My only thought on this is the cost of broadband that is limiting the adoption of things like this. For example: Broadband is currently not within the budget for me and my wife. We are paying off our cars and school debt before we will have broadband. I know many others who would love to have high speed internet but just don't want to pay the $40+ to have it. Also not everyone can drop $35 into a game just to purchase a new shiny gizmo in an fake world, being finanically responsible and living within your means , means there has to be limits to what you buy and what you don't. I am not arguing that the government should provide my high speed internet as a "right", but companys should lower the cost of things.
C.C.
· 3 years ago
Second life is being written off as just another multiple player game but it is so much more then that. It's funny because Eric was the one who turned me onto it as well.
By the end of next year Second Life is going to change the way some people do business. It's already starting to effect some and your going to see more. I'm waiting for the first true ONLY in SL business to open up that sells real world products. It's starting to happen. Get ready for it.
colin
· 3 years ago
It's amazing how long this stuff takes to catch on - I was playing with this and more so a predecessor (ActiveWorlds) almost 8+ years ago
scobleizer
· 3 years ago
Jonathan: agreed, but then cost has always been an inhibitor in this industry. Feel lucky that you didn't need to pay $6,000 for an Apple II with only 64kb of RAM (yes, you read that right) like my dad did back when I was in Jr. High.
You can get free wifi at a lot of places in our area, by the way. That's still how a lot of my friends get on.
My son had free wifi in the restaurant we were in yesterday.
Christopher Coulter
· 3 years ago
Umm, another 3D VRMLish platform hype-up. NC's weren't, the web wasn't a platform, Click did not replace Brick. No way in the world, that everyone is gonna fire up Big Iron's or Unix backends for a Second Life "OS". At best just a cutesy way to sell stuff. And now the bobbleheads going " platform inside of a platform". Egads.
Man, Paul is so right, kiss of death, indeed.
scobleizer
· 3 years ago
Colin: I was in ActiveWorlds too, but it wasn't as easy to build things and it didn't have a revenue model, if I remember right.
scobleizer
· 3 years ago
Christopher: hey, I kiss Yahoo. I kiss Google. I kiss Apple. I kiss you! Heheh!
Robert Scoble
· 3 years ago
Dave asks: when would Microsoft make Windows run in Second Life.
That would be fun, but the Virtual PC team is a bit, um, engaged right now getting Windows to run on the new Intel Macs.
Patrick Dodds
· 3 years ago
If Chris Coulter didn't exist, would he have to be invented?
AndrewBurton
· 3 years ago
Hey, "Jarod Russell," aka Andrew Burton here. For the record, I have been inside Second Life, for over two years now. I've been developing in Second Life for two years now. In fact, I was likely the first person to blog from inside Second Life -- long before we had a broken, one-way XML-RPC gateway. Look me up, I'm "Jarod Godel" in the game, you can probably find my posts in the forum.
The reason I don't think Second Life will be (or is) an OS is the same reason I don't think that AOL is (or ever was) the Internet: it's a centralized, closed platform. I'm not trying to deny it's a fabulous piece of technology, but unless there are some behind the scenes things going on that I haven't heard about, I wouldn't use SL as my main OS/interface anymore than I would use GMail as my harddrive.
It's too centralized. It's completely proprietary. The world that "the users" have built and supposedly own is not owned by the users because the Lindens can cut off and ban a user on a whim, with no means for the user to export what they "owned" in-world.
And, yes, I know about the Lindex. I know about developers being paid to create software in-world. I also know that many of those developers get paid chump-change because of the Linden/Dollar exchange rate.
Second Life is a fabulous technology, and I have no doubt in my mind that it represents the Face Of Things To Come. However, unless a whole 'lotta changes are coming in both the Second Life technology and the business model, there's no I'd load any kind of SL/OS on my computer.
Flackrum
· 3 years ago
Aside from the virtual living and associated fun that is 'Second Life', it also provides a motivation for the non-programmers and tech gurus alike to harness the comparatively sizable power of Second Life's scripting language and create virtual content with not only easily quantifiable results, but potential profit.
Even my 46 year old (tech newbie) father is building homes and furniture in SL. Haha, that crazy bastard. He draws the line at scripting though.
But I digress, I think the scripting sealed the deal for me. The graphics aren't mindblowing, there are online social alternatives, but SL gives the user real (ok virtual) power and a healthy dose of freedom.
Robert Scoble
· 3 years ago
Andrew: I never said it was gonna replace Windows or Macs or Linux. But, it does seem to me to be getting many of the attributes of a different kind of operating system.
But, sorry for the swipe. Thanks for letting me know more!
AndrewBurton
· 3 years ago
By the way, ever been inside Garry's Mod or seen what developers can do with it?
