 avatars.

Dave has some very interesting projects in the pipeline including a new TRUTHS exhibit and Nanotechnology Island in Second Life.

Philip Rosedale Invited To Speak at Framework 7 Conference on Privacy Enhancing Technologies.

NPL and the Location and Timing Knowledge Transfer Network have invited Philip Rosedale, founder of Linden Lab, to be one of the keynote speakers at the ‘Fine Balance 2007′ event in November. This event’s workshop on Web 2.0 aims to help identify and prioritize strategic research directions and provide input to the European Commission on privacy enhancing technologies for virtual worlds and Web 2.0.

The output from this workshop will be taken into consideration for a future Framework 7 research call, funded by the EU in these areas. Some of the technologies the European Commission will likely support are privacy enhancing technologies for the internet, health records, biometrics, identity cards, social web, virtual worlds and more.

EC supported workshop to be held in Whitehall, London and in Second Life.

This is the first time that a European Commission supported event has been held in Second Life. It will be a one day conference held in Whitehall, London with about 150 people attending. The keynote speakers and afternoon workshop on Web 2.0 and virtual worlds will be streamed into Second Life for participants and speakers who cannot be there in person.

Second Earth and “Science on a Sphere”

After SLCC, even though I returned home to New York City with a massive content overload, I couldn’t resist dropping into Meteora to talk to Haskshaven Harford the avatar of Eric Hackathorn from NOAA. Eric has designed a public 3-D space to highlight the research NOAA performs, and is COO of Maya Realities a company formed to explore 3-D virtual world metrics.

NOAA - part of the US Government specifically for climate change that looks at global warming and includes the National Weather Service. At SLCC, Eric introduced NOAA’s exciting new project on Second Life called Second Earth. Eric gave credit to this Technology Review article for the name.

Second Earth is a project that NOAA has just acquired 9 sims to start. They aim to stream live data onto a replica of the earth in Second Life, to bring geospatial, weather and many other kinds of data into the collaborative environment of Second Life to create a social decision making tool.

Dave Taylor is keen that the International community also participates and is working hard to get European funding for a collaboration with NOAA. According to Dave “Scientists need data for their research, and lots of data are locked up in individual projects. This project and others being considered by climate researchers will enable the sharing of data by scientists, researchers and policymakers.” Dave explained that NPL chairs a global community that is studying the problem of comparability and validation of Earth Observation data, just the kind that this project supports. “Visual data is so much more compelling and understandable to the non-specialist and scientists in other fields”.

The project brings together two projects that NOAA has already implemented in Second Life - Science on a Sphere that at the moment is limited to streaming video onto a globe (see the picture above), and the weather map project (picture below) that streams live weather data from the NOAA web site onto a map in Second Life.

Hackshaven explained: “There are already installations of Science on a Sphere in several locations now all over the world. This is the virtual version and the basis for the new second earth project.”

Science On a Sphere is a room sized, global display system that uses computers and video projectors to display planetary data onto a six foot diameter sphere, analogous to a giant animated globe.

“Second Earth is just getting started,” Hackshaven explained. “Eventually it will be a globe like this one only much larger 9 sims worth. And, it will be a combination of science on a sphere and the weather map, google earth + second life.”

“Nuclear Power Stations in Second Life”

Jeffrey Corbin, whose avatar Zazen Manbi is pictured above, recently obtained funding for teaching an environmental impact course in Second Life. He and Dave Taylor intend to build a functional but virtual Nuclear Power Station, as a shared facility between the US and Europe to help explain and demystify nuclear power and its vital role in controlling global warming.

Dave Taylor, Davee Commerce, environmental monitoring, Framework 7, Framework 7 in Second Life, future hospital, global climate change, hospital of the future in Second Life, Knowledge Transfer, Maya Realities, Nanotechnology Island in Second Life, National Health Care London Framework for Action report, NOAA, NOAA in Second Life, NPL, NPL in Second Life, nuclear power stations in Second Life, Professor Ara Darzi, Science on a Sphere, SciLands, Second Earth, Second Health, Second health machinima, Sir Ara Darzi, SLCC, social networking, The Future of Healthcare Communication, The International Spaceflight Museum in Second Life, The National Physical Laboratory, TRUTHS Virtual Hospital

Second Life will be “bigger than the web” and we’re “moving away from being a lab and into an operating system.” These bold statements by Philip Rosedale, in his keynote address at SLCC, inspired my questions in the interview Philip very graciously gave for Ugotrade that morning. Philip is wearing the “Missing Image” T-shirt, created by Millions of Us, that he opened his jacket to reveal during his speech.

The interview is divided in two parts. Part one looks at the possibilities for Second Life in Africa. Part two looks at how Linden Lab “can stop being a lab.”

You can read a full transcript of Philip’s keynote here.

Philip was very present at SLCC. He visited panels, discussed, debated, and answered pressing questions from residents and the press about all aspects of Second life. A stream of admirers seemed to follow him wherever he went asking for autographs, and for pictures of themselves standing next to the man who founded the virtual world that has come to mean so much to them.

But, these quotes, “bigger than the web,” and going from “a lab into an operating system,” certainly got the conversation going.

This is bigger than the Web. That’s a bold statement. How can I defend the statement that what we’re all working on is going to be bigger than the Web.

The essence of Philip’s argument, it seemed to me, hinged around two points. One, that Second Life allows a new form of global communication between cultures that is not limited, like the old Web to predominantly hyper-linked text that you need to be very literate to read and that you visit alone without any way of sharing your experience with others there at the same time.
For example:

[In Second Life] you get to explore it [Tokyo] using a geography and topology that you grew up with. Anyone on the Web, no matter how illiterate, understands it. Want to know more? Walk forward. And the best part, that you don’t see in this picture [screen of Tokyo on Second Life], is there will be other people there.

And secondly, the opportunity Second Life gives people to join a global virtual economy free of “fees and tariffs and taxes.”

I really believe the one thread that I see a lot of lately is that the rapid growth outside the US is confirming a lot of things. The fact that SL is so flat and globalizing is going to be a huge change agent. Globalization involves fees and tariffs and taxes. None of that is going on here. That’s going to be part of the pressure that’s going to drive an enormous amount of interest.

