UgoTrade

Steve Prentice, analyst for Gartner Research, very kindly talked to me on Skype from the Symposium/ITexpo in San Francisco, yesterday. Of course, I asked about his controversial prediction, “the majority of active Internet users and major enterprises will find value in participating in this area [Virtual Worlds] in the coming years.” And:

By 2011, 80% of active Internet users (and Fortune 500 enterprises) will have a “second life” - but not necessarily IN “Second Life.”

Metaversed and others have found this “way off the mark.” But, “Things always happen sooner that people think,” was Steve’s response. And, I had just spent most of the day watching the amazing Gapminder.org videos of Hans Rosling (presented at TED - see TED blog), so I was definitely in the mood to agree.

When dealing with world scale development on issues like poverty, global health, or even the rate of growth of a developing world like Second Life it is very hard to get a handle on events that occur on this kind of massive scale. The amazing, animated, interactive statistical analysis of Hans Rosling brilliantly debunks conventional pessimistic views on beating world poverty - and other major “Myths about Developing Worlds.”

Hans Rosling, co-founder of Gapminder, manages to turn boring numbers into vibrant animations that make sense of the world.

Click on the video grabs to watch these videos!

And as I watched Rosling’s dynamic analysis unfold, I kept thinking about the Seven Digital Divide Fallacies from Digital Divide.org

Those involved in the ten-year effort to close the Digital Divide were all well-intentioned. But we were like blind men describing the elephant as a tusk or a hoof rather and missing the point about the whole elephant. Similarly, closing the Divide turned out to be not a matter of gaining access to computers or cell phones but finding room for both. It is not a matter of promoting personal use of gadgets vs. shared use of gadgets but both. It is not a job for business or government but both. Not about choosing open source software over Windows but both. Similarly, it is not about GSM wireless vs. CDMA but both. Not about bottom-up vs. top-down efforts but both.

Pessimism leads to an over emphasis on top-down efforts.

Well my own small commitment to step out into the sunshine has been to keep the conversations about technology in developing countries linked to an exploration of the development of virtual worlds. Even though the mantra, “What about issues of broadband access?” is ever present in my ears. But, as I mentioned in my last post there have been some big developments in broadband access in Africa, and elsewhere, recently, and new opportunities will emerge with this.

Rosling gives a completely new view on issues of development, poverty and health on a global scale. But, he does not look at virtual worlds! Probably, there isn’t the kind of data available for virtual worlds for this kind of analysis and projection. But, I think it would be very interesting to see some of the same interactive analysis techniques that Rosling applies to developing countries applied to virtual worlds. It might help people get a handle on some of the issues that are just too big too grasp without these kind of visual thinking tools.

What is important about virtual worlds is that they are social and immersive.

Neomeme, recently, brought both the beautiful map of the internet and the blogosphere that are at the beginning of this post to my attention. The image on the left traces links on the blogosphere - blue are reciprocal links and green are one way. Discover posted the original story which will tell you where your favorite, “jocks, gadget hounds, political junkies, and porn aficionados hangout,” and which blogs create the white hot spots. But, what struck me was how color coding the two way links blue on the map told a new and very interesting story of the blogosphere from the point of view of “active”citizenship.

[The] blue blob represents a balanced sociopolitical discourse. The prevalence of blue in this area shows that most of these links are reciprocal, suggesting a sort of metadialogue between bloggers who hurl headlines at one another. The brightest light belongs to syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin.

The dream for a metaverse that is a single coherent environment, with a single client interface and countless virtual planets is possibly emerging faster than we can imagine. In my conversation with Steve Prentice, we went over many of technology issues/obstacles concerning a stable scalable supporting ground for virtual worlds to flourish on.

Who might be the big players? Would Google with their server farm savvy, or even the giant telecoms be the big virtual world service providers one day soon? What about IBM’s announcement of building a massively scalable main frame platform using cell processors? (see discussions of this on 3pointD and eightbar.) Also see eightbar’s comments in support of Steve Prentice and Nick Price’s report from ITexpo.