Brian Shapiro
· 3 years ago
Maybe Second Life can be an OS, but even though I haven't used it I know what it basically is--and I don't think people would WANT to use it as an OS. We've heard people talking about virtual reality OSs for years before Second Life and I always thought the idea was out of touch, like a lot of other ideas that percolated from futurists. I thought the idea of a Network Computer (Oracle) was out of touch also. And to add a more clear example, Microsoft Bob. I don't think a lot of people who hype technology realize what people want from their computers.
Jonathan Jesse
· 3 years ago
Robert,
I remember purchasing a computer for obscene amounts of money and connecting to BBS on 1200 baud modems, but still free wifi is not everywhere nor should it be. Also how does Second Life work on other OSes (OS X, *nux)? That will help speed up adoption. I just wonder if there are better things to be spending money and time on, being in the real world, outdoors, etc.
scobleizer
· 3 years ago
My son was using a Mac, works just fine. I hear it works on Linux too.
Sharon
· 3 years ago
Whilst I think virtual worlds provide some fascinating insight into how you can improve collaboration and decision systems (and develop leadership skills according to the recent Wired article), they also make me feel my age. We have this amazing planet that we still only barely understand, and I'd rather spend more time living in and exploring the physical world than spending too much time in a virtual one.
Michael Pate
· 3 years ago
I spent some time playing in Second Life this weekend after watching the on10 story. The most negative thing so far: The vast empty areas where hardly anyone was around. I went by Ten Island and SlackStreet more than once and no one was ever around - the silence was deafening. If SL is going to become an OS, it needs a lot more network effect.
Paul Wheeler
· 3 years ago
Jonathan, 1st, there is an OSX version, nothing for *nix but it should be possible, I gues Linden Labs just doesn't feel there is a market for it at this time.
As for the cost, you can get a basic membership for a one time 10$ fee (no land ownership, but you get everything else, and there are public sandboxes where you can build, script, and play without owning any land). So for 10$ and a couple bucks at the nearest internet cafe (with machines capable of doing some 3d stuff) you can do all the SL you want (the download is very small for a broadband connection). I do the 10$ basic, and I've been completely satisfied, I just do scripting, so don't really need land.
-Paul
AndrewBurton
· 3 years ago
There is a Linux version, but it's in Alpha-testing stages right now. I'm not sure if it works since the latest patch.
Paul Wheeler
· 3 years ago
I suppose if you loosen your definition of operating system sufficiently Second Life could be construed as one, but I think its a stretch. What Second Life is, is an application platform, albeit not a very efficient one. I've been using, and developing for, Second Life since it was in beta back in 2001. And you can do some really amazing stuff in it, but it's certainly no replacement for a good old ASP.Net application, and its commerce is fascinating, but it's no replacement for a bread and butter business. Will we be browsing SL tomorrow the way we browse the web today? No. But SL, or programs like it, could be the future of social software (aim, myspace, facebook, etc). Let me put some provisions on that. Instant messaging, blogs, and personal profile type sites will never die, and no, I don't want to be in an immersive 3d environment whenever I want to chat with somebody. But it does enrich the chat experience, and it does provide a cool new way to express yourself creatively (quite a bit more expressive that a myspace page). So I think virtual worlds could become a ubiquitous enhancement of existing social/chat networks, and having a home in SL could become as common as having a myspace profile (and as important for business, if you are a band, movie, TV show, radio station, club, etc).
Eric Rice
· 3 years ago
A quick point and quick rant:
One of the things that's funny is how decentralized it actually is. I'm idle and hidden most of the time now and buried by IMs.
I dunno if it's really an OS inside of an OS, since when you take the 3D out, and you have an application that people would laugh at you if you said you were gonna make: http://blog.ericrice.com/blog/_archives/2006/3/...
WHAT? A social-netowrk-collaborative-organization-2.0-frickin wiki-type-sociaD. If someone was to say they were making this AND that people would pay for and earn money from, Tech Crunch, and the rest of the blogosphere would be poo pooing it or celebrating it, the former I think. I mean our behavior is so predictable that I bet if this gets Digg'd or Slashdotted, we can prolly write the snarky comments ourselves and save everyone the work. We're predictable like that.
The only interesting element to the mix is that SL is in 3D, something that enables some functionality lacking in other areas. My downtown area is lame, and the redevelopment agency can't make a good downtown plan to save their lives... Robert's *son* could do a better job, and oh btw, the big point there is that he CAN do this. And set up shop. And make money if he wants. But there's a more persistence of presence... being idle or blowing someone off is a little bit tougher than in IM or e-mail, or even conference calls.
And naturally, easiest strawman is seeing 'the game-y-ness' of it. When I'm in Second Life, I'm actually doing the same stuff I do in Real Life. It's another channel, another place where me and my peeps Get Shit Done, while everyone else is getting older and resisting change.
