Will Virtual Worlds lead to an Ergonomic Web?
Today, Virtual Worlds are generally built with a static geography. For instance, Second Life is essentially a virtual city that has grown in size over time, but long term residents are familiar with the general layout. This follows the concept of a Metaverse that everyone can join.
My questions are: Is copying real life effective? Can such a virtual world scale to enable every user, every computer agent, every device, every language to be included and still feel personal, user-driven and a controllable, convenient experience? Hasn't the Web already solved a lot of problems that the current concept of virtual worlds fail to answer?
As more and more virtual worlds are built, the issues for users getting a controllable convenient, experience increase when they want to engage and connect their experience across in these various worlds. Though standards were a hot topic 2-3 months ago, I'm not sure if they are the way forward. My feeling is we haven't solved the fundamental problems that come with 3D such as that it fails to improve upon 2D's speedy access to resources and remains complex to navigate. I think most of us in this industry agree, there's a range of things missing. For instance, virtual world platforms haven't yet achieved the fundamental innovation of the World Wide Web: hypertext. Hypertext such as hyperlinks enable independently run and managed web pages to send users between them. This has been fundamental to the successful scaling of the Web. In so doing, it has enabled users get convenient access to the best known relevant ideas. But, even though virtual worlds have teleport, they currently lack easy methods for both social and spatial rearrangement to suit new contexts. If virtual worlds are going to receive mass adoption then I think we have to create a truly effective and scalable opportunity. I just don't see that in the traditional virtual world platforms and I think that's now reflected in the true take up numbers on sites such as Second Life, which despite the amazing level of PR, blogger support and user try outs has failed to acquire a large regular community compared to the newer 2D web communities whose growth rates have been achieved often without PR and have managed to gain higher ongoing participation rates. Imagine how fast new platforms such as Metaverse will grow when they are released! Personally I can't wait.
As I've said a few times before I'm not convinced by the concept of the Metaverse. Instead, I think what's becoming more and more obvious to me from our work at VastPark is that virtual worlds will grow into what I call an "Ergonomic Web". What I mean by an Ergonomic Web is that it is a web of virtual places and interactive content where the content and the connections to other virtual places adapt to suit the user. While this might not seem revolutionary, I'm pretty sure the outcome will provide an extraordinary and unprecedented level of user control and co-innovation. The concept allows for users to redefine their virtual reality to suit the needs of their immediate application and to share that reality with others so they can engage in the same space online for entertainment, intranets, knowledge transfer, hard asset management, B2B and general training. It allows for a lot more reusability of content and for content to be improved, remixed and further syndicated to suit the needs of the individual user and the rights provided by the publisher.
Now you might be wondering what the hell it might mean for content to be "improved to suit the needs of the individual user". I'll give you an example, but first an explanation of what I'm starting to call "Ergonomic Media".
Paul Lynch, our senior web developer came up with the term Ergonomic Media to explain dynamic media syndication that adapts traditional and new media to suit the individual user. I love it as it suggests a "plastic" reality that can be easily folded and reformed and it feels like a significant step towards dissolving the hard matter of digital objects and turn them into concepts that will form part of the fundamental building blocks of what we may call the "Conscious Web" (a web that builds itself and can feature all that we currently call Web3.0 and below).
Okay, now for the Ergonomic Media example: Imagine you download a new song and you listen to it a few times and on the next time you play it, it is an extended mix of the song, and a few listens later there are some remixes and one where the band give a short introduction and you hear a live version of the song that they just recorded, later on there's even information about the upcoming album release and a few highlights as well as a new version of your song recorded for the new album. In this way, popular downloads of songs, movies, novels and new media can become direct channels between the artists/publishers and the end users.
Another example would be a distributed version of YouTube that could feature downloadable and streaming clips where all the media can have new supporting video ads and new updates of the contacts and new links to community remixes and responses.
RSS has shown the power of dynamic content. Ergonomic media implementations will take it to a whole new level. We're working on a specification called MetaWSS which enables some of these aspects, but we think this is just the beginning of a wider revolution in how we interact and consume media.
What do you think of the concept of Ergonomic Media and an Ergonomic Web? Do you see it as an advance upon singularity concepts like the Metaverse? Have you always wanted to fold space and time and so you are ready for an Ergonomic Web or are you still thinking linearly?