In response to a question by Prokofy Neva who asked about Second Life’s influences on First Life (see transcript), Philip elaborated on the power of Second life’s small but thriving economy (with the caveat, “That’s a big enough question that I obviously can’t say perfectly that I know.”)

shrinking of the communication sphere is one of our biggest influences. And then the other is the entrepreneurial early phase. SL is still very early and small. The thing that makes it grow is the success of individuals in two ways. Being able to find and connect to each other and those individuals who are able to work together. There are about 1000 people who make $1000 or more each month. That’s critical mass. That’s the real-life impact we’re having today. We’re creating jobs and opportunities at a small scale, but at a scale that’s large enough to be irreversible.

After the keynote, I was so excited by the implications of Philip’s projections for the future of Second Life that before I turned on my recorder there were about ten minutes of informal discussion on how Second Life could help the developing world, and Africa in particular. What follows is a transcription of the recorded interview with some editing of my rambling questions!

The unrecorded portion of the interview was a mini brainstorming session on broadband connectivity in Africa, and how Second Life could be made available to Africans. Africans have shown the world how mobile phone technologies can be used for virtual banking and to create new economic opportunities in areas with no banking infrastructure.

“Well over 80% in Egypt and South Africa alone, according to a report by the UN’s Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad)” rely on mobile phones to run their small businesses (BBC News).

Philip talked with me about the role of Second Life in positive global development at VW2007. And, if Africans had access to the global virtual economy of Second Life and its rich immersive forms of collaboration and communication, all our first lives and second lives might become immeasurably richer.

Africa is often called the “missing link” because until now it has been left out of the global broadband revolution. But, there are many new initiatives to get Africa connected, and to find ways to deliver cheaper international bandwidth.

Well over half of the countries on the continent now have some kind of broadband offer delivered through DSL, wireless or satellite.

If you are not tuned into connectivity issues in Africa yet, the best source for information on African connectivity, that I know, is the Balancing Act News network. For up to date information on the state of the African internet in various markets Balancing Act has (pay for) publications they make available at special rates for students and universities. Also, there is a download zone for longer research publications. If you go into these reports and the data provided you will see, not only is there are some very interesting Data Bandwidth forecasts for (2006 - 2011), but also of particular interest, may be, the paper, “African Broadband, Triple Play and Converged Markets.”

Well enough pre-amble here is my interview:

INTERVIEW WITH PHILIP ROSEDALE

Part One (my questions in bold type):

How could Second Life bring the benefits of a virtual economy to Africa?

It seems that if there were a few computers, even not individual computers but shareable cafe style computers. And then there was also a mechanism where you could redeem Linden dollars for something - you were talking about phone minutes, or a local currency. If you had that minimal point of infrastructure broadband access and an individual, I suppose to co-ordinate that bank transfer mechanism - my understanding is no-one can use Pay Pal to withdraw money from banks in Africa today, so you would need a person that could pay you in minutes or in local currency. But I think, if those two things were done, and you built a cluster of machines in an area there you might actually be able to see people log in, create accounts, and create jobs for themselves.

Yes, in Africa people use mobile phones to send money to each other in areas were there are no banks or ATMs for miles. And local entrepreneurs set up kiosks where people can redeem their minutes for currency…

Well we could probably make it possible even for people to trade Linden dollars. It would be relatively easy to trade Linden dollars for phone minutes directly. I mean if there is a phone company running a back bone there where that is quite common, it would probably to fairly simple to make it possible for somebody to take Linden dollars even on our site and say redeem them as phone minutes on the exchange. That would be something that we could potentially do, if there was a way to pay for phone minutes in the US in dollars and essentially get minutes on the phones there. We could allow someone to go to our exchange and put Linden dollars up for sale, get dollars back and have them basically put in their phone as minutes.

Given the current high rates for broadband in many parts of Africa, do you think it would be possible to organize and fund the introduction of Second Life in a community there, at least a proof of concept, even before these hoped for changes in broadband costs and connectivity have occurred?

I think the thing that I am a little skeptical about in that is, if you fund a program like that and then you come back and you say, “Wow we can give jobs to people in Africa if only broadband didn’t cost anything,” I would be rather frustrated by that because then you can’t just snap your fingers, nobody is just going to relent and say broadband is free in Africa now. I guess an interesting problem in all this is, if cheap broadband is absolutely necessary, I think you need the cheap broadband first. You can’t really use Second Life to argue that people should have cheap broadband somewhere, you need to provide it.

The thing to demonstrate is a wholly entrepreneurial model. Where I guess you could charitably help the world develop are those places where you can show an operational model that soup to nuts makes money for someone. I mean if someone could go into Africa somewhere and make money by allowing people in Africa to have the jobs using something like Second Life then you’ve got it. So the trick is how to finagle that. It seems that the connectivity is the key problem there.

Part 2:

At this point in the interview, I took sometime explain to Philip how interested and excited I am about the future role of Second Life in reducing the world’s carbon footprint through large scale energy monitoring, facility management, network control centers and other projects that link Second and First life in sensor/actuator networks for the mutual benefit of both.

I have blogged a lot about the potential of such real/second life integrations, so I launched into a rather long preamble that I won’t transcribe here, as there I have many posts on this topic. But, Philip quickly teased out the main question hidden in my long intro about such projects that must have secure and powerful communications between Second and Real Life!

“You mean how quickly are we going to open things up?” he asked.

Yes, I said. And, is it all going to happen at once or are there steps that can happen first, like will people be able to back up their own assets soon?

Well I think backing up assets is something that will be very soon. We are working on it right now, so that you can do much better off line back up of assets. But, that only covers one piece of it. You still have a state, how much money you have, the various flags and global markers that are on things are not things you can back up and restore. But I am not sure what else you have in mind……

Well I know Second Life can be incredibly useful not only for facility management and energy monitoring but for city and an environmental planning. And for these applications you need to be able to import large scale architectural models, for example?

With the open source code you will basically be able to do any kind of object importing and exporting you want. And the open source that is available on the site today will allow you to do multiple imports of CADs.