It's the human OS, on another platform, with a steady stream of bug reports...And *then* you die.
Mike Drips
· 3 years ago
Is Windows Vista being delayed inside of Second Life too?
Aaron
· 3 years ago
I think Second Life is pretty cool and it may really take off. The funny thing is, we already have the Second Life and second life runs inside of it. It's the internet where you can develop games, visit things people have built, blog inside of it, you can visit just about anywhere and you can pretend to be someone else. So just because you can fly around this place and sell things why is that going to change anything? It's like internet virtualization. I don't know, maybe if it's done right, the 3-Dness of the whole thing will make a difference.
scobleizer
· 3 years ago
Aaron: actually the Web works inside Second Life too. So, how you really have second life inside of Second Life. Heheh!
Doctoe
· 3 years ago
I think Second Life and the web are slowing conspiring to collide and I cannot wait until it happens. When we stick nanotechnology in the mix, then things get really interesting. You start to *feel* your media, your networks and your peers. Kosso and I spend New Year's eve in SL on Eric Rice's island listening to his podcast. Best NY in years!
John Anthony Hartman
· 3 years ago
It’s hard to prove it’s not an OS.
So what do you do in Windows, OSX, any *ix platform? Well you collect files that are organized in directory structure --- ISL(in Second Life) see Inventory. These files are data that provides information in visual and textual ways ok still don’t see a schism between SL and OS. All right on an OS you can write code and create programs; yes you can do this in SL. On an OS you can install and run these programs, ever animate an avatar, drive a car or do you have a big screen TV in your house ISL that play’s movies, can you say media player. Ok so I am still searching for how SL is not an OS. OK think …. Oh I have it, the task bar and start button or dashboard… no you have one of those in SL. Um I can chat, e-mail, and collaborate as well as cruse the web. Well I can chat, e-mail, collaborate and.. wait I can not browse the web yes that’s it does not have a browser so it CAN not be an OS. Oh but wait boys and girls have you seen Ubrowser.com a browser that can be applied as a texture to 3D models. Hum ok it’s not an OS until Linden releases the Ubrowser but once they do what can’t it do? Oh and buy the way I was in Second Life awhile back and did not grok it until Eric set me down and showed my just how powerful it truly was. So I signed back up and am now blogging my SL existence at thoughtplasma.com yea that’s me ISL Thought Plasma look me up and tell me how I am wrong.
sidd
· 3 years ago
Some time ago now, I posted some replies to musings by Jerry Paffendorf on his popular Second Life Future Salon blog (and here is my comment).
This was at the time when Google Earth was just launched as Google Earth, and the virtual worlds people were getting quite excited about a new era of data visualization and interaction.
My opinion of the future of Second Life is pretty much the same now as it was then: Second Life imitates real life, and for most of the tasks we do every day on line (communicating, finding information), real life it is hopelesly inefficient.
Examples like imbedding a browser into second life are just pointless, as it demonstrates that the 3d interface, and particularly the avatar metaphor, are just getting in the way of what we really want to do. (why bother imbedding a browser into second life? why not just put up full screen 2d browser.)
You may be able to do a great deal with the SL API, but why would you want to? The existing methods are more efficient by design, because SL has a flaw in its very basic design metaphor: the idea that imitating the way we interact in Real Life will be a productive way to navigate in online communities. :)
Mark Haniford
· 3 years ago
Second Life seems to be a precusor to what an open system like Croquet will be.
Sebastien Lambla
· 3 years ago
Robert,
We've been through the exact same thing with the 2nd world back in 96, or blaxxun, or cryo, or or or or...
So it's a 3d world that can be extended, scripted and taken over. Fabulous. How is that making it an OS? The fact that i can write an application to run using their 3d environment is no different from having one running on .net or java, and neither of them are an OS as far as I know?
As for the addictive and creative nature of it, once again, yes, fabulous, but we've been there already. There's absolutely nothing new with this concept. My first company was in the online world business circa 98.
I fail to see the market. Or the thrill. Or what is new in it.
Please enlighten me.
Darius Clarke
· 3 years ago
I agree with Mark. Croquet ( http://www.croquetproject.org ) will have what Second Life doesn't. Peer to peer network (so no tax to play or work, any two or more computers will do), a real OS, a real programming language (Smalltalk, by which anyone can evolve the syntax or the IDE w/o waiting for standards, and distant pair programming with any number of people), business proficient communication with the rest of the online world, including business quality security, and a direct link into the academic community for research. Seems like all the things that made the original internet essential. Plus ad hoc group collaboration like Second Life, and mash-ups at the in-memory class/object level (no zillion of different, non-standard file formats) and immediate live environment change with each method change so no compile/link/test cycle.
