RW+VW=W
(Real World + Virtual World = World): Part 1.
Where are you? Hiro says.
In Reality or the Metaverse?
Both
Neal Stephenson Snow Crash.
The talk on the street is of the 3-D Web. Some talk Web 3.0. Some say Web 2.5. It’s really immaterial and too early to classify as the speculation is fired by the entry into the consciousness of the mainstream media of the ‘reality’ of 3D virtual worlds. That is, of Second Life.
So now that we have an operating mainstream social VW (which in reality has nowhere near the user numbers of MMOGs such World of Warcraft: see http://www.mmogchart.com) the next question from serious minded folks of course is: How can we use these 3D VWs for serious activities such as X or Y?
What happens to the world of serious activities when the RW and the VW merge? Or, and lets just be a little more cautious and practical at this point in time, as they start to merge?
The VW and the RW are already meshed. No? So you go to that ATM in the High Street. You check out your account status. Is that positive or negative money balance there real? It is not represented by anything concrete such as gold, that went aeons ago. It is just by our general agreement that you have that worth. You withdraw cash from the machine. And, as you buy that beer in a bar, the bartender accepts your note without question. That note represents value. That value is virtual. There is no physical equivalent. In our sophisticated world we do not need the concrete, but we do need a social web of trust. (Castronova)
By now you can see where I am coming from?
We have not needed 3D visualisations to virtualise our world. We are doing it just fine, but at this time only in very restricted domains such as finance where the digital domain of the 0s and 1s of money operate.
In the analogue domain – the shades of grey of human interaction – virtualisation until now has not been possible. What exactly do I interact with? What can I trust?
Using the technologies we have today, and keep the financial context open, I could a interrogate sales avatar bot representing a loan company and at the same time have a separate channel open to a consumer advocate avatar advising me OR have the consumer avatar sitting next to me in the interview. That is the reality of where we are headed.
RW+VW= W is now – its just unevenly distributed [William Gibson]
In my next post: where this is going to hit first.
[ Eduard Castronova: Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games]