Philip Rosedale: "Yeah, it will become the Web"

The Guardian posted a brief audio interview  with Linden Lab Founder Philip Rosedale yesterday. It ranges from brief discussions of expanding data centers as a part of Linden's partnership with IBM (about 2:00 in), stories of how Second Life's servers are attacked all day by teenagers having fun and, less frequently, Russian mobsters (about 6:00), and the benefits of new interfaces like Mitch Kapor's take on the 3D Camera (about 11:50). When asked about his thoughts on whether Second Life was the future of the Web (around 9:15), Rosedale responded with an immediate and emphatic "Yes. Not only do I think that, I think that it'll become more pervasive, especially if we open it up and standardize it. I'm not necessarily saying that this one company will control all those servers. No. We're working on systems where you can have the servers outside of our company. But, yeah, it will become the Web. I believe that what we're working on right now will become a more common way of using the Internet to retrieve information essentially."

This isn't entirely news. Rosedale has touted Second Life as the future of the Internet--or, at least, a future of the Internet--for some time. He goes over his usual reasons: Second Life escapes the language dependencies of text-based hyperlinks and adds a sense of continual presence. I hadn't heard him talk before, though, about the more general ease of a Web built around virtual worlds.

"Once we get over the learning curve of making the software work well, making the interface good, we're going to be in a situation where it's really something anyone can use and can use enjoyably," he said. "The Internet itself, the Web today, it's great! But you've got to bear in mind that we all have a PhD in Web. That's why your parents, or if you have older parents, that's why they don't use the Web. They may use email, because that's pretty easy to use, but they don't use the Web. They don't go on there and get a job online or find movie times because it's too hard. They have to learn a semantic language that they don't know. Second Life—virtual worlds in general—don't provide that problem."

There's a little bit of irony there since one of the biggest complaints about Second Life--and 3D virtual worlds in general--is the difficulty of use. My parents are both fairly savvy Web users (I'll say for their benefit that they're also relatively young), but even my AutoCAD-adept, mechanical engineer father  doesn't really "get" the idea of a 3D interface for the Web. To be fair, neither do many of my 20-something friends.

I'm a bit of a Kool-Aid sipper, though, so I'm willing to assume there's a ways to go on the learning curve. If gestural interfaces  can make it  (especially if their adoption takes less than the roughly 20 years it took for the mouse to start to catch on) and the millions of users in today's youth-oriented worlds stick with it, maybe they'll  be graduating high school with PhDs (or at least MAs) in Web3D.

[Interview at The Guardian]

Comments

[len]

The question is this: is a 3D interface more powerful than a text-based interface for common operations?

3D provides powerful context for a given set of concepts. Text can pack more concepts into the same display space.

If you look at the history of enscribed communications, the invention of alphabets and sentence structure that can be acquired by some n of the population is the advancement over previous means.

I think Rosedale is wrong in the sense that the web becomes 3D. He is right in the sense that more information will be embedded into 3D containers.

[Chingiz]

I do think (and hope) that the web will go 3D. 2D interface of the web (think of webpages as book pages) could be easily adapted in a 3D environment. I do see a reason for all online shops going 3D because at the moment web shopping is not social and shopping in general is more of a social thing. tourist destinations, hotels and etc. Just imagine being able to walk into your virtual room, walk around and reserve it if you liked it. GPS navigation can go completely 3D. Theres plenty of room to be creative and plenty things to re-adapt from the current web into 3D web.
cheers

[Rip]

I think Mr Rosedale is a bit over optimistic about his system becoming a major part of a international effort toward developing a 3D version of the web. The opensim project (among others) is making some very impressive headway with respect to establishing the protocals and other tools needed to run the coming 3d web. Meanwhile good old Linden Labs continues to lose paid membership, offer free accounts and inflate their lost customer base with non playing zombies. Its just a matter of time before this failed business model catches up with Linden Labs, and they end the race as a also run.

[Lauren Gauthier]

Please lets make sure we do no confuse Web3D with SL, especially when talking about standards for a 3D Web.

[Paul Aslin]

Philip Rosedale just doesn't get it, his Secondlife has nothing to do with the current internet at all. The current internet is open standards based, viewable and editable with a large variety of applications on all current operating systems (and many dead OS's too). Secondlife is editable and viewable using their software only, and a token open source version.

[J]

"Rosedale has touted Second Life as the future of the Internet--or, at least, a future of the Internet--for some time"

Who's Internet is it?

Open, lol.. So they sign contracts before elections and use media interests for political benfit that results in three winners (LL, Telstra, and the ALP) with funding grants.

Telstra, the ISP with 25cent local calls for dialup or BB using dongles, a contract for every node - the cleaver country...

:-)