But, I think I have heard from architects that using the current tools to do this is a very long and complicated procedure?

I think in the next couple of quarters we will probably have rich interchange formats for objects - we like that. But I can’t tell you anything too specific about it right now.

When will it be possible to own islands on our own computer and connect to the main grid asset server?

That is the nearest term thing that we are going to try to do with respect to opening up the back end of the system. So that what we want to do is to allow people to, even before we are able to open source all the technology, we will probably find ways to have people operating servers outside of our building. We probably will not, until we reach the full open source point, have enough security in place to trust un-trusted individuals to run servers on the grid. But initially what we can do is we can establish a relationship with larger companies of operators that we would be able to trust with everyone’s assets in second Life.

Yes, its a good interim thing…

Yes, it’s a great interim thing! What I would like to do is have servers operate internationally as soon as possible so that people in Australia, for example, put their land on servers that are hosted in Australia. So that is something that we are working very hard on right now.

So how will Linden Labs make money after the opening sourcing of everything?

It is easy for us to make money this is just one of those things. If there are network effects, which push everyone to being in one single world, we can charge fees where appropriate for registering or connecting to that world. So even if we don’t host a server for example, we can still charge you whatever we like for attaching your server to the grid. We control the registry, we control DNS if you want to be to the North East of somebody else’s island only we can put you there, even if it is your computer, even if you are the one hosting it.

So that is a fine model. It is similar to DNS. It is one in which we basically we provide a global function to people, naming and the allocation of spaces, and charge a fee for it. And, that will actually look relatively similar to the business today. So we should be able to let people run their own servers, charge them a fee for attaching those servers to the grid, run some of our own servers that we collect if you will the whole fee for and it all works fine.

But if you open all the protocols then other people can do that?

No, because they won’t be able to get a hold of you. There is only one world that you have the name that you have in Second Life.

So they will have to set up competing worlds, if they don’t link to Second Life, closed of to your grid and then who would want to be there because no-one else would be there?

There is a powerful network effect behavior there. New York will always be the largest city in the continental United States. It has been that way for 200 years. So if you are the largest virtual city, you will always remain the largest virtual city. And, we are. So that means we can open up everything we are doing without the kind of risk that you might normally see.

So are you going to open up everything all the protocols?

Yes, everything.

So some people will just go off and do their own thing?

There is a good place for lots of little or purposeful applications to be built. But the internet was completely open protocols to begin with. I notice it is not fragmented. There is only one internet. Big surprise [said with irony!].

Thanks so much Philip, perhaps you could say it one more time about going completely open source!

Yes, open, open!

*********

 

Doing what they love & getting paid for it on Motarati Island.

The picture below shows Toby Rainbow and Suku Ming from Ponitiac’s Motarati Island in Second Life, and the USA in First Life. I met them while they were standing patiently in the long line of residents waiting to speak to Philip after his keynote at SLCC. They built a stock car racing track that caught the attention of Pontiac. Now it is part of Motarati Island. And, you can find them there everyday doing what they love, and getting paid for it!

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The Philips Design Second Life Team have put out what must be one of the coolest invitations on the planet. They are asking Second Lifer’s to share in designing the future.

The Co-creation Experience is intended to be a journey over time that we hope to take together with the ‘Philips Design Friends Group’. The only qualities you need are to be open, creative and collaborative.

 

The third discussion on the co-creation experience (for more information on earlier discussions see designphilips.com and my earlier post on Philanthropy By Design) will be held on Friday the 24th, 12.00 PM -2.00 PM PDT, and Tuesday the 28th 11.00 AM - 1.00PM PDT (Second Life time) on Philips Design Co-creation experience on Virtual Holland 3. I will be on a plane to Chicago SLCC on Friday at this time. Hope to see y’all there! But, I can’t wait for Tuesday which will be a repeat of the Friday session.
The topic will be the Philips Design Probe program - an in-house far-future research program that considers what lifestyles might be like in 2020. The Philips Design Probe program

was set up to identify long term systemic shifts and to anticipate changes in future lifestyles, based on new and emerging technology, socio cultural trends and the effect of political, economic and environmental influences.

In one of those Second Life “serendipity” experiences that I mentioned in my previous post, yesterday, I bumped into Dolf Rhino (picture below). Dolf is a Philips Design Senior Director responsible for business development and operational management in the area of Design for Virtual Worlds. And, soon we were joined by three key members of the Philips Design team. Yel Oh, a Philips Design innovation director with a background in interaction and experience design, and Wendy Mahana and innovation consultant.

Yel Oh explained that the Probes work has been split into a number of projects that are theme based. The plan is to hold a series of meetings in Second Life in the coming months to share this work, some of which is not yet public.

The series will start this week by introducing and discussing more generally some of the Probes themes which are: 1) The future of self expression; 2) The future of clothing - Philips have quite some history in wearable tech (the picture at the beginning of this post is from the Design Probe Program -Skin) ; and, 3) The future of packaging. There are a couple of others but Yel Oh said they are not yet public ….. “hope to bring them to SL once they are public in RL (simultaneously),” she added. Each Probe project will then be individually presented and discussed in future meetings.

Embedded sensor/actuator networks merging virtual and real environments can increase the emotional band-width of both.

I asked Yel Oh how they proposed to bring these Probe works into Second Life as part of a co-creation experience. I am particularly interested in how this project, using sensor technologies, might use the special qualities of Second Life not just to facilitate co-creation of real world products, but also to help virtual and real environments merge into each other more deeply.

The immersive 3D experience, and Second Life’s electronically mediated environment that is already rich with meta data, is a very interesting environment to experiment with the possibilities of interaction been real and virtual sensor/actuation networks. Virtual worlds have a big advantage over the real world in terms of working with sensor data as the have built in wireless, RFID, meta data and geolocation, so it makes sense for this to be a place for proto-typing sensor/actuator enhanced communication.

Philips Design’s project of creating expressive wearables in Real Life seems an ideal opportunity to explore new ways to enhance emotional expression in virtual environments and intensify the expressive interaction between real and Second Life.