Darius Clarke
· 3 years ago
Oh, and Croquet has its own built in parser so Domain Specific Languages work seamlessly in the same environment & IDE, naturally. Programming in the debugger is a natural as well. Just fix the error and keep running the same routine with out missing a single step next.
Sebastien Lambla
· 3 years ago
Darius,
what problem does it solve? What does it bring?
I understand the social implication of such worlds. I fail to see how this technology, OS, APIs, languages and what not, brings anything to the table? What are you trying to build that you can't do with today tools?
Collaboration in a 3d world? IM solve this problem. Physical presence has no impact whatsoever, except for specialized industries like CAD and architecture.
As I said, I understand why a teen wants something more powerful to create than what myspace offer. And I can see where a blog application inside it can be a decisive word of mouth advantage. Marketing platform? Absolutely. Commerce platform? Maybe, although all the others failed, while having nearly the same business model. (Also note that virtual currencies that are exchanged against real currencies can end up causing conflicts with tax laws in such countries as france... Others faced that issue in the past).
That said, I fail to see the revolution. And throwing smalltalk and p2p technologies into an application doesn't make it more revolutionary. As I said and others have mentionned, 2nd world in 96, activeworlds and nexit in 97, blaxxun in 98, even vworlds from microsoft many years back.
Charles Box
· 3 years ago
So this is The Sims meets Lamda MOO?
John Robb
· 3 years ago
World of Warcraft has a lot of this too.
Larry Borsato
· 3 years ago
Does it really matter if it's an OS or not? If that abstraction helps then that's great. It's an environment that you immerse yourself in; so much more that just an OS. Would you even seriously compare it to XP or OS X?
Hmmm. Maybe it's time to re-read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.
farlane
· 3 years ago
Will Second Life become the next OS? I'd have to say "No", as I can't see any non-open source OS making significant inroads.
Does Second Life provide a window into what the OS of the future might be like? I'd have to say "certainly" as we're moving into an era where our "drive" is as big as the internet and our peripherals are beyond counting.
Mark/Darius: Thanks so much for the info on Croquet. Looks like a fascinating project.
len
· 3 years ago
Silly rabbits. Tricks are for kids.
The tipping point for 3D is here because you have a generation of 3D savvy game players coming of age. An operating system? I doubt that but 3D is coming back. Pick any technology that was a 'loser' ten years ago but worked and has a loyal following, and it comes back as 'new and different' with all the usual pundits crowing.XML is SGML. HTML is GenCode and so it goes. See "The Magic Christian".
Yes, I've built them too and still do for a hobby; it's like painting in the Z and time, it is great fun and composing non-linear music and events is a new art form and challenging. VRML97 and X3D work just fine because I don't need it to be that easy, just hackable.
Otherwise, there is a well known lifecycle for 3D worlds if you are still of the 'killer app' mentality:
1. WOW! 2. Wow. Wanta see this? 3. Let's go play in 3D. 4. Whisper chat please. 5. Ummm... I don't have time for that these days. 6. Where are all the people?
1B. WOW! ....
On the other hand, if you need real time simulators for training, persistent 3D worlds are very effective.
Micala
· 3 years ago
I've been in SL for about a year now, actively and I really think SL is like anywhere else in this world .. and it is what you make of it.
Obviously if you can only be there once in a while for short amounts of time and have no desire to create content or be involved, you're not going to get as much out of it as a person putting in a lot of time creating things or spending more time there.
I'm no scripter, but I have become a pretty decent builder in SL and have been paid decent amounts for projects. So not only is SL a way to meet new and interesting people, it's an open arena for creativity and I think that's the biggest draw for me.
If you're checking it out, look me up. I'm Micala Lumiere there.
Francis Dupuis
· 3 years ago
I love the comments, they are almost identical to the comments I used to see when windows was first finding it's feet in a DOS world...I mean really, who needs a graphical interface to run wordperfect?
Someone asked, 'why do I need a browser in a 3D world?' In turn I ask, 'why do you need a projector in a boardroom?'
Find the answer, see the future.
Prokofy Neva
· 3 years ago
I thought about this for awhile. And I think you've got it backward. I think the question you'll want to be answering is: Can the Operating Systems Become Second Life? Or: Can Operating Systems Get Second Lifed?
The operating systems were just the old world's 2-d tools, and they'll have to fold into the new 3-D metaverse. So I'm hoping you're going to want to secondlifize Word and fold it into SL.
James
· 3 years ago
Until an true 3d interface is made, (eg, interacting with 3d in 3d, not 3d in 2d) it will continue to be faster and easier to stick with the twenty-something year old 2d desktop concept.
So, as of today; no. Now, if I had some sort of 3d holigram on my desk I could poke at, it would be a completely different story.
Tiny Giotto
· 3 years ago
Indeed. It is more than just an OS, it or at least the concept of it has the potential to steer the next major change in direction of the internet.