I asked these questions and Steve patiently answered. But, in the end the most exciting aspect of virtual worlds is emerging regardless of uncertainties around the exact path the technologies will take. The extraordinary quality, or ROA (Return on Awsome), of virtual worlds is the new levels of collaboration and connectivity they present. I also spent time with Jonas Karlsson and Karen Arena from Xerox today and, as this was a long conversation, it is fodder for another post. But, in closing, Jonas summed things up very clearly: “To me, the main point is that these environments are immersive and social.”

Second Life, Ustream and Twitter!

As I was writing this post last night, alerted by a Twitter, I found myself watching Eric Rice stream live from Second Life to Ustream. He was interacting with a group (not to mention a bunch of vehicles!) on Second Life and with a live audience on the Ustream chat lines. It was a social mash up that really started to spin my brain on the possiblities for virtual and RL integrations. I haven’t had a chance to ask Eric about the Fed Ex van that showed up a few times in his stream also. Another interesting point, Eric Rice has decided to switch to his RL identity in Second Life despite the almost legendary status of his Spin Martin avatar. A sign, to me at least, that the linking of virtual and real worlds is happening faster than we think.

Also, thank you Aleister for introducing me to Adri at Metaversality and taking me to Wednesday night’s ” KRTU Jazz for the Metaverse.” KRTU , on 91.7 FM, provides jazz for San Antonio from Trinity University. Here’s Adri and the legendary Ella Fitzgerald - kindred spirits!

Tags: Second Life | Virtual Worlds | Virtual Reality | Twitter | Ustream | Second Life | Web 3.D | social media | social networks | global development | myths of global development | TED | gapminder | Hans Rosling | World Health | global poverty | Jazz | Ella Fitzgerald | blogosphere | internet | interweb | ROA | return on awsome | metaverse | Gartner | IT | digital divides | blogosphere | positive global development | sustainable development | Itexpo |

In the year of 2010, 70% of the population in the developed nations will pass ten times more time per day interacting with people in the virtual world than in the physical world, says Charles Abrams a Director of Research for Gartner in, Internet Midia Digital.

What with the upcoming launch of Second Life Brasil, the arrival of Second News! Brasil, and the Gartner Conference in, Sao Paulo, Brasil (April 10th and 11th), virtual worlds in general and Second Life, in particular, are making a big splash in Brasil at the moment.

The picture on the left is of the opening party on Second Life for Second News! Brasil. The picture on the right is of the Pelorinho, Salvador, Brasil from Omar Junior’s Flickr photostream.

What is it about virtual worlds that will draw this many people in for this amount of time? Certainly it is not just about being 3D! The pivotal points of a virtual world are outlined in “Onder’s Big Three.”

“Onder’s big three” describes the qualities any virtual world must have if it is going to play the kind of role in 2010 that Abrams from Gartner describes. (Notably, Onder finds that, at this time, Second Life is the “ONLY virtual world that completely complies with ‘Onder’s Big Three.’”

1. Real money must move in and out of the “virtual” economy freely. RMT (Real-Money Trading) is designed in, not forbidden by TOS.

2.Users must be able to create unique content and retain ownership over it. Things like scripting and accepting uploads are important here. Multimedia is a bonus. We must be able to control the rights to our content.

3.The world must be persistent, and the users able to change it. Residents like being able to build the world themselves, and don’t need somebody stepping in and erasing their work.

But, in terms of the growth of virtual world’s in developing countries, at the moment, Onder’s number one point is, perhaps, the most important. The use of mobile phones as virtual bank accounts, to send, receive and save money is being touted but Telecom industry pundits as the major market driver after SMS.

M-Banking

BBC News notes: “M-banking, as it is known, might help to serve the three billion people who currently have no access to financial services, according to the World Bank.”

On the left is a Kaizen Cash booth on Brazilian Second Life (Kaizen is one of the Brazilian partners in Second Life Brasil - see 3pointD for the complete story). It will be possible to buy Linden Dollars using Brazilian currency, the Real.

On the right, is a “Geesm,” (GSM) kiosk in Lagos for mobile phone based virtual banking (no connection to Second Life, yet!).

Olusola Oyewola points outs call centers as they are known “attend to their customers just like your banker does when you go to cash some amount of money.” For more about the role of mobile phones in job creation in Africa see, Textually, Mobile Africa, Afrigadget, and Timbuktu Chronicles.

