Next-gen of Internet: Virtual Reality

In DigiCiv class about a month ago someone mentioned that humanity is still realizing the potential of the Internet. It can do things that we don't realize yet. (Imagine if the Jedi in Star Wars wrote off Anakin as simply a good podracer.) So here's a question: what will succeed the World Wide Web? Right now the most likely candidate is virtual reality.

By virtual reality I mean digital representations of environments complete with trees, horizons, and human avatars. The current leader in the virtual world industry is Second Life. Imagine a virtual landscape similar to World of Warcraft, then imagine that it's not a game at all. There's nobody to destroy and no quests to fulfill. Your character just hangs out and does whatever you want. That's Second Life.

The Millenium Eye, a working Ferris wheel in SL modeled
after the real-life Eye of London.

Second Life goes out of its way to allow users to create their own structures, services, and products. If you want to build a church and invite others to come meditate with you, you can do that. If you want to build a city straight out of a zombie novel, you can do that. If you want to design and market a line of virtual fashion, well, you get the idea. The creator of Second Life, Phillip Rosedale, described it's content as the average of all of our dreams.

Plus, you can fly.



But this isn't an ode to Second Life (which I haven't even officially used yet--just taken the tour.) I just wanted to introduce it as an example of a virtual world so that I can highlight strengths and weaknesses.

A virtual student at Arkansas State's virtual campus.

Reasons to take Second Life seriously:

• The University of Texas, the National University of Singapore, and other big schools already have a virtual campuses on Second Life.
• Other non-profit organizations are reaching people through SL. (Survivors of Suicide Project, the UK's National Health Service, etc.)
• Graphics currently remind me of the first Playstation consoles, but the technology will probably progress to stunning realism within twenty years.
• Other advancements will be made to increase 3D immersion.

Weaknesses of Second Life:

• It has a strange, almost fetish feel to it, because people do try to realize fantasies there (lots of fairy wings, vampires, and every woman seems to have a large bosom.)
• Sadly, there is a thriving portion of SL devoted to adult content. (Sounds like the rest of the Internet,  huh?)
• Perhaps limitations in connection speeds will never allow the graphics I expect.

I'm sure there's a lot more to the subject than this, but it's something to begin thinking about. Perhaps humanity will always be more comfortable receiving its information from two-dimensional platforms like books and websites. But when we have the capability of advancing to fairly realistic and immersive 3D representations, we might adapt.

A lot of the obstacles that slowed humanity's exploration and colonization of new frontiers in the past dosn't apply to digital frontiers (although new ones might.) We don't have the time costs of crossing the Atlantic ocean by ship. We don't have the financial costs of going into outer space.

The main obstacle we seem to have in exploring the virtual frontier is deciding where our comfort zones are.