And, as Yel Oh, pointed out these concepts are about self-expression and emotion very close to the heart of Second Life. I immediately fell in love with the idea of garments In Second Life reflecting emotional expression recorded from biometric sensors in Real Life. And, I asked Yel Oh how these could become a co-creation project in Second Life soon, like now!

To learn more about how Philips Real Life clothing lights up to express the emotions of the wearer go here. And, for more pictures from the Philips Real Life “Skin” project see here. And, for a brief but cool video here.

The Philips Design Co-Creation Experience in Second Life

Dolf Rhino explained: “One of the elements we are looking to understand is how input and feedback on prototypes is valuable in SL and RL. In general we want to look at how the feedback on topics might be relevant when translated to the RL.”

I asked how they planned to start the co-creation process in SL. Yel Oh replied:

well what I would really like to do (but no promises here) is to build some of the most relevant concepts here in SL, especially ones with emotional feedback. This could be triggered by behaviour or communication from within Second Life, although connecting to real life sensors would be even more interesting. Then give them to selected members from our group to try out for a period of time here in-world. After finding out about the initial experiences it would be great to offer full permission creations. And then see how the new owners adapt and change the original concept.

Also I asked whether there were any plans to experiment with the Second Life Client to enhance collaboration and co-creation. Dolf said yes they were doing some experiments with adapting the client. But, it was too early to report about the results. It will be very interesting to hear more on this!

“Sensible Organization: Inspired Social Sensor Technologies”

Using social sensor technologies to merge virtual and real environments, and to enhance the already rich immersive collaborative environment of Second Life and other virtual worlds is, for me, one of the most exciting frontiers at this stage of the virtual adventure. There are some very interesting projects coming out of MIT that show the huge potential of sensor/actuator network technologies integrated with virtual environments.

For example, “Sensible Organization: Inspired Social Sensor Technologies,” is looking at “how we can combine data pertaining to social, physical, or real information with virtual information to improve organizational effectiveness.”

Also, look out for some innovation to be coming from Cisco in this regard! I will be keeping an eye on Christian Renaud’s blog and the new Cisco Virtual Worlds blog as Christian has some very interesting ideas and a lot of experience in this area. The post on Cisco Virtual Worlds today is on, “Making ‘Over the Network” better than ‘Over the desk.”

When you have an ‘over the wire’ or ‘over the network’ interaction, you use fewer senses. Lets summarize the pros and cons for now, and some possible technology opportunities to address the shortcomings….

I ran into Christian Ciscosystems and Coco Linden on the Cisco sim. Christian said he would have dressed for the occasion if he had known someone would be taking pictures. Coco, a relatively new Linden, works on the client. Coco said, “we have lots of new devs all getting up to speed and fixing bugs so things should get noticeably stabler.” Coco has added the anti-spam controls for notecards, textures, and landmarks. Thanks Coco!

And, an important project to watch is EOLUS One. Eolus has some very interesting projects in the pipeline using sensor techonologies to link Second Life and Real Life in ways that enhance both.

MIT’s “Responsive Environments”

MIT’s awesome Responsive Environments Group is producing more ground breaking “Things That Think” than I can begin to enumerate in this post. And, their Dual Reality Lab demonstrates “Virtual and real worlds that reflect, influence, and merge into each other by means of deeply embedded sensor/actuator networks.”

Dual reality” is the concept of maintaining two worlds, one virtual and one real, that reflect, influence, and merge into each other by means of deeply embedded sensor/actuator networks. Both the real and virtual components of a dual reality are complete unto themselves, but are enriched by their mutual interaction. The dual reality Media Lab is an example of such a dual reality, as enabled the Plug sensor/actuator network that links our actual lab space to a virtual lab space in the Second Life online virtual world.

You don’t have to be from MIT to join in the Philips co-creation experience.

“The only qualities you need are to be open, creative and collaborative.” So come and join in the discussion on Friday Aug 24th or Tuesday Aug 28th. And, you can pick up some useful virtual goods for your space in Second Life while you are there.

I have already grabbed, Photoframe, Perfect Draft, Senseo Coffee Maker and Ambilight Slide show for my cube on arcspace. (You need a space on SL where you have rights to build to use these great virtual products.) The slide show and the photoframe will soon be joining the termite mound with the Ugotrade blog link, and the coffee cup (designed by my friend Aleister Kronos - he has a cube next to mine) in my arcspace very soon. But hey, I actually dipped my toes in the the prim building world by assembling the parts. I am looking for some termites now! And, I hear Aleister found some.

I can see why people get hooked on building in Second Life. It is really rewarding to assemble an experience to share with friends in just minutes. Here I am sharing a caffeinated hot tub with Robbie Kiama of Metamart who was introducing to me his new meta Travel HUD (heads up display) that you wear in Second Life. Check it out. It is very easy to put your favorite places and your own sim (with a picture) into the lists so others can find them, rate them, and send your hot spots to the top of this “digg” for Second Life!

You can find out more at Metamart And, if you haven’t yet tried metaHUD yet – you can get a FREE copy here

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Anshe Chung (picture from Rik Riel’s Flickr stream) spoke live from China at the grand opening celebration for the new Non-profit Commons island in Second Life. Anshe expressed her passion for using virtual worlds to connect globally.

Anshe Chung is SL’s first millionaire, a global metaverse entrepreneur, and donor of the island and buildings that house the NPC. Anshe described some of her own early experiences in virtual worlds and the power of the immersive social experience. She has seen virtual worlds and the internet enable people, previously forgotten and disconnected, to become connected to a global economy, and to meet other people on a more even footing. She talked about how people isolated from the world economy use rural internet cafes in China to socialize globally and make things of value in in virtual worlds.

Anshe, through her own portals on Second Life and other ventures, has been responsible for getting a vast number of people involved virtual worlds. She explained that she hoped the Non-profit Commons in SL could extend this process of finding new ways to connect technically, socially and emotionally to the members of non-profits.

Connecting Virtually: What makes the experience in Second Life so compelling?

Christian Renaud of Cisco uses the term “networked virtual environments” in the blog description of Cisco’s new Virtual Worlds Blog saying:

We believe that these environments offer an excellent new tool in our collaboration toolbox, alongside established technologies like IP Telephony, Web Collaboration, and Telepresence.