Everyone loves the web, most people like games, hell one more dimension is always going to be a good thing.
My belated 2 cents - Second Life itself won't be an OS - as others have pointed out it's too centralised and proprietary.
But I do think it's definitely the precursor of the 3D web, and maybe, just maybe, the precursor of a future OS.
And it's just recently hit 2 million accounts, double the one million mark hit less than 2 months ago.
It's definitely going to be something!
Taran Rampersad (Nobody Fugazi
· 3 years ago
Concur with Sean's statements regarding SecondLife being (presently) too centralized and proprietary. Of course, that could be seen as sacrilege on Scobleizer.
2 million accounts, though... well, out of 1.6 billion people online, 2 million isn't all that much. Call me at 10 million.
TT
· 2 years ago
God...this is more comedy than I can comprehend. You're so obsessed with this game that you've deluded yourself into believing that it could be even tangentially related to the next OPERATING SYSTEM.
Step back. Get a grip. This is ridiculous.
How does this game even come close to doing what an OS does? Where do I access low-level system primitives? What would a Second Life driver even look like?
Here's a quick heuristic to identify if something is an operating system. If the installer asks if you want to be a furry, it's not an operating system.
WELP
· 2 years ago
Hey. You're retarded.
Remind me when this pathetic game of yours manages memory (it doesn't even have to use virtual memory, just paging), has any sort of multi-threading (pre-empted or otherwise), runs drivers, handles interrupts, or otherwise does anything an OS does.
Just a bunch of technical gobbledygook that means nothing, right? Continue to live under that delusion because you, like all other SL players, are delusional that anyone cares about your stupid game.
"This is why I think Microsoft needs to pay deep attention to it and why my son says it's the most addictive thing he's done so far."
Look at how stupid you are.
IRBMe
· 2 years ago
Believe it or not, most operating systems running int he world don't even have a user interface. They run on the web-servers, t he file-servers and other servers that run a flavour of Linux, UNIX, Solaris etc. usually, and are behind everything we do in the world. Whether you're depositing some money in the bank or phoning somebody on your mobile phone, some server probably running one of the aforementioned operating systems will be involved in some way.
Proposing that this.. game.. could be the next operating system is proposterous. An operating system is comprised mainly of a kernel, the component that manages the hardware, provides virtual memory, file systems, multithreading/context-switching and other services; a programming API that programmers use to interface with the kernel; a collection of programs that make the operating system useful (e.g. see the GNU toolset); a way for the user to interace (be this a terminal, remote SSL session, FTP session or a GUI like X11 or Windows Explorer).
A game does none of these things, except maybe function as an awful GUI. What you're proposing is replacing a desktop environment with a user interface like that which this SL game provides. Even that would be an incredibly stupid idea.
Please at least have a clue what you're talking about before making ridiculous claims like this.
You're retarded. That is all.
Anongirl
· 2 years ago
@ 76: "If the installer asks if you want to be a furry, it’s not an operating system."
That's the best line out of all of the comments.
Sumax
· 2 years ago
Very interesting points pro & con... Is SL the next OS, I think the point has been made clear by many, NO! It doesn't (yet) have the management complexity to handle a fraction of what an OS runs. Could it be the next GUI, perhaps! There was a time when we had to load MSDOS before installing our GUI Windows (not to imply Windows is just a GUI). It's only natural to continue development & the current foundation is a good one. Why break something that's working well only to have a whole new beginning.
The idea of developing the now open source SL GUI to provide more productivity or whatever universal use people want is a sound direction. I don't see much of a difference when a user has to download & install IE or Firefox or whatever app vs. an SL install.
The day maybe a long ways off, but the likelihood of a 3D SL type GUI being bundled into our OS base is pretty much a certainty. They’ll probably call it something like MS3D…
I remember back in the 80's this silly media called a CD-ROM. Everyone said it's the next big leap in installation & multimedia... Then for about 1/2 a decade it seemingly died out, left the headlines, or was used as an example of what everyone thought is the next big thing that never was... I find this interesting since the following 1 1/2 decades were effectively driven by the CD-ROM. To that I say keep your eye out for the NC, it may need to die several times before it’s ubiquitous in our lives…
Maxwolf Goodliffe
· 1 year ago
Well if it is a platform (i agree) then it needs to be open like most of the Internet is today. Here at the company I work for you strive towards this goal.
We can export builds from SecondLife and put them into other game engines or work with them in 3DSMax or your program of choice.
We make a LiveCD called D-GiG that you can run that lets you deploy quickly your own simulator and configure it from your web browser that uses Linux.
... an OS? ...sorry but your wrong. It's not an "Operating System". An Operating System is code that manages how your software connects to your computers hardware.
Does SecondLife do that? Answer: No. It doesn't have any control over that, the Operating System running the SecondLife client app handles that.
