SANSAR Dreams

Don’t call it Second Life 2

As I sit here with my coffee, I find myself in a precarious position. Sure, the sun is shining and the wind delicately meanders through the leaves outside for a serene atmosphere, but something still doesn’t feel right.

In my mind, I find the duality of SANSAR and whether to call it something good floating haphazardly among countless other random thoughts.

On the one hand, I could take the easy route and just be an unabashed cheerleader for the new flagship virtual reality “experience” like so many others, but then I wouldn’t be giving it an honest review.

I remember back in the day, I had made mention on numerous occasions about the “SL Cheerleaders” who effectively have their lips planted firmly to the PR department of Linden Lab in exchange for preferential treatment. Yes, I’ve included folks like Strawberry and Draxtor in that group – but more often than not there was a missing context.

I don’t necessarily believe these are bad people. After all, they’re just performing their part and it is a crucial aspect of their purported fame in the virtual world. They talk it up, no matter what, and they get the exposure and access. It’s a sweet deal and it makes total business sense, however much you are willing to trade integrity for it.

But even today it is a bit of mental gymnastics to watch even Strawberry make videos trying to say nothing but good about SANSAR and having an immense amount of trouble finding those talking points.

What I see from SANSAR is a lot of smoke and mirrors – selective journalism from cheerleaders trying to narrow that angle of view to omit the bigger picture and show only the good, or in this case a totally non-critical viewpoint.

Even when we see pictures of maybe 50 avatars stacked on each other at Drax’s build in SANSAR, we see headlines like “People are piling up in SANSAR to get a look! It’s so popular!”

But we both know that’s not the case. For one, if they’re all piled up on each other at the entry point, that means they’re all logging in and not interacting or even moving when they get there. Secondly, it’s mostly a flash in the pan experience so to speak… if you logged in right now, that location is likely empty, barring all the folks reading this and logging in to check the validity of that claim.

And therein is a bigger point to be made about all this hype, which is exactly all it is… just a load of hype.

So I sit here with my coffee, contemplating how to go about this post. Believe it or not, I don’t enjoy shitting on every project. I know a lot of people spent years working on this project and it would be unduly harsh of me to tear it up. But it has to be done for the sake of honesty and integrity in virtual worlds journalism.

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Nothing Special

Let’s get some things out of the way up front.

SANSAR is nothing special, regardless of what the hype machine is trying to sell you. As a matter of fact, it looks suspiciously like a clone of Avatar Reality BlueMars, though not using the Crytek engine.

Which brings me to a major sticking point – it’s built predominantly as a controlled and publish only environment. Don’t mistake SANSAR as “the next Second Life” because it’s anything but.

When you have a publish environment that is highly controlled for assets, then yes… obviously it’ll likely look a lot better. That’s the entire point of a publish environment, in that you can set things in “stone” and then apply additional shaders and effects to the scene because the scene nodes are “compiled”.

Insomuch as this aspect, the question begs to be asked:

If you’re looking for a published scene system that looks prettier but takes away the live editing and organic aspects of Second Life, then why not just use Sinewave Space? They’re essentially SANSAR but far better in that regard.

Authors Note: Sinewave Space actually does have a live editing ability alongside the publish model.

If we are to look at the “VR Headset Focus” of the SANSAR Model, I believe it’s a mistake to build an entire system like SL or even SANSAR on the premise of betting on the ubiquity of VR headsets. Sure, it’s a nice inclusion for a niche audience (because that’s what it is and will be for the foreseeable future), but it makes zero sense to build an application for a niche audience and then split that niche audience into an even smaller niche to cater to.

It’s a lot like getting into the automobile business and catering to just Bugatti Veyron owners with a bit of a nod to the peasants driving a Honda Civic. If your goal is to have market saturation and be the ubiquitous go-to for virtual worlds, this is not how you do it. Instead of trying to build an entirely different platform, one should learn what worked the first time and replicate those variables with better execution.

What Project SANSAR represents is a team of coders and executives who believe they actually understand the future of virtual worlds and attempting to make a flagship project based on faulty comprehension. Focusing on the wrong aspects of what makes shared virtual spaces like Second Life amazing, and distilling those out-of-context talking points into a product of its own misses the point entirely.