And, in my view, the time is just around the corner when “networked virtual environments” will be the tool par excellence for global collaboration and much more. This is one of the founding inspirations of the Ugotrade blog.

SuezanneC Baskerville, makes a fascinating comment to Christian’s post drawn from her recent post Virtual World moguls meet across shared Surface in Metaverse Poker Room. She suggests “that it would be interesting to see Linden Lab link it’s San Francisco and Boston offices using Cisco’s Telepresence system.” Christian’s Renaud’s response to her comment is also a must read. He notes his own experiences with wall sized video conferences, “bumping into colleagues in our break-rooms in our Technology Center offices in Raleigh and San Jose…..”

But, of special interest to me, is Christian’s comment on one of the key aspects of virtual worlds or “verses” as he likes to call them.

The “serendipity” of virtual worlds is a key part of the paradigm shift that Second Life has brought to “over the network interaction.” Christian explains:

One of the areas that we are constantly striving to improve is how you make an ‘over the network’ interaction as valuable and signal-rich as an ‘over the desk’ interaction. One of those variables, which is a key attribute of virtual worlds (or ‘verses, as I call them), is serendipity. I can’t very well bump into you on a telephone call, or (other than your example above) on a Telepresence call, however I can bump into your avatar in Second Life easily. How do we facilitate this serendipity, perhaps even nudge you in the direction of someone with shared interests? Food for thought.

“The Serendipity of Second Life”

And, just to press home a point on this “magic of Second Life,” I had a serendipitous encounter on SL only minutes after reading Christian’s comment. I bumped into a rising Japanese Electro/techno/house star, Shingo, on Virgin EMI Music Japan.

Risso Little is new to Second Life. I had gone to Virgin EMI Music Japan to follow up on some interesting posts on Japanese sims by my friend Al Kronos. While we were chatting an earthquake struck Tokyo, and my new found friend’s eighth floor apartment started to shake. I had just gone to his My Space. And, I was listening to one of his excellent tracks when this happened. (Click here to listen)

Well to make a long story short, Rizzo and I were very relieved when the shake up was over. I offered to take him shopping (yes, I know, what was I thinking? “I shop therefore I am”). But, nevertheless in a few short hours Shingo gave me an introduction to some Japanese areas in Second Life. And, I took him around some of the American and European sims. Here we are chatting with a group of Japanese fashionistas waiting to earn Linden dollars modeling dresses in panels. Later, I connected Rizzo Little to Nat Mandelbrot (of Cruxy Player fame) who is pioneering new ways for musicians to extend the experience of their music in Second Life.

Thinking on a global scale - Second Life is not “empty space.”

The casual drop-in approach to Second Life taken by some main stream journalists, and their resulting cursory view from afar, has created a lot of misunderstanding in recent months about how Second Life works to connect people globally, in completely new ways, for business, pleasure and social change.

Story Geek recently wrote an excellent post pointing out that stories in “Wired and the L.A. Times have deemed Second Life (SL) a failure because of it being empty” misunderstand this new virtual landscape that appears empty to a casual glance even though it is actually teeming with life and economic activity.

Story Geek gives an excellent analysis of why a high level glance at a virtual environment misinforms the observer much the way such a high level glimpse might in the real world perceive Canada as empty. And so, Story Geek quips, “Maybe all businesses should pull out of Canada also.” Story Geek points out some of the specific ways that Second Life’s teeming economy and bustle of activity might not be apparent to a drop in observer. And, he points out:

by understanding the mechanics of the world you get a clearer picture of how the residents exist, inter-relate and consume.

Reflexive Architecture: Experiencing People in the Global Reaches of Virtual Space

3D Experience architect Keystone Bouchard is currently engaged in exploring through reflexive and responsive architecture new ways for people to experience other people’s presence in virtual space. As Story Geek noted, mis-perceptions of emptiness can arise in virtual environments for many reasons, e.g., because Second Life is an open 24/7 space with people arriving from multiple time zones at different times of the day.

In a Gallery of Reflexive Architecture, to be exhibited as part of the new Library Gallery exhibition on Info Island by the artslib group, Keystone is showcasing some of his work with scripter Fumon Kubo. Keystone has posted a video composite of several machinima pieces each describing a different installation in the gallery, such as Rippling Prims, Prim Decay, Sudden Space, Restless Spheres, Carvable Prims, Visible Traces, Moving Tiles, Interactive Glass, and The Cacoon. Some include sound as an integral part of the experience, which is best experienced first-hand (SLurl … subject to change).

The picture below is of Sudden Space.

Keystone explained to me:

One thing I’ve struggled with is the idea that people think sims are ‘always empty’ just because there wasn’t someone there the instant they visited. But in actuality, these places are flooded with people flowing through them. The difference is, we’re on a global scale now most websites are ‘empty’ most of the time too. So, I wanted to build in a system that illustrates that you’re not alone, a relatively low-impact way of measuring how spaces are used as well.

Keystone took me through the reflexive 3D experiences he has created. Here is a short selection of some of the comments he made.

Visible Traces

Each one of us should have a different color and they follow our trails. Right now I have them set to last 2 hours so, we can see visible traces of people who have been here before us. I can already see in the first day this has been here that some of the corner installations are overlooked, so, its meaningful feedback

Rippling Prims

I’ve wondered how this one will behave with many avs present so far, its only been tested with 2 but, its created a nice little space for us where nothing was before.
On Demand Architecture = Prim Ripples.

Carvable Prims
This explores the idea of avatar movement gradually ‘carving’ the architecture. Every time an avatar appraoches, the ‘wall’ elements move a slight bit away so, over time, the high traffic areas become larger.

It was based on a conversation Theory Shaw and I had a while back one of those monumental ‘What If?’ conversation

Keystone and I discussed how reflexive 3D experience architecture will take on new value and meaning when it can be laced with data from the real world. The potential of virtual world/real world intergrations to provide a doorway to a sustainable future is a key theme on Ugotrade. And, I have discussed this many times, including here, here, and here in some depth.

We are on the cusp of virtual revolution that will shift the world away from models of communication, representation, and production that emerged in the industrial age.

