What follows is entirely impractical. Those of you who have come to rely on this blog for the pragmatic and practical take on technological innovation may want to skip what follows.
What got me off topic today was our book club. We’re currently reading one of my favorite novels: “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” by Cory Doctorow. (Read it for free here.)
It got me thinking about something called “the singularity” again. This is a term first coined by Ray Kurzweil to describe the point in the near future when the pace technological innovation becomes, for all intents and purposes, infinite. Here’s a short video describing one aspect of the phenomenon:
THE IMMORTALISTS – a short film by Jason Silva
Immortality is within our grasp. Yes, for real. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Sadly, there’s a catch. Even when humanity is smart, we’re still horrible at dealing with each other. Sooner or later someone will decide that what the world really needs is a good apocalypse.
After all, in an age where the pace of technological innovation is infinite, you’ll have about three dozen cheap and easy ways to end all human life listed on six dozen popular blogs.
It could be that this phenomena of knowing that anyone could end it all at any moment might be the new way people come to live with death. For a time, mankind won’t be fearing their own deaths, but rather the end of all civilization.
What will finally end it, of course, will be those who try to prevent the end from coming. As organizations are formed to lock down the “dangerous” information or censor “dangerous” people, there will be a backlash from people objecting to being controlled. The schism between the opposing points of view will rise until eventually it produces someone who can’t stand an eternity of humanity being controlled in this way.
So they’ll end it for all of us.
When people make guesses as to how the world might end, they usually point at natural phenomena or ecological disaster. I’m putting $50 on the singularity. Any takers?
If you’re able to get a half-hour cleared at 2pm SLT today, do join us in Second Life (SLurl) for the next session of Virtual Worlds Keynote. Hélène Zuili, CEO of MakeMyWorlds will give a case study entitled “Real World Expos in Virtual Spaces”. If you’ve ever wondered about a true marriage of real and virtual trade shows, this is the session for you.
If you think you might have questions do make sure you’re there for the live session; the Q&A portion is not recorded! This is to keep each episode short and to the point for maximum usefulness in business environments. As usual, if you have questions for a speaker you might have missed, you can also email me at info [at] calebbooker [dot] com.
Recap from last time:
Last week we held the very first session of Virtual Worlds Keynote with guest speaker Jonena Relth, President of TBD Consulting. Her topic was “Why We Sold Our Real Building and Went Totally Virtual” and proved to be a valuable resource for anyone who has ever considered taking a team online. I loved how grounded in real-world concerns her approach was, and the story that she tells about the discovery of this new tool is meaningful for a wide variety of professionals. You can view it in its entirety here:
Why We Sold Our Real Building and Went Totally Virtual
This video now begins its life as a tool that you can use when proposing a solution for cutting travel budgets, team building exercises, or cost effective training. You can get the code for embedding this on your blog by right-clicking on the video itself, or click here for various social networking options.
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To join us in Second Life, you’ll need to do the following:
Go to SecondLife.com, create an account, and install the software.
Log in through the Second Life software using your user name.
Click here to be teleported to our studio before 2pm Pacific.
I’m seeing signs of the new rush into virtual worlds beginning. Let me give you a few references:
Myst Online is back! Why does this mean anything? Well, it failed twice. The game just isn’t financially viable. The creators, however, just switched the lights on and aren’t even worried about making any money out of it. That’s how cheap it has become to run these things!
Layoffs Won’t Stop Project Wonderland – The latest from a GigaOM affiliate blog about the Wonderland team’s determination, stating that the project has enough momentum to carry it forward without any need for Oracle’s help and a number of companies are taking a serious look. Isn’t this exactly the kind of thing we started seeing just prior to the first dot-com bubble?
These are three specific examples, but in general I can tell you that there’s more virtual worlds news trying to cram itself through my news reader than ever before. I’m also hearing a lot of behind-the-scenes chatter of some huge announcements coming this summer. Brace yourself folks, 2010 is going to be a big year for virtual worlds.
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Want some hard facts, but don’t want to go through hundreds of articles to find it? I can’t blame you. Here, chew on these PDF links:
As of right now you can’t even buy the development kit for Web.Alive. That doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t start getting ready to build there!
Firstly, why should you bother?
I took a tour of Mellanium‘s environment again today, and what really struck me was the level of detail visible. I was looking at this highly detailed model of the Titanic with textures so good I could zoom in on the knots in the wood. That’s impressive, but what was even better was that I could glance across the room and see a fully rendered locomotive and old fighter plane.
The interface was obvious. Fixing up my avatar was easy. The voice just worked. Full-screen mode just worked. We could easily hand files to each other, view PowerPoint and fully rendered web pages with Flash support, and snap privacy settings in the room on and off with a click. All of this right in the web browser.
So its a beautiful thing, tested with up to 90 concurrent users and it runs on your mom’s laptop. While things with Avaya’s buyout of Nortel make things a little shaky, this isn’t a platform to be underestimated.
At the beginning I promised information on how to get an early start. Its simple: buy a cheap copy of Unreal Tournament 2004. It comes bundled with UnrealEd, which is all you need to begin building environments right now. Import your static meshes from Maya or 3D Studio Max, and you’re just a step away from publication.
Now we just have to wait for Avaya to release the dev kit. I’ve been lead to believe that good news is on the way, but beyond that we’ll just have to wait and see.
Congratulations and kudos to the Nonprofit Commons project, fighting for the greater good in some inspired ways. I’m in awe of the scope here – the vision for this project was huge. I’ll have to make sure to meet the organizers someday, they must be a real force to be reckoned with.
About TechSoup’s Nonprofits In Second Life, Nonprofit Commons project. Learn more about how nonprofits are making a real-world difference through virtual world work.
Kudos to Draxtor Despres as well for his video work; genius as usual.