SecondLife can load and display media and even run interrupted scripting programs. But that doesn't make it an OS anymore than Flash/Actionscript, or XHTML/Javascript. Sorry, it just doesn't. Until Linden makes a version of SecondLife that is installed to the computer as the official OS and handles the drivers for hardware and file storage etc, then SecondLife will never be an OS.
My best advice, look up the term "Operating System" in wikipedia or something. The OS is thown around a lot, it's starts to get annoying when I see people using it even when they don't know what it means.
All Comments
Also not everyone can drop $35 into a game just to purchase a new shiny gizmo in an fake world, being finanically responsible and living within your means , means there has to be limits to what you buy and what you don't.
I am not arguing that the government should provide my high speed internet as a "right", but companys should lower the cost of things.
By the end of next year Second Life is going to change the way some people do business. It's already starting to effect some and your going to see more. I'm waiting for the first true ONLY in SL business to open up that sells real world products. It's starting to happen. Get ready for it.
You can get free wifi at a lot of places in our area, by the way. That's still how a lot of my friends get on.
My son had free wifi in the restaurant we were in yesterday.
Man, Paul is so right, kiss of death, indeed.
That would be fun, but the Virtual PC team is a bit, um, engaged right now getting Windows to run on the new Intel Macs.
The reason I don't think Second Life will be (or is) an OS is the same reason I don't think that AOL is (or ever was) the Internet: it's a centralized, closed platform. I'm not trying to deny it's a fabulous piece of technology, but unless there are some behind the scenes things going on that I haven't heard about, I wouldn't use SL as my main OS/interface anymore than I would use GMail as my harddrive.
It's too centralized. It's completely proprietary. The world that "the users" have built and supposedly own is not owned by the users because the Lindens can cut off and ban a user on a whim, with no means for the user to export what they "owned" in-world.
And, yes, I know about the Lindex. I know about developers being paid to create software in-world. I also know that many of those developers get paid chump-change because of the Linden/Dollar exchange rate.
Second Life is a fabulous technology, and I have no doubt in my mind that it represents the Face Of Things To Come. However, unless a whole 'lotta changes are coming in both the Second Life technology and the business model, there's no I'd load any kind of SL/OS on my computer.
Even my 46 year old (tech newbie) father is building homes and furniture in SL. Haha, that crazy bastard. He draws the line at scripting though.
But I digress, I think the scripting sealed the deal for me. The graphics aren't mindblowing, there are online social alternatives, but SL gives the user real (ok virtual) power and a healthy dose of freedom.
But, sorry for the swipe. Thanks for letting me know more!
I remember purchasing a computer for obscene amounts of money and connecting to BBS on 1200 baud modems, but still free wifi is not everywhere nor should it be.
Also how does Second Life work on other OSes (OS X, *nux)? That will help speed up adoption. I just wonder if there are better things to be spending money and time on, being in the real world, outdoors, etc.
1st, there is an OSX version, nothing for *nix but it should be possible, I gues Linden Labs just doesn't feel there is a market for it at this time.
As for the cost, you can get a basic membership for a one time 10$ fee (no land ownership, but you get everything else, and there are public sandboxes where you can build, script, and play without owning any land). So for 10$ and a couple bucks at the nearest internet cafe (with machines capable of doing some 3d stuff) you can do all the SL you want (the download is very small for a broadband connection). I do the 10$ basic, and I've been completely satisfied, I just do scripting, so don't really need land.
-Paul
One of the things that's funny is how decentralized it actually is. I'm idle and hidden most of the time now and buried by IMs.
I dunno if it's really an OS inside of an OS, since when you take the 3D out, and you have an application that people would laugh at you if you said you were gonna make:
http://blog.ericrice.com/blog/_archives/2006/3/...
WHAT? A social-netowrk-collaborative-organization-2.0-frickin wiki-type-sociaD. If someone was to say they were making this AND that people would pay for and earn money from, Tech Crunch, and the rest of the blogosphere would be poo pooing it or celebrating it, the former I think. I mean our behavior is so predictable that I bet if this gets Digg'd or Slashdotted, we can prolly write the snarky comments ourselves and save everyone the work. We're predictable like that.
The only interesting element to the mix is that SL is in 3D, something that enables some functionality lacking in other areas. My downtown area is lame, and the redevelopment agency can't make a good downtown plan to save their lives... Robert's *son* could do a better job, and oh btw, the big point there is that he CAN do this. And set up shop. And make money if he wants. But there's a more persistence of presence... being idle or blowing someone off is a little bit tougher than in IM or e-mail, or even conference calls.
And naturally, easiest strawman is seeing 'the game-y-ness' of it. When I'm in Second Life, I'm actually doing the same stuff I do in Real Life. It's another channel, another place where me and my peeps Get Shit Done, while everyone else is getting older and resisting change.