Leapfrogging

Jamais Cascio in World Changing, discusses “Leapfrogging” - the “notion that areas which have poorly-developed technology or economic bases can move themselves forward rapidly through the adoption of modern systems without going through intermediary steps. ” Bowers writes on PSD blog, “M-banking remains the most powerful example of leapfrogging that I know of. It’s actually a double leapfrog - from landlines to cell phones, and from traditional banks to virtual wallets.

Scott Schaffer has been blogging for a while about “leapfrogging” from “Phase 1 of internet development, the connection of the electronic world” which has been dominated by the platform creators (Microsoft) and search (Google) to “Phase 2 - connecting every physical item to the Internet,” which will take the internet into 3D. He notes, “Phase 2 will be 1000 times larger and more lucrative than Phase 1.”

Physical World Connection Players

Business Week, last week summarized the Chinese physical world connection players. Gmedia uses two-dimensional bar codes to bridge “the online and offline worlds, turning, say, a coffee table into a physical hyperlink, and your mobile phone into a giant mouse pointer. You “click” the barcode on the coffee table by taking a picture of it with the camera on your phone, and then are automatically taken online.”

Hong Kong-based, MyClick, “Although, it uses a patented photo recognition technology, not barcodes, the end result is virtually identical. Any visual medium - a magazine page, billboard or television commercial - can carry an image framed by a special border. The user simply snaps a photo of the framed image.”

Steve McCormick, vice-president of MyClick says: “In China, consumers are into marketing that’s hao wanr (fun). It’s not like the US, where the internet is a tool for purchasing products. Here, it’s all about yu le (entertainment).” Also, see Pacific Epoc’s interview with MyClick.

But, for a questioning look at whether mobile phone advertising and datamatrix codes will work , see Danwei.

What is happening “on the ground? M4G and Life Logging

Africa - Ready For Business tagged me recently. And, ever since, I have been wondering what to write for a meme post - What are my goals? Well one of my goals for this blog is not just to focus on top down innovation, but to keep looking at what innovations are coming from people who take up and use technology in creative and unexpected ways.

I love coming up with big ideas. But, I have been reining in my love of “big ideas” lately. I have come to realize that more often than not deep engagement with very specific areas evolves into big ideas one could never have imagined when starting out.

In Africa, the focus of innovation may not be on broadband at the moment, but, this does not mean trails are not being blazed. Virtual banking “the next big market driver after SMS” is being pioneered in Africa and other developing countries (including Second Life!).

Also, Africa Ready For Business notes, new and innovative uses for SMS are emerging . See their post for a video on M4G - Mobile For Good about how MG4 is helping Kenyans find jobs. And, check One World, to see more about this “social franchise project designed to use mobile phone technology to alleviate poverty” by delivering vital health, employment and community content via SMS.

Innovative approaches to connecting on grid and off grid worlds don’t just come from large corporate ventures.

Please check out, the other here, to learn about Jerry Paffendorf’s (The Futurist In Residence at The Electric Sheep Company) “on the ground” experiments in Phase 2 internet development using his shoes.

Pursuing an instinct to life log with his Nike+ tracking shoes plus new camera plus new Google MyMaps service, Jerry begins work on the virtualizing the neighborhood side of things.

Bridge blogging is a very big idea!

Recently, I was following a link from Clapping Trees post on, Top Blogs in China Malayasia and the Phillipines, when I came across Yee’s Blog, “Ya, I Yee, if only I could be a bridge blogger.” Aha, there you have it. That’s the way to think about “bridge blogging.” It is too big of an idea to pin down. Now I feel I can write down three goals:

1) Aspire to”bridge blog” while remembering this is a lofty goal.

2) Work on some practical bridge building everyday. For example, put time into at least one of my avatars (other than my blog), e.g., in Second Life, Twitter, Stumble Upon, Jaiku, Mybloglog, etc., etc., to build connections, make friends, and exchange ideas with an aspiration to building bridges across digital divides, and towards the goal of positive global development.

3) Practice meditation everyday.