In Second Life we are beginning to see Global initiatives like EOLUS One put together the kind of global collaboration that will make virtual environments the stage for planning, designing and managing real life buildings and cities in new collaborative and participatory ways. And once built, these cities will stream back into Virtual Worlds as data that is responsive to our needs and the needs of the environment.

Then 3D experience architecture will emerge as not only a beautiful expression of a new era of global communication and collaboration, but as a a tool par excellence for benefiting communities and people, and creating a sustainable future.

Thinking Globally: How Can Developing Countries Benefit from Virtual Worlds?

An important question that came up at the non-profit commons launch was how non-profits in developing countries can utilize virtual worlds. This is a topic I discussed with Alanagh Recreant of Uthango Social Investments in this post. Also see this interesting article on Uthango’s work in the South African national newspaper Cape Argus. And, please see Uthango’s new blog, Africa’s Second life , Our Virtual Reality, to learn about the first event of Uthango’s African Round Table Initiative, in Second Life, Aug 24th.

These are exciting times for Non-profits on Second Life and the fact that facilitating developing countries participation in virtual worlds seems high on the agenda is very encouraging.

MacArthur funding a non-profit track (see press release) at the SLCC convention which Rik Riel will be blogging.

The Grand Opening of Non-profit Commons on Second Life

There are some excellent blogs on the non-profit commons launch. Ruby Sinreich live blogged it. And, Rik Riel has posted some great pictures on his blog and more here. Susan Tenby (avatar Glitteratica Cookie) talked about TechSoup’s work in Second Life - 300 group members and thousands of avatars have come to their weekly meetings. Coughran Mayo from Preferred Family Healthcare spoke (via Skype), and Glitteractica Cookie (Susan Tenby of TechSoup), Jeska Linden (NP liaison for Linden Labs), and Anshe Chung live from China.

Evonne Heyning (avatar In Kenzo) elaborated on some of the specific ways the Non-profit commons on Second Life will be a portal bootstrapping the non-profit process on Second Life with efforts like, an “office in a box,” to help non-profits get up to speed fast on Second Life. Go visit nonprofitcommons.org on the web and in Second Life:
slurl.com/secondlife/Plush%20Nonprofit%20Commons/130/125/22/ to find out more.

After the panel there was a tour of the 32 nonprofits who have offices at NPC. Here I am at Yehoodi, the swing dance society run by Rik who is DJing real time. The swing music was great. And, I didn’t have to wait long before I landed a very dashing dance partner -Dore Junot (film maker Salvador Luna in RL) who I gather was the video guru for the mixed reality panel (photo below of the live event, “Jeska and Susan in two worlds,” from net2photos flickr stream)

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I met with Ansi Orochi (a.k.a. Ansgar Schmidt, Lead Architect, Virtual Worlds, IBM Research and Development) on Sawubona on Second Life to ask him the question: “What Are The Most Important Characteristics of Web 3D?” Sawubona, is in a very early stage of development - the first official press release isn’t due for a month. But, it is already clear that this is going to be a ground breaking social music project in Second Life, combining global collaboration and technological innovation to raise money and awareness for a township project in South Africa.

An IBM mainframe has been harnessed to Second Life to allow Second Life residents to remix songs live in Second Life and even add their own voice. South African musicians have donated songs. And, musicians from all around the world and singers, drummers, guitar players and other musicians have contributed tracks that can be recombined in Second Life. The aim is for musicians from around the world to come to together to produce news songs. They will use the Sawubona to remix and collaborate to form virtual bands that will produce CDs and eventually go on a concert tour. The sale of these CDs and other spin off products will also go towards the township project, as will the proceeds from a stadium concert of Sawubona musicians during the 2010 World Soccer Cup, South Africa.

Many IBMers and T4-Media members have been donating time to this project. Jacqueline Wolff, Communications, IBM R & D Germany, responsible for Podcast and Videocast, is working with Ansi. She will produce a blog and podcast about the activities of Sawubona.

Sawubona felt like an auspicious place to discuss “the web as virtual world.” One of the characteristics of Web 3D, in my view, if it is to play a role in positive global development, is that it will emerge from such collaborations across community, culture and business.

Ansi is Eolus McMillan’s partner in the development of the EOLUS One initiative. EOLUS is pioneering, in Second Life, cross industry, academic and community collaboration to prototype large scale facility energy management, building planning, and retail 2.0 projects. EOLUS One aims to harness Second Life as a global creative context bringing communities and corporations together on designs that will benefit communities and the environment.

“The Web As A Virtual World.”

I began my discussion on Web 3D with Ansi by asking him some questions on a recent report in Business Week which, while acknowledging the place of the leaders on the road to Web 3D, Second Life, Google Earth and IBM, focuses on the first requirement of Web 3D - an agreement on open standards.

I was glad to see Business Week this week move on from reporting Second Life as though it was still 2005 (an era when Second Life was still seen as a game, see this earlier post) with this story, “Just Ahead: The Web As Virtual World:” And, BW finally gets to the crux of the matter, at least in topic selection:

Google (GOOG ), Second Life creator Linden Lab, IBM, and a bevy of additional companies are moving toward the day when you can stroll around a 3D Web–and not just their own sites–using a virtual replica of yourself that you’ve created. They are working to establish technical standards, open to all programmers, that would allow the entire Internet to become a galaxy of connected virtual worlds.

The BW report mentions that standards groups like the Web 3D consortium are meeting to develop open standards. And, in 18 months, “an interoperable avatar likely will be approved by the I.S.O., an organization that has verified technical standards like the JPEG, a shareable format for digital images, for its 157 member countries.” But the missing piece, in my view, is to link the discussion of open standards to an understanding of what the characteristics of virtual worlds will be most important when “technical standards, open to all programmers, that would allow the entire Internet to become a galaxy of connected virtual worlds.”

Cory again confirmed to BW that Linden Lab will open source the server code in a year or two so:

developers will be able to modify it to create their own Second Life-like sites and build connections so that a store or other application in one virtual site could interact with those in others

But, I was a little surprised by BW statement that Cory Ondrejka of Linden Lab had indicated:

The company has not decided whether it will hand the code to a standards body to oversee or will write it, get it working, and hope to set a de facto standard the way Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT ) Windows trounced Apple Inc.’s (AAPL ) platform by opening up in the 1980s.