It's the human OS, on another platform, with a steady stream of bug reports...And *then* you die.
So what do you do in Windows, OSX, any *ix platform? Well you collect files that are organized in directory structure --- ISL(in Second Life) see Inventory. These files are data that provides information in visual and textual ways ok still don’t see a schism between SL and OS. All right on an OS you can write code and create programs; yes you can do this in SL. On an OS you can install and run these programs, ever animate an avatar, drive a car or do you have a big screen TV in your house ISL that play’s movies, can you say media player. Ok so I am still searching for how SL is not an OS. OK think …. Oh I have it, the task bar and start button or dashboard… no you have one of those in SL. Um I can chat, e-mail, and collaborate as well as cruse the web. Well I can chat, e-mail, collaborate and.. wait I can not browse the web yes that’s it does not have a browser so it CAN not be an OS. Oh but wait boys and girls have you seen Ubrowser.com a browser that can be applied as a texture to 3D models. Hum ok it’s not an OS until Linden releases the Ubrowser but once they do what can’t it do? Oh and buy the way I was in Second Life awhile back and did not grok it until Eric set me down and showed my just how powerful it truly was. So I signed back up and am now blogging my SL existence at thoughtplasma.com yea that’s me ISL Thought Plasma look me up and tell me how I am wrong.
This was at the time when Google Earth was just launched as Google Earth, and the virtual worlds people were getting quite excited about a new era of data visualization and interaction.
My opinion of the future of Second Life is pretty much the same now as it was then: Second Life imitates real life, and for most of the tasks we do every day on line (communicating, finding information), real life it is hopelesly inefficient.
Examples like imbedding a browser into second life are just pointless, as it demonstrates that the 3d interface, and particularly the avatar metaphor, are just getting in the way of what we really want to do. (why bother imbedding a browser into second life? why not just put up full screen 2d browser.)
You may be able to do a great deal with the SL API, but why would you want to? The existing methods are more efficient by design, because SL has a flaw in its very basic design metaphor: the idea that imitating the way we interact in Real Life will be a productive way to navigate in online communities. :)
We've been through the exact same thing with the 2nd world back in 96, or blaxxun, or cryo, or or or or...
So it's a 3d world that can be extended, scripted and taken over. Fabulous. How is that making it an OS? The fact that i can write an application to run using their 3d environment is no different from having one running on .net or java, and neither of them are an OS as far as I know?
As for the addictive and creative nature of it, once again, yes, fabulous, but we've been there already. There's absolutely nothing new with this concept. My first company was in the online world business circa 98.
I fail to see the market. Or the thrill. Or what is new in it.
Please enlighten me.
what problem does it solve? What does it bring?
I understand the social implication of such worlds. I fail to see how this technology, OS, APIs, languages and what not, brings anything to the table? What are you trying to build that you can't do with today tools?
Collaboration in a 3d world? IM solve this problem. Physical presence has no impact whatsoever, except for specialized industries like CAD and architecture.
As I said, I understand why a teen wants something more powerful to create than what myspace offer. And I can see where a blog application inside it can be a decisive word of mouth advantage.
Marketing platform? Absolutely. Commerce platform? Maybe, although all the others failed, while having nearly the same business model. (Also note that virtual currencies that are exchanged against real currencies can end up causing conflicts with tax laws in such countries as france... Others faced that issue in the past).
That said, I fail to see the revolution. And throwing smalltalk and p2p technologies into an application doesn't make it more revolutionary. As I said and others have mentionned, 2nd world in 96, activeworlds and nexit in 97, blaxxun in 98, even vworlds from microsoft many years back.
Hmmm. Maybe it's time to re-read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.
Does Second Life provide a window into what the OS of the future might be like? I'd have to say "certainly" as we're moving into an era where our "drive" is as big as the internet and our peripherals are beyond counting.
Mark/Darius: Thanks so much for the info on Croquet. Looks like a fascinating project.
The tipping point for 3D is here because you have a generation of 3D savvy game players coming of age. An operating system? I doubt that but 3D is coming back. Pick any technology that was a 'loser' ten years ago but worked and has a loyal following, and it comes back as 'new and different' with all the usual pundits crowing.XML is SGML. HTML is GenCode and so it goes. See "The Magic Christian".
Yes, I've built them too and still do for a hobby; it's like painting in the Z and time, it is great fun and composing non-linear music and events is a new art form and challenging. VRML97 and X3D work just fine because I don't need it to be that easy, just hackable.
Otherwise, there is a well known lifecycle for 3D worlds if you are still of the 'killer app' mentality:
1. WOW!
2. Wow. Wanta see this?
3. Let's go play in 3D.
4. Whisper chat please.
5. Ummm... I don't have time for that these days.
6. Where are all the people?
1B. WOW!