I tag

Ya, I Yee, Electronic Village, Mshairi, JynxedPanda, African Gadget Geek, Congo Girl, Zanglu, Team Mascot, Brown Thoughts, Mutant Palm, Black In Business, Steli

Tags: Second Life | Virtual Worlds | Virtual Realty | m-banking | kaizen | global development | internet development | leapfrogging | Web 3.D | Web 3.0 | GSM | SMS | Africa | Second Life Brasil | physical hyperlinking | mobile phones | cell phones | mobile computing | MyClick | Gmedia | Electric Sheep | social media | social networking | life logging | Nike | Web 2.0 | virtual china | bridge blogging | Brasil | MMOGS | digital divides | social entrepreneurs | social entrepreneurship | internet | web development | positive global development |

Children are working on their OLPC laptops in a school 10 miles outside the capital of Nigeria, Abuja. This school was selected by Khaled Assounah, Director of Nicholas Negraponte’s One Laptop Per Child Program (OLPC) who spent a year touring schools in Nigeria. For the full story from Nigeria, see CNET, and here for more background on the OLPC project, and a video demonstration.

Tags: OLPC | Nicholas Negraponte | Nigeria | global development | digital divide | education | $100 laptop |

“Like water and heat, internet is a clear necessity in the modern world, opening doors to education, employment and engagement.” (Sarah Lai Stirland, Wired)

This great “story of community-initiated sustainable development” that was posted on Boing Boing is some of the best news I’ve heard all week.

Sarah Lai Stirland of Wired writes: “Last month, volunteers turned on a novel broadband network in this 135-unit block [a San Francisco housing project], throwing a digital lifeline to Emma Casey and other tenants.”

“Using a refurbished PC she picked up for $100, the 47-year-old mother of two adult children is now going online to help her son find a job, get health information and, she says, pay tribute to neighbors who’ve met with violent or untimely deaths.”

While local governments remain mired in debates over how to do it - public versus private infrastructure - and academics argue cart and horse scenarios on education and teachers versus IP addresses and computers, some enterprising mixes of profit and non-profit groups working with local communities are getting the job done.

The supercool technology behind this SF community project, providing bandwidth that matches DSL service, is from Meraki. While it is still in beta, the “Meraki’s mini” contains a Wi-Fi router-on-a-chip, combined with the same microprocessor and same memory that formed the heart of a Silicon Graphics workstation 10 years ago. These components are now cheap enough to sell with a box in a $49 dollar “plug in.”

The New York Times noted, “$50 boxes that serve, depending upon population density, more than one household and can be installed by anyone with the ease of plugging in a toaster…….This grass-roots approach, with next-to-nothing expenditures for both equipment and operations, is impossible to ignore.”

One billion on line - five billion to go. And, lets start with those most in need this time.

18.-22. May 2007 WirelessSummit, USA

Aug/Sept 2007 WSFII 2007, Ghana

The concept of Mesh networking is to automatically detect the best route, highest bandwidth, and dynamically adjust to varying conditions. The ability to automatically reroute connections was first developed by phone companies to deal with down phone lines and provide people with continuous access.

While Meraki requires multiple nodes for widespread coverage, Air Jaldi has found an elegant solution to developing a wireless mesh network that works over large distances in the mountainous terrain and inclement weather of the Himalayas. Air Jaldi’s Mesh network, provides broadband internet access, and is based on recurring deployments of a hardware device, which is designed, and built locally - it is known as the Himalayan-Mesh-Router.

Here are some members of Tibetan Technology and AirJaldi . They have just installed A New Node at Government Polytechnic College, Kangra.

[left to right: Tenzin Gonpo, Phuntsok Dorjee, Ranbhir Rana, and Pauli]
Photographed by Aurelien Personnez, 15th March, 2007

Another flagship Mesh networking project is the e-village, “in Mahavilachchiya (Sri Lanka), a little known village, 40 km from the nearest town Anuradhapura, and surrounded three sides by the Vilpattu jungle…… There are 50 PCs and a sophisticated multimedia lab. The majority of the computers are located at the houses of the children attending the Horizon Lanka Academy.”

Tags: Mesh Wireless networks | global development | digital divides | Sri Lanka | e-village | community WiFi | Internet access | broadband access | Mest | networking | Meraki | Air Jaldi | Tibetan Technology | ICT education | wireless | social entrepreneurship | internet |

Day One of the Virtual Worlds 2007, NYC.

