Computerworld has a great interview with futurist Ray Kurzweil up right now, circling mostly around his latest book and augmented reality. There was too much to cover, though, so Ian Lamont earlier posted part of the cuts on the exponential growth of computer technology here and now shared Kurzweil's thought on virtual reality and virtual worlds: "We'll be spending quite a bit of our time in virtual-reality environments," said Kurzweil. "Environments like Second Life are really a crude harbinger of what is to come. We'll have these virtual-reality environments which will be quite competitive with real reality. They'll be very realistic. They'll be full immersion, just as in SL you can be someone else, you don't have to look the same in these virtual environments."
"And they won't just be kind of a plaything," he continued. "Second Life already has a real economy, and people do real business transactions and have real romance. And we'll be doing that in a real panoply of virtual-reality environments."
Obviously there's nothing too specific here, but it's nice to hear it from the experts. He goes into much more detail on some of the other subjects, which, while not purely about virtual worlds, are well worth reading.
Real romance? Not until avatars break wind and the significant other pretends not to notice.
Feedback curves are rarely smooth. That is also true in biology and other non-linear systems. Other people also predicted the rise of the Internet and the effect it would have on culture and communications, not all of it good. Control/filter emergence is the trend worth watching.
One wonders if games are the drivers of innovation or the source of diseases (causes of bifurcation already evident as the market is shredding into different VR world models based on local applications).
It may be that games are the very model to avoid. It might shock some pundits to discover that fidelity of communications and novelty of communications are mutually exclusive.
Posted by: len | November 13, 2007 at 12:58 PM
It is interesting to note that Kurzweil first made such predictions back in 1999 in his book "The Age of Spiritual Machines".
Posted by: HatHead Rickenbacker | November 14, 2007 at 05:55 AM
And others were making the same predictions in the 1980s and probably before.
Some bits are obvious. No prophets need apply. No Moogs either.
Posted by: len | November 14, 2007 at 06:16 AM
I read Fantastic Voyage, The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity is Near, and they changed my life. I even found some of his lectures on Itunes and I find myself impatiently awaiting his next book.
Recently read another incredible book that I can't recommend highly enough, especially to all of you who also love Ray Kurzweil's work. The book is ""My Stroke of Insight"" by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. I had heard Dr Taylor's talk on the TED dot com site and I have to say, it changed my world. It's spreading virally all over the internet and the book is now a NYTimes Bestseller, so I'm not the only one, but it is the most amazing talk, and the most impactful book I've read in years. (Dr T also was named to Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People and Oprah had her on her Soul Series last month and I hear they're making a movie about her story so you may already have heard of her)
If you haven't heard Dr Taylor's TEDTalk, that's an absolute must. The book is more and deeper and better, but start with the video (it's 18 minutes). Basically, her story is that she was a 37 yr old Harvard brain scientist who had a massive stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain. Because of her knowledge of how the brain works, and thanks to her amazingly loving and kind mother, she eventually fully recovered (and that part of the book detailing how she did it is inspirational).
There's a lot of learning and magic in the book, but the reason I so highly recommend My Stroke of Insight to this discussion, is because we have powerfully intelligent left brains that are rational, logical, sequential and grounded in detail and time, and then we have our kinesthetic right brains, where we experience intuition and peace and euphoria. Now that Kurzweil has got us taking all those vitamins and living our best ""Fantastic Voyage"" , the absolute necessity is that we read My Stroke of Insight and learn from Dr Taylor how to achieve balance between our right and left brains. Enjoy!
Posted by: Angelita | June 16, 2008 at 12:46 AM
Not once have I ever seen an article about Second Life that told the truth.
Do you want to know what SL is about?
1. If you download the client for the pourposes of romance, financial gain, or life extention like our little friend Kurzweil you will be very dissapointed. SL is a giant artists colony that is all, the only people who stay are those who want something they cannot have in rl. I wanted to build things, this is why i stayed along with many others.
2. If you expect to see ANY monetary gain from SL within the first 6-12 months of play, you will be dissapointed. Someone who already does graphic design or knows computer scripting language may get a 3-4 month edge, but thats about it.
3.SL has absolutely no goals, points or objectives, you must set all of these yourself so that is why being a person who likes to create things is optimal.
4. Romance is a laugh in there- the amount of women who prostitute themselves while knowing full well that they dont like men in the first place, is puzzling and the few men who appear as men in the game are subjected constantly to being hit on. Every sick perversion that anyone can think of is there, but one does have to seek it out.
5. Its a passive dictatorship, you have next to no say in what happens. You dont get a vote a nudge or a whisper when some new feature that destroys your ablilty to access the grid comes on as a must be.
In a nutshell, sl can be fun, but it is in your first year possibly a chat room. Kurzweil is on the other hand blind, this man takes a truckload of supplements in the hopes that he will live long enough to be buck rodgers, meanwhile he is trying to make a world where he isnt a sad little man,
Posted by: Stunt Double | July 31, 2008 at 02:22 AM
That guy is constantly on this same bandwagon, the transhumanists are kinda funny because they dont realize that in order for this "spiritual machine" to show up, the regular old people all gotta die except for the people who sell us this garbage.
Read Charles Galton Darwin's "The Next Million Years" and plato's republic- Kurzweil is a useful idiot.
SL is just a game like every other game, i play it from time to time, so what, this guy is trying to find a place where he can go and be all the things he isnt in rl
real life doesnt lag
Posted by: Lollypop | July 31, 2008 at 02:39 AM