I hope to talk to Cory in depth about this soon as a “de Facto standard” does not seem in keeping with many other statements Cory has made re Linden Lab’s approach to making LL’s Second Life protocols available for the greater good.

Open standards are perhaps even more important to corporations than open sourcing the server code. And, Ansi was clear that while he is very impressed with what Linden Lab has done, and is doing, he thinks:

The world has learned and understood the value of open standards in contrast to proprietary approaches from some companies in the recent years. Creating de facto standards does not help anyone except the company creating them.

I will be doing a series of posts asking many people: “What Should Be The Characteristics of Web 3D.” Hopefully, there will many perspectives on this conversation from many quarters.

The mission of Ugotrade is to explore virtual realities role in creating a better planet. And, Second Life continues to provide more stories than I can keep up with in this regard. Philip Rosedale’s commitment to Second Life’s potential role in positive global development was clear to me back in April. And, Second Life continues to reveal new possibilities in this regard every time I log in.

Second Life - the most open and only truly user generated virtual world to date - already exhibits most of the characteristics that constitute a paradigm shift in global communications and knowledge production that can change the world completely much as Gutenberg’s invention of moveable type printing did, Ansi noted. He put it succinctly:

The main characteristics of the paradigm shift (to Web 3D) have already happened in Second Life.

Virtual Worlds are, in Ansi’s view, the Gutenberg 2.0 revolution. Gutenberg’s invention brought knowledge to the masses. But, virtual worlds and WEB 2.0 technologies can go a step further connecting us to each other in an immersive environment that is capable of transmitting whole cultures and reimagining communication in ways never possible before.

Wikipedia notes A&E Network ranked Gutenberg #1 on their “People of the Millennium” countdown, and in 1997, Time–Life magazine picked Gutenberg’s invention as the most important of the second millennium.^[2

There seem to be a lot of interesting comparisons that could be made between Philip Linden and Gutenberg.

Gutenberg’s picture below (right) with picture of Philip Linden from Torley Linden’s Flickr stream (left) - “Philip Linden has many talents among them, typing while holding a flute :-)”

While it is still the infancy of Virtual World development, Linden Lab’s Second Life has in Ansi’s view laid down the ground work for on the chief characteristics of “the web as a virtual world.”

Web 3D should not only include increasingly sophisticated levels of avatar interaction (that will include level of body language communication not available yet), but new ways to handle digital rights so avatar’s can travel between virtual worlds.

One of the reasons Linden Lab has much work to do before open sourcing is to develop ways to protect, when the server code is open sourced, the hard work existing residents of Second Life have already put into the vast amount of assets they have developed in Second Life.

Second Life has a sophisticated and powerful micro-economy that currently includes the protection of intellectual property rights and the ability to easily share, give away or sell objects easily. Being able to handle digital rights for an interoperable avatar on Web 3D goes beyond the mere establishing of open standards but into the core characteristics that can make a vibrant virtual economy work. Linden Lab has uniquely created just such a vibrant virtual economy on Second Life. And, how this is integrated with open standards might well be the billion dollar question re the future characteristics of Web 3D.

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Yesterday, in Second Life, I met Illuminous Beltran, a.k.a Michael J. Osias, Chief 3D Architect for the IBM IT Optimization Business Unit. Illuminous is leading a team of researchers building 3D Command Centers for customers. And, during my tour of the Virtual Network Operation Center Division of Scripts in the Sky Research Labs, Dreamland Industries, in Second Life, he introduced me to potential role of Second Life in the next generation of software design.

Illuminous’ group is a partnership between the IT Optimization Unit and IBM Research. The key developers are IBM Researchers from Hawthorne NY. Illuminous’ background is in telecommunications, treasury and finance operations, and defense industry. He has experience in large e-Business infrastructures including portals, B2B, e-Commerce, and legacy integration and transformation.

Illuminous’s Virtual Network Operations Center in Second life, and his Holographic Enterprise Interface “that integrates with enterprise systems and provides communications and event management with the 3D environment” was originally his own “skunk-works project.” But, after his VNOC drew attention as a popular way to demonstrate some of IBM’s virtualization and enterprise management tools, IBM decided to invest in the project. They are in the process of making it available to customers. Illuminous’ Second Life project has not only resulted in a number of patents, it is beginning to be leveraged by IBM in a number of ways from saleable products to service offerings.

“Visual Programs or 3D machines are the next level of software design”

Illuminous talked enthusiastically about the uniqueness of Second Life as a 3D platform that offers a new freedom to sculpt and paint code, and create visual programs or 3D machines that are the next level of software design.

In these 3D machines, code and 3D are inseparable and human mind and machine integrate as never before. They will transform industry, business and government through the creation of Virtual Services Operation Centers, Security Operations Centers, and Global Command and Control Systems and much more. 3D data processing will no longer be a simulator but the real deal.

Notably Illuminous said that if Second Life’s servers were open sourced tomorrow his recommendation would be to develop the next generation of 3D Command Centers wholly on the Linden platform. Illuminous has just spent some time porting the VNOC into Torque, an operation requiring a deep level of C code reconaissance necessary “to make Torque dance.” This step, he said, would be unnecessary were the LL servers already open sourced.

Interestingly, echoing the debate on Arch, Illuminous does not like the term visualization for the work he does in Second Life. He says we are in need of new terms but concepts like visual programs and 3D machines come closer to describing this new generation of 3D code/architecture. And, such 3D information machines have the potential to become increasingly helpful to humanity. They can become, in a global collaborative 3D environment, both beautiful and wise - 3D Wisdom machines.

“The extraordinary potential of an open source 3D platform with the Linden characteristics”

Many may be surprised to hear that for this exciting adventure on the frontiers of software design, Illuminous’ platform of choice is not some high end legacy system but the popular consumer platform of Second Life. Take note if you still see Second Life as a game, or have been convinced by a recent spate of negative reporting that Second Life is just a 3D chat room portrayed as good for nothing but sex, lies, and scandalous videotape.