Philip Rosedale, founder and CEO of Linden Labs gave the opening presentation at VW ‘o7, 9am. In an auditorium jam packed with a Fortune 500 crowd gathered to look at, “The Future of Marketing and Media,” Philip Rosedale/Linden stayed true to his visionary, futurist roots. His talk centered on the theme: “What makes virtual worlds special is not that they are 3D, but that they are richly collaborative……We are there together, make things together, explore things together. This was not obvious in 2003. Virtual Worlds will change the nature of who we are. This type of experience changes you, makes you demand change in the real world that is so easy to change in virtual environments…..this technology ends up changing us as people.”

I took this picture in the hallway after the presentation, where the press had gathered to get interviews. Philip is deeply engaged in a discussion. But, he is not explaining Linden Lab’s mission to a key influencer, a reporter from PC (one was waiting for him) or a CEO (and, there were many eager to engage his attention). Even though he was scheduled to leave for South Carolina before noon, Philip Rosedale is taking the time to talk to an educator who asked him how his students can get involved in Linden Labs as interns. And, right after his interview with Fuji Television Network News, he took the time to talk to me (and my ipod!) about Second Life’s possible role in positive global development. Now, that made my day!

I met Philip Rosedale at the back of the crowded theater. In a full house, I was sitting on the floor. And, after his introduction, he sat down there too! So, I asked him if he would be willing to give a short interview for my blog on the role of SL in positive global development. I mentioned how excited I was about the potential of virtual worlds in this regard. And, he was equally enthusiastic, saying this was a very interesting topic. I mentioned I had done a post recently on “Africa and Second Life,” commenting on the advocacy for the role of virtual worlds in positive global development in general, and Second Life in particular, by Mutumwa Mawere. I was quite delighted to hear Philip had read this article in zimdaily.com too!

Here is the beginning of the interview. I will transcribe more tomorrow. But, Day 2 of VW ‘07 starts early, and it is late already, so here is the start.

Me: What are your thoughts about the possible role of Second Life in positive global development?

Philip Rosedale: There is no question that Second Life is in many ways, especially at its early stages, a more powerful transformative cultural educational tool, in a sense, than perhaps it is an entertainment tool. In other words, the greatest opportunity for change and capability that it offers to anyone is someone who is not well connected to the world, and can learn Second Life, and jump in there, and basically instantly be in this $40 million a month economy - this huge base of people from around the world. So I think that developing countries and how they can use Second Life is incredibly exciting. I think that the only thing that we don’t actually really know the answers to as a company is how the broad band enablement, and the typical pc, and how the cost of access or the access regime works in a particular country - with getting pcs connected to the net.
Tags: Second Life | Web 3D | Virtual Worlds | Philip Rosedale | Linden Labs | Africa | global development | Virtual Worlds 2007 | marketing | media | Philip Linden | Virtual Reality |

Servers for the people! (picture from O’Reilly Radar)

Welcome to Net 0! Warana Unwired, a project from Microsoft Research India (see blog), bypasses Web 2.0, Web 3.0, Web 3D and Web(n+1) etc., etc. and puts the power of servers directly into the hands of the people, replacing pcs with cellphones. This may be the first project of its kind in developing regions “where an entire PC setup has been replaced with mobile phones.” Farmers can use the system to access “essential pieces of information such as the ideal time for planting and harvesting sugarcane, the current market rates of their produce, and payments made by the factories.”

But, as ifacethoughts points out, one big factor in the success of other projects is going to be “the Government regulations regarding this.” As, in terms of information access, the individual farmer is put on the same level as the giants. Also, Abhijit Nadgouda notes, Warana has better literacy rates, and more “industries and people there are aware of rest of the world.” In many places the most urgent need is to apply technology “to ease availability of energy, water, education and employment.”

(See Supercool School for a sneak peak at an “EduBlogger” event - “focusing on new and revolutionary ideas in education,” and, Neverwonderland for an interesting post on finding internet access solutions for rural Mexico. And, thanks Neil Caldwell for sending me the link to O’Reilly Radar. I am always interested to hear about how new ways to reach the superhighway are being pioneered on the dirt road.)

Reinventing the internet and the world wide web.

