1997 all over again?
Metaversed has a post titled “7 Reasons Why Virtual Worlds Are Like the Web Circa 1997.”
Funny, I’ve usually used the one-liner that they’re more like Prodigy in 1994. After all, by 1997 we had common browsers, even though they supported the <blink></blink> tag. In 1994 Prodigy actually sent down pictures of the screen to be drawn bitmap style. Which let me tell you, was brutal on a modem.
Of course, one of the big reasons to call it ’97 is the fact that virtual worlds are a bit of an investment bubble. Lots of money rushing into the space.
The Web has gone through a few key inflection points — one of them was the release of Mosaic in 1994. I don’t think we have yet seen our Mosaic for virtual worlds — VRML was a try at it, Electric Communities, and so on. But it’s not here yet.
And despite Linden’s plans to open source Second Life, I’m not sure it’s that either. SL seems to have a lot of assumptions built into its architecture, legacies of its original birth as a fairly simulationist environment. For example, there’s that wonderful full-world atmospheric CA simulation going on, that permits all the hot-air ballooning. Really cool, but also extra stuff that most users don’t need or want.
Metaversed points out another need that was felt more keenly in 1997 than in 1994: search. The Web was a far different place before Google. Right now, this is a point of pain for SL users more than for most other VW users, simply because other VWs are far more monolithic.
There’s other inflection points we should be looking for — what’s CSS or CGI for VWs? What’s Web 2.0 for VWs? And how long will it take to get there?
Stuff like OpenCroquet and Ogoglio are of course out there espousing fairly different approaches than the old-school Prodigy style. It’s going to be interesting seeing what old assumptions and what new assumptions are implicit in the next generation.
Yes I tend to date it a bit earlier than 1997 as well Raph. One comment about “investment bubble” however — I think there is a lot of money interested in the space but I don’t think there has been an enormous amount of money actually deployed in the space.
pssst.
[nitpick]
mosaic was actually early 1993 — not 1994 — if i remember correctly.
[/nitpick]
m3mnoch.
p.s. i just wikipedia’s it. yep. april 22nd of 1993 according to “the people.”
Yep, you’re right. I was thinking Netscape. 😛
I hope that OpenGL 3 is going to be the CSS for VWs… Flash 9 is the web 2.0 for VWs. Yep, web 2.0 is a step backwards from web 1.0 in the name of instant gratification…
OMFG. That blink tag isn’t closed in my feedreader. ARGH. 😛
Taking the literal approach…
CSS is all about separating content from data, so could there be a VW that let’s the player alter the entire world to suit their view of it? Virtual World themes, as it were.
Web 2.0 is all about community interaction, so on the one hand we’re there already, but on the other, community interaction could always be easier, especially with a better interface system, or more granular emotions and expressive avatars.
At the moment most virtual worlds are a closed ecosystem, so the big spike for them could be standardisation. That’s a boring suggestion but just look at how web developers pushed for better standards, got them, and built a bunch of more engaging websites as a result.