www.nickhodge.com

In 1988 Mitchell Waite sent me a small paper­back to read: Ver­nor Vinge’s True Names. I was a mere, lowly Hyper­talk pro­gram­mer from Adelaide, South Aus­tralia. He was an import­ant person.

This book has stuck in the neur­ons, and now the vir­tual is becom­ing real. It really goes to show how hard sci­ence fic­tion depicts a future that cur­rent liv­ing humans will not see. Based on some work I was doing to Tricks of the Hyper­talk Mas­ters, cre­at­ing what would be now known as a “skin” over Com­puServe; the book was just sci­ence fiction.

True Names pub­lished in 1981, describes a world called “Other Plane” were people inter­act online. The premise of sep­ar­at­ing your online from your phys­ical inden­tity; and the concept of a future Sin­gu­lar­ity per­vade my per­sonal world-view today.

Thanks Mitch.

Now, what does this have to do with today?

Second Life. It’s more than the tech­no­logy; it is also about the plat­forms involved. It is also how it impacts real people: such as Dave Wal­lace. Second Life is what I visu­al­ised as “Other Plane”

Watch the first half of this video: Jim-Cory-SecondLife.wmv, Lang.NET Sym­posium.

The first half of the video is light on tech­no­logy; but heavy on the eco­nom­ics, and wider-world impacts of the vir­tual world. The user cre­ation rate (Write­ness in the Read/Write equa­tion) is over 60%; com­pared to the web which is less than 10%.

A key reason seems to be the eco­nomic value attached to vir­tual objects scrip­ted in Second Life. As items in the Second­Life vir­tual world are intel­lec­tual prop­erty; an item can be cre­ated, sold and purchased.

Ensur­ing that intel­lec­tual prop­erty is val­ued is going to be one of the toughest chal­lenges for upcom­ing generations.

Is the script­ing in Second Life the new HyperCard?