This story from rural India brings up an interesting and under discussed topic – the invisible layer beneath the visible World Wide Web, i.e., the Internet or Net. The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used interchangeably but this is misleading and gets in the way of understanding all the ways both levels can be approached creatively.

Heres a little sketch in case you are confused!

The user interface of the future will not only bring smart searching, dubbed as Web 3.0, into the hyperlinked world of Web 2.O – social networks, user-­created taxonomies of content, “and the kind interactivity, represented by sites such as Flickr, Del.icio.us, and Wikipedia.” It will also harness the multiple intelligences and multidimensionality of user generated virtual worlds like SL.

We can already see the beginning of this re-imagining in the current discussion around the future of Second Life. See, Information Week, and a very interesting article, “The Future of the Grid: How SL could cope with millions of concurrent users,” in The Avastar by Gwyneth Llewelyn. Gwyneth is a writer, mentor, artist, futurist, metathinker of Second Life and business manager of Beta Technologies.

Click here, for more about Gwyneth.

In her article, Gwyneth, discusses how LL [Linden Labs] can handle the ever increasing amount of users logging in to SL. She points out that what we understand as the Second Life grid today is “a collection of textures and prim data inside LL’s servers.” And, if LL were to allow “textures to be downloaded from outside the grid, perhaps even allowing users to store them on their own,” their 2000 servers would be able to handle 20 million simultaneous users.” (There is evidence Gwnyeth notes that, “the grid currently doesn’t handle well past 30K simultaneous users.”) But, she asks, if we start thinking of “the grid as just ‘the glue’ between SL clients and servers with no data…..what kind of service is LL providing then?”

People have speculated that Linden Labs will release the server source code as open source, (open source for the client was recently released), and LL has talked about moving more of Second Life to the Web, to reduce the burden on Second Life servers. Currently, “users can create accounts, check whether their Second Life friends are online, and buy and sell land and Linden Dollars using a Web browser (Information Week).” But, for Second Life to be a global interface much like the Web is today, it would have to go public domain, and to move out of the the current cozy nest (see diagram 1 below) to become a virtual reality interface that will replace the World Wide Web ( diagram 2 below).

As Second Life begins to take flight, the mind of Real Life and Second Life, is likely to become increasingly merged. The arrival of 3D voice in the coming months, heralds a new era when the “Second” aspect of Second Life will become more difficult to discern. There is some very interesting discussions on Augmentation vs Immersion (immersion puts the emphasis on the secondness) and what this means for advertising and branding on SL in Second Life Creativity. There will soon be more people on Second Life who have experienced it through voice than without. Friday night, I was fortunate to meet Gwyneth at an opening of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Neufreistadt. And, she pointed out that voice could well finish of those “pesky” immersionists once and for all! We talked a lot about the changes voice would bring to SL. Soon, “you will soon have 10 million users on Second Life that have only experienced SL through voice …….so who will care if 1 to 2 million people disagree and leave?” Eventually, you’d argue that “almost all those 10 million will come in because they ‘want’ more ‘RL in SL,’ not less, and voice is the best way to give them that…….and soon video mapping of your face on your avatar……”

The Second Life Herald, in a blast from the past, writes: “Conventional wisdom in Second Life suggests those who wish to import the real world into the metaverse are best served by tightly controlled private islands - particularly since many residents seem to prefer to separate second life and real life - and actively discourage RL incursions into their fantasy universe.” The ways things are going, Real Life infringements on Second Life are unlikely to be what is confined to private islands.

_{Golam Amadeus, master sculptor, gives an art lesson/seminar on the Museum of Contemporary Art in Neufreistadt. (photo by Gwyneth Llewelyn, Flickr)}

Currently, some SL residents are extremely wary of the merging of RL with SL, worrying the loss of anonymity with the arrival of voice will mark the end of the creative fantasy worlds that been the heart and soul of Second Life up to now. After hearing peoples’ fears, about the way “old” cultures on Second Life will be affected by the coming of 3D voice, I have begun to wonder whether SL anthropologists and historians were already hurrying to the deep level fantasy communities and doing interviews and taking pictures of these soon to be “vanishing” cultures. Perhaps, these images will soon be part of a hip show at the MoCA examining their “constructednes.”

