http://www.technologyreview.com/magazine/110/

Paul may be correct down the road a bit…

ICANN has made a complete mess of that simple task.

The American people and the U.S. Government will not continue to tolerate such nonsense. Why would they want some Australians “shaping” and
dictating the on-line experiences that Americans will expect to come from
Free Market evolution.

Over 10 years ago, many people moved to 3D virtual communities [long
before Second Life] to prepare for the phases AFTER the Proof-of-Concept
Market trails. Netizens are being quietly and slowly migrated off of the
DARPA Cartel’s transport.

Soon entire continents, such as Australia, will NOT BE ROUTED. They do not
have the needed bandwidth for the broadband services that are becoming
the norm. At some point, the U.S. Government and a new generation of
leaders will wake up and realize that they have a brand new Internet
free of the nonsense that the DARPA Cartel has perpetuated.

What may continue to be routed is simple-minded text-message services,
email spam and the other 1980s technology that ICANN loves to preserve
in their new quest to maintain stability and of course job security.

Some Americans may continue to live in the past. Others may find that the
new generation of services (fueled by new technology and larger
address spaces) will be more appealing. They will of course be allowed
to vote with their keyboards, mice and on-line money. ICANN is expected
to disappear as a bad dream once consumers are given a real choice.

ICANN will never be allowed anywhere near any advanced 3D on-line
technology being developed for the American markets. People who
invest the dollars in those developments are fully aware of what ICANN
represents. Any claims that ICANN’s CEO makes about being part of
those plans are absolutely false. The ICANN camel will not be allowed in
those tents or 3D online worlds.

To me, if you think of the internet, its very natural
to think of web3d. Its like an organism.

If the modem/pc is the car, then web3d is the destination.
All the other 2d webpages are simply magazines.
you read online.

Businesses will of course move to use the virtual world structures for their own functioning, so the blogged comment is largely true, if just vague at the current time. The difference is that the new worlds will be so different from the 2007 concept of “media” that there is no precedent to approach this as a place to “market” and therefore, many experts who do see what’s coming are in a panic.

…and so forth

sound all to me like
“why would I need an information higway ? I already have a Highway nearby”

Click on “OTHERS” and see x number of other shoppers walking in the aisles, stop and talk with them, meet & greet. Want shoppers who are geographically close to you in the real world so you can meet in person? Just click “OTHERS NEAR,” . . . “let’s have coffee, tea, or me?”

Want to earn some $, get a purchase discount? Wear a virtual bit of clothing that says, “TIDE,” “DELL,” “CHEVROLET,” “NIKE,” or “LEVIS.” Amount earned will be dependent upon amount of virtual traffic seeing you, like a billboard, earn more if click thru, take a virtual drive in a new auto, or even that lawn mower you need for the yard, and, if you buy, you get a discount and the “walking virtual billboard” gets $. Same goes for the local dentist, wear a DDS’s virtual t-shirt billboard and get free dental if x number of prospects click thru.

. . . you get the idea!

Why is this kool-aid so refreshing to everyone? Virtual Worlds are not the future…they are simply a component of the future.

In a wide ranging keynote address at the 2007 Influence Forum, ICANN CEO Paul Twomey told the audience that virtual worlds are the future of global commerce….

to deny it is like to say:
You could never make a computer intelligent because you would have to tell it everything… And then boom, the internet.

Playstation HOME !

http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

Aren’t those exactly the attributes Corporate America wants customers to have? E.g., being blind to the facts, and being addicted to buying.

Checking out your new dreamhouse in 3 minutes from your home, trying on 100 sets of clothes in 5 mins, giving the new toyota 2025 a testdrive in your neighbourhood for 10 mins and maybe check how that next nano plastic surgery is gonna look. All while eating breakfast in the morning on your microsoft multitouch table. Some things work better with a body, virtual or real.

I think future avatars are gonna let us do things with our bodies that we would never have time for or even dare in real life. However I dont see virtual avatar based worlds taking over the internet thus killing off the web or similar. Its a bit like the book vs computer vs tv vs whatever debate. One thing doesnt rule out the other.

Putting any kind of interaction normally reserved for text-based web sites into the domain of World of Warcraft and Second Life is never going to be popular, simply because it’s a giant pain in the ass. Shopping online is efficient because I can see everything right in front of me and narrow it down immediately to get what I want. Shopping in real life is fun because I can browse freely and touch things, smell things, and try clothing on. Shopping in the land of the Lawnmower Man gives me none of the benefits of shopping on the internet and none of the benefits of shopping online - instead I’m stuck virtually “walking” around a store (waste of time) to look at products I may or may not want.

Now, if I wanted to ‘pull’ a bunch of items in my size and in a certain color or cut ‘off the shelf’ and compare them in 3D space, that would be incredibly useful, but I don’t need to be in some buzzword-laden immersive 3D world to do that!

And yes, there are some very popular 3D worlds out there. And guess what? The amount of users on them, let’s estimate liberally and say 20 million (I don’t know, WoW has 10, right?)… that’s still a pretty small percentage of total internet users. And the only real-world item you can order up in WoW is pizza. And THAT’S only about being too lazy to pick up the phone, not about having some incredibly advantage in shopping for pizza IN THREE-DEE ON THE INTERNETS!

Seriously, give me a step-by-step on how this will work, even in twenty to fifty years. It doesn’t matter if the technology is there, it’s just not ever going to be useful enough.

Now, while we’re talking about the future, let’s focus on flying electric cars and ending world hunger. That’s slightly more useful.