....
On the other hand, if you need real time simulators for training, persistent 3D worlds are very effective.
Obviously if you can only be there once in a while for short amounts of time and have no desire to create content or be involved, you're not going to get as much out of it as a person putting in a lot of time creating things or spending more time there.
I'm no scripter, but I have become a pretty decent builder in SL and have been paid decent amounts for projects. So not only is SL a way to meet new and interesting people, it's an open arena for creativity and I think that's the biggest draw for me.
If you're checking it out, look me up. I'm Micala Lumiere there.
Someone asked, 'why do I need a browser in a 3D world?' In turn I ask, 'why do you need a projector in a boardroom?'
Find the answer, see the future.
The operating systems were just the old world's 2-d tools, and they'll have to fold into the new 3-D metaverse. So I'm hoping you're going to want to secondlifize Word and fold it into SL.
So, as of today; no.
Now, if I had some sort of 3d holigram on my desk I could poke at, it would be a completely different story.
Everyone loves the web, most people like games, hell one more dimension is always going to be a good thing.
My belated 2 cents - Second Life itself won't be an OS - as others have pointed out it's too centralised and proprietary.
But I do think it's definitely the precursor of the 3D web, and maybe, just maybe, the precursor of a future OS.
And it's just recently hit 2 million accounts, double the one million mark hit less than 2 months ago.
It's definitely going to be something!
2 million accounts, though... well, out of 1.6 billion people online, 2 million isn't all that much. Call me at 10 million.
Step back. Get a grip. This is ridiculous.
How does this game even come close to doing what an OS does? Where do I access low-level system primitives? What would a Second Life driver even look like?
Here's a quick heuristic to identify if something is an operating system. If the installer asks if you want to be a furry, it's not an operating system.
Remind me when this pathetic game of yours manages memory (it doesn't even have to use virtual memory, just paging), has any sort of multi-threading (pre-empted or otherwise), runs drivers, handles interrupts, or otherwise does anything an OS does.
Just a bunch of technical gobbledygook that means nothing, right? Continue to live under that delusion because you, like all other SL players, are delusional that anyone cares about your stupid game.
"This is why I think Microsoft needs to pay deep attention to it and why my son says it's the most addictive thing he's done so far."
Look at how stupid you are.
Proposing that this.. game.. could be the next operating system is proposterous. An operating system is comprised mainly of a kernel, the component that manages the hardware, provides virtual memory, file systems, multithreading/context-switching and other services; a programming API that programmers use to interface with the kernel; a collection of programs that make the operating system useful (e.g. see the GNU toolset); a way for the user to interace (be this a terminal, remote SSL session, FTP session or a GUI like X11 or Windows Explorer).
A game does none of these things, except maybe function as an awful GUI. What you're proposing is replacing a desktop environment with a user interface like that which this SL game provides. Even that would be an incredibly stupid idea.
Please at least have a clue what you're talking about before making ridiculous claims like this.
You're retarded. That is all.
That's the best line out of all of the comments.
The idea of developing the now open source SL GUI to provide more productivity or whatever universal use people want is a sound direction. I don't see much of a difference when a user has to download & install IE or Firefox or whatever app vs. an SL install.
The day maybe a long ways off, but the likelihood of a 3D SL type GUI being bundled into our OS base is pretty much a certainty. They’ll probably call it something like MS3D…
I remember back in the 80's this silly media called a CD-ROM. Everyone said it's the next big leap in installation & multimedia... Then for about 1/2 a decade it seemingly died out, left the headlines, or was used as an example of what everyone thought is the next big thing that never was... I find this interesting since the following 1 1/2 decades were effectively driven by the CD-ROM. To that I say keep your eye out for the NC, it may need to die several times before it’s ubiquitous in our lives…
We can export builds from SecondLife and put them into other game engines or work with them in 3DSMax or your program of choice.
We make a LiveCD called D-GiG that you can run that lets you deploy quickly your own simulator and configure it from your web browser that uses Linux.
It's all free, open source.
DGiG LiveCD OpenSim based simulator:
http://wiki.magrathean.ca/index.php?title=DGiG
Videos of sim exporting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7Vz0fzWj2o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRMDhY_bFDU
Does SecondLife do that?
Answer: No. It doesn't have any control over that, the Operating System running the SecondLife client app handles that.
SecondLife can load and display media and even run interrupted scripting programs. But that doesn't make it an OS anymore than Flash/Actionscript, or XHTML/Javascript. Sorry, it just doesn't. Until Linden makes a version of SecondLife that is installed to the computer as the official OS and handles the drivers for hardware and file storage etc, then SecondLife will never be an OS.
My best advice, look up the term "Operating System" in wikipedia or something. The OS is thown around a lot, it's starts to get annoying when I see people using it even when they don't know what it means.