As well as talking to Gwyneth, about the future of SL, I did much of what I would do at a RL opening - check out some of the art and schmooze with press (yes, there were other bloggers and RL press there, including Aleister Kronos, Team Mascot, Redakisto Noble), artists, curators and other key influencers with drinks and hors d’oeuves in hand. Hey, its an art opening, I’m a New Yorker - this is not just Second Life its Second Nature!

And, when I was lucky enough to run into Gwyneth Llewelyn, I lost no time tapping into her deep understanding of the culture of SL. Gwyneth was at meetings in 2004 and 2005 hosted by Philip Linden when he said: “SL will never have voice, unless the technology evolves.” And, she noted, in 2006, he said, “we’re looking at some interesting technologies that will allow ‘voice’ to be as customizable as your avatar.” But, in the end, market pressures have brought 3D voice into Second Life without the kind of morphing technologies that would protect the anonymity that makes Second Life a second place, rather than an extension of Real Life. In 2007, he finally conceded that he was losing terrain to the competition. So, as Gwyneth pointed out, any new “3rd Life” or “After Life”, will have a window of perhaps 2-3 years. Then they will face the same issue.

“Voice is not just about ‘lack of anonymity,’ though; it is about a different conception of how a virtual world should work. I’m fairily confident that the ones relying on the lack of voice to protect their anonymity will not be the ones more affected (they are, as said, a small minority, of just a couple millions, which will fade out over the years). Instead, it will be the ones that will heavily use voice that will shape the ‘new’ Second Life, and it will be a quite different place, in the sense that old things that were possible only with chat will have to be done differently.”

I cannot, in this post, do justice to all the brilliant observations Gwyneth made on how voice would change the culture of Second Life. But, for a full analysis see her latest post, The Schism Around Voice: Multicasting vs. Broadcasting.” Second Life’s chat utility is a journalist’s dream delivering a full color coded transcript with a few clicks of the mouse. The transcript of our discussion is 24 pages long! Here is a little sample. Gwyneth is talking about the advantages of reading.

15:36] Gwyneth Llewelyn: A good example of this are the “news tickers” on the TV news… you know… they have became very popular in the past decade,
[15:36] Gwyneth Llewelyn: the advantage, of course, is that in a few seconds,
[15:36] Gwyneth Llewelyn: you can put all news there
[15:37] Gwyneth Llewelyn: and you don’t even need to have the sound on
[15:37] Gwyneth Llewelyn: so all TV stations do it that way
[15:37] Gwyneth Llewelyn: it’s not by “chance” or because it’s technologically more advanced,
[15:37] Gwyneth Llewelyn: but because you can convey much more information, much faster,
[15:37] Gwyneth Llewelyn: and people *do* have short attention spans
[15:38] Gwyneth Llewelyn: I give always the following example: every day people bombard me “oh, just listen to that podcast, it’s just 15 minutes and very interesting!”
[15:38] Gwyneth Llewelyn: my answer is: “sure — is there a text transcript of the podcast somewhere?”
[15:38] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Because that takes 1 minute to read,
[15:38] Gwyneth Llewelyn: and I can read 10 podcasts in the same minute, at the same time
[15:39] Gwyneth Llewelyn: While with ONE podcast that takes 15 minutes… i can’t do anything else!
[15:39] Gwyneth Llewelyn: It requires my full attention.
[15:39] Gwyneth Llewelyn: It’s *great* if I’m in the bath, though — LOL
[15:39] Gwyneth Llewelyn: or driving
[15:39] Tara5 Oh: yeah i know what you mean i was just thinking i was going to ask you if there was a way to save a chat history because this was a very interesting conversation and i missed half of it!
[15:39] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Oh, Ctrl-H, Tara
[15:40] Gwyneth Llewelyn: It pops up history, ie. the whole chat gets into a scrollable window

“Voice will kill multitasking, social events, and the uncanny ability of interacting with dozens (sometimes hundreds) of people *at the same time*. This, for me, is far more important than the “anonymity” aspect overall. It’s obvious that it’ll be far better for one-to-one communications (but why don’t people use Skype or even a phone for that?), short business meetings (which don’t require text transcripts), and, naturally, presentations, seminars, classes, conferences, announcements, live music events, and all sort of “broadcasting” events (one person talking, many listening). It’s of no use for “multicasting” events (all people talking, all listening). So SL will lose all of those slowly over time.