Illuminous pointed out the extraordinary potential of an open source 3D platform with the Linden characteristics to give software designers the freedom to paint and sculpt, and work together in code as never before.

An open source 3D platform with Linden characteristics would give me a common, interoperable platform that can be used to quickly develop innovative 3D business applications. Some of the desirable characteristics include the grid architecture, the in-world communications infrastructure, and the rich programming and state models.

Illuminous also mentioned that while he has come across critiques of the Linden Script Language at conferences, he does not find these criticisms validated in his own experience.

The Linden script language has been able to fulfill all of the programming requirements I have needed. Instead of forcing tons of function into individual large scripts, I program several interacting objects that collectively are combined to form new types of machines or programs.

“The 2D Web is, in many ways, an after thought.”

When Illuminous was talking to me about some of the special possibilites Second Life offers to next level software design, I thought of Keystone’s ideas about virtual architecture. And, how the Second Life collaborative environment, and the freedoms and possibilities created by the building and scripting tools have led Keystone to think about reflexive and responsive architecture - “data architecture.”

Illuminous described that 2D web is, in many ways, an “after thought.” In 2D “computers are bored waiting for us,” no chance to burn out a card and get “the blue screen of death” on a Google. And, he explained, to aggregate and integrate information on web pages is very clumsy. The relationship between mind and computer is much more intimate and integrated in 3D. Not only are there the special relations with the structure of objects in play but there is the fourth dimension of time and change.

For a more complete explanation of the VNOC and The Holographic Enterprise Interface you can pick up a prim book (see page below) at Dreamland Industries in Second Life. And, for more pictures of the VNOC see here.

The rack of XMLRPC Channel banks and the central communications hub does decryption and packet parsing for the Holographic Protocol Architecture.

The Holographic Protocol Architecture (HPA) provides a common and consistent communications framework that allows communications between the virtual and non virtual worlds, and also is used within purely in-world networks.

Illuminous’ integration server to manage the enterprise API integration and mediate communications has also be used in other virtual worlds.

It has been leveraged for use in other virtual worlds, without modifications by using the back end enterprise plugins and the standard interfaces. This allows us to use multiple 3D engines, with minimal changes to the 3D engine, and nearly none of the integration logic, since the job of the 3D engine to maintain world state and sessions, not process large volumes of data and integration logic.

VNOC and the mitigation of energy issues

On Ugotrade I have been blogging about the potential for VOCs to revolutionize energy management. The energy management potential of VNOCs may stay neck and neck with increasing demands for power for CPUs for a while until all the tools for energy management can be tied together in cohesive picture. But, Illuminous explained their potential to reduce energy consumption in a number of ways is considerable. For example, Virtual Operation Centers are better able to consolidate the footprint of large numbers of machines only being used at say 10% capacity, to get rid of extraneous machines, and to monitor power and cooling, distribute workload between data centers, and even move processing to cooler site when weather conditions are unfavorable.

This kind of level of virtual energy management has an important role to play in the energy management goals of the EOLUS initiative.

Christopher Linden Visits EOLUS One -”Where Creative Minds Come Together.”

Last week a steady stream of Metarati visited the EOLUS One iniative that includes in its multifaceted approach a Virtual Operations Center where EOLUS is prototyping and modeling uses cases that have the potential to transform the real estate industry, architecture, and the future of retail. I can only give a taste in this post of the momentum this projects seems to be gathering. I was fortunate to be there last week for a few important meetings, including when Christopher Mahoney, Business Development Manager at Linden Lab, took a tour.

Reinventing the Real Estate Industry in Second Life

Chris has be focusing on SL/RL integrations and is particularly interested in they way the real estate industry could work in new ways in Second Life. But, Chris was clearly blown away when he saw how committed Eolus Mcmillan (a.k.a Oliver Goh of Implenia) is to creating a new model for the Real Estate Industry that puts Second Life at the heart of a new approach to managing the complete life cycle of property.

The life cycle of property can be revolutionized in many ways in a virtual environment and each moment of the cycle, in Eolus Mcmillan’s view, offers different points of engagement, from collaboration on planning and virtual modeling, to the use of Virtual Operation Centers for building management and more. The cycle begins with a birth - a piece of land where decisions are yet to be made about what to do with it, and ends with a maintenance mode - where different responsiblities are on different parties e.g. owners, tenants and even the property itself. For example, at the end, a property may be enlisted through building automation to such tasks as taking care of its elderly occupant who has a pace maker, or needs their blood sugar or heart problems monitored.

Tab Scott (a.k.a Terry Beaubois in Real Life), Keystone Bouchard, Virtual Architect for Clear Ink, and Kiwini Oe a.k.a Steve Nelson of Clear Ink have been putting their heads together on this reinvention of the Real Estate life cycle (more on this in another post).

I caught two other metarati stopping by EOLUS One also. Fizik Baskerville (a.k.a Justin Bovington of Rivers Run Red) who is working on a number of very interesting SL/RL integration projects that I hope will be the topic of a future post. And, Pathfinder Linden who flew in and connected the EOLUS One Initiative with his friends at MIT Media Lab, Responsive Environments Group.

Open Sourcing the Second Life Servers

During the tour, which I will discuss later in this post, Christopher Linden made clear statements on the goals re open sourcing server side (the client is, of course, already open source).

The first tough step for LL Chris explained is figuring out a way that Second Life assets can be distributed onto other servers without degrading the property rights of all the current residents who have so much invested in all the many, many assets they have created on Second Life. And, while this is a thorny problem involving many issues from file encryption to permission structures, Chris indicated that the ability to back up assets on other servers could be available by the end of the year. Rumor has it that full open sourcing is on something like an 18 month schedule. But LL, as far as I know, have not mentioned dates as yet, although they have been very clear about their intentions to completely open source, and that they are moving as fast as they possibly can. Chris concurred saying that Linden Lab are preparing to open the platform completely and transform themselves into an application provider of services like search, Voice Over IP, user interfaces etc.

And, if open sourcing of the server side is accomplished in 15 to 18 months, Eolus Mcmillan said this would be timely for the EOLUS initiative which he hopes will be ready to gear up for large scale integration projects in about the same period.

William Gibson in Second Life

William