Does this worry me overall? Well, not really; “different” is not necessarily “bad”. But when thinking what tools like SL can give us — real-time multicasting ability — I’m sorry to see it go away. For me, it would be the same as having a new world-wide regulation that would require all bloggers to shut down their sites (which do allow asynchronous multicasting through comments) and register with public or private publishing companies that will provide them with broadcasting abilities, but no simultaneous feedback from their readers. I would certainly adapt, but also miss the joy of being a reader and an author at the same time — one of the most important things (or even “freedoms”) that the Web has given to us. SL has given us the ability to do that in real time, and now it removes it — so I’m obvious sorry to see it go away! I just hope that the creativity of using voice as a new geekish tool will compensate with new, interesting uses for that technology, that will give the “New Second Life” some new potential.”

I ended my last post on Second Life with Philip Rosedale’s legendary proclamation, “I’m not building a game. I’m building a new country.” [interview to Wired, 2004-05-08] Which, Gwyneth notes, “received a serious blow when Linden Lab removed the telehubs. It was clear that what would follow next was a jump to private islands, where you can devise your own urban planning, and that there wouldn’t be “one country”, but “several communities” inside the same virtual environment.” But, I will be following up on Aleister Kronos’s very interesting comments on this notion of Second Life as a country/countries, and what that means for laws and governance - Utopian Anarchy or Dystopian Chaos - in a another post. But, I am beginning to think Second Life is neither a game, nor a country. Rather, Second Life is about the reinvention of our world.

Tags: Second Life | Web 2.0 | Web 3.0 | Internet | Web 3D | Virtual Reality | Virtual Worlds | World Wide Web | Philip Linden | Philip Rosedale | Mulitcasting | Chat | Marketing | Voice Chat | IM Chat | global development | wireless networks | digital divides | Microsoft Research | |

Opera CTO, Håkon Wium Lie, demos OLPC at Wired, and gives a video tour.

The OLPC, often called the $100 laptop project (now $150), initiated by the MIT Media Lab under the leadership of Nicholas Negraponte is a project with tremendous implications for education, literacy, the digital divide, and economic growth across the globe (cheat sheet on OLPC). Also, see a comparison between Flexgo - the new payment system intended to make Windows affordable for the non-rich in developing countries, and OLPC , here.  There is also and interesting video from Brazil that I found on Neverwonderland comparing Classmate with OLPC.  Classmate is the $400 laptop made by Intel  - “for kindergarteners through high school students in emerging nations.”  Classmate will run under a version of Windows modified “to prevents kids from accessing Internet sites or adding programs that have been designated by parents or teachers as off-limits,”  and sold in conjunction with a pay-as-you-go system. (see my page comparing Flexgo. with OLPC for more on this).

A business model of “four cows and a computer,” (see Spiegel for the full story) has only become possible thanks to a new local Internet connection known as Cordect.

“By European standards, this ‘Indianet’ is only a patchy and relatively slow provisional solution, a kind of digital dirt road leading to the information super-highway.  The basic technology is the same as that used in wireless phones — the only difference is that the base station isn’t next door, but several kilometers away. And since electricity shortages are common in the countryside, there is a battery to supply the Internet cafés for up to four hours in case of outages.”
“Cordect was developed by the Indian Institute of Technology and is developing into a veritable sales hit in the country’s backwaters.  Telecommunication corporations from other countries such as South Africa, Tunisia, Yemen and Kazakhstan are already betting on the new Internet technology. ”

Now the giants want in.  Microsoft announced last year they would invest “roughly $1.7 billion in order to cover the subcontinent with a network of 50,000 Internet Cafés during the next four years — a network that will not just connect the prosperous towns, but will deliberately designed to extend into the poor rural areas.  This means that there will probably be fierce competition between Microsoft and the local competitor Cordect, which has already provided 10,000 Indian villages with Internet access.”  And, “Microsoft spent two years conducting intensive market research that involved setting up 300 trial Internet Cafés, in order to get used to the specific features of the local market.” (Spiegel)

If you have any news for me how this story is playing out in different places, please keep me posted!