The sum of the whole is greater than the parts.

That isn’t to say they’re bad people. No… just very misguided on their understanding of what makes an amazing virtual world system. Second Life as a popular platform came as a sort of spontaneous quirk that Linden Lab wasn’t entirely prepared to either comprehend nor handle when it did happen.

Remember: It was billed as a game, and had game aspects before the inkling of open-ended, user generated, virtual world snuck in and things were rebranded to focus on those aspects in the rise of popularity for it.

It was a lot like building a video game and realizing that the modders are doing unintended things with it, however amazing… then you start catering to what the customers want and use it for to capitalize on it.

Hell, Second Life as a concept isn’t revolutionary (regardless of how Philip Rosedale would frame it). I mean, while he himself has said he had the idea in the mid-1990s but didn’t think it was feasible which is why he continued working at Real, that in itself is a fabrication… Because you know what else existed in 1995 when he insists such a virtual world system wasn’t feasible?

ActiveWorlds.

And while Activeworlds looks outdated by today’s standards, it would be a disservice to it if I didn’t also state that if you know what you’re doing with the platform, you can create worlds in there that are on par and sometimes even better than Second Life. After all, they have Zones and the ability to implement screen space particles for weather. Not to mention they actually have a built in particle editor that is dead simple and powerful to use, unlike coughs Second Life who (for the love of God) has access to Windlight and Nimble (the weather system that came with Windlight).

Oh, that and mirrors. Activeworlds has working mirrors and figured out how to do it without lagging the place up in the process.

But I digress. Yeah, that’s how old this open-ended virtual world concept actually is. Second Life is special not because it was the first or even the best. It is special because it improved on an already existing formula, even begrudgingly.

After all, they didn’t have the foresight to implement a marketplace online until years after XStreet did it – which goes to show that you, the virtual world inhabitants, are far more responsible for pushing the ideal virtual world system than the companies that produce the platforms. Your third party viewers and dedicated teams of volunteers are proof of this just the same. Your outright ingenuity in how you use the virtual world is just as responsible for its advancement – when mesh was implemented in Second Life, you used it as clothing and mesh bodies, and so on… Linden Lab didn’t think of that one (apparently) and so you didn’t have stuff fitting correctly.

Though even mesh was a non-Linden Lab innovation for an SL platform. It showed up years in advance via the RealXtend viewer and implementation, all while Linden Lab was saying it wasn’t possible. Once again, you are the innovators here – or at the very least, the driving force of it.

It is you who are continually driving that advancement – with or without the company running the platforms. OpenSim is a good example here, though not as coherent as a proprietary system like SecondLife.

What SANSAR is, in a nutshell, is a company trying to wrestle that power back from you and severely constrain your ability to innovate – to make themselves the sole channel of that innovation, and the sole purveyor of it. At the baseline, this is removing a large portion of the “magic” formula that is Second Life in the organic nature and trying to bottle it into bite-sized snippets under tight control.

It defeats the entire point.

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Out of Context

The most interesting part about SANSAR is that if you took it out of context, it would be fine. But coming from Linden Lab, that isn’t quite possible. On its own, it’s a pretty nice piece of software – albeit nothing revolutionary in any manner.

When an “experience” is filled up – as in, you reach a set concurrency limit, the scene just creates a copy and starts teleporting the newcomers to the new copy instead. The term for this is “sharding”, and this alone makes me shake my head. Given the opportunity to start from the ground up and redesign the virtual world experience platform using modern approaches, Linden Lab immediately screwed up and built a sharded system. This is going to haunt SANSAR for the entire shelf life of the project.

What I see with SANSAR is a missed opportunity from Linden Lab to really push the boundaries and reinvent their flagship namesake, Second Life with modern technology and approaches, applying what they’ve learned since its inception. That being said, it seems like Linden Lab hasn’t learned anything over the past fifteen years.

Here we find that Linden Lab had the opportunity to design a single shard system and do it right this time, but failed to do so. After all, Novaquark is designing Dual Universe as a single shard universe and is what I would say an iteration of Second Life should have been from the get-go. It’s pretty bad when a crowdfunded system is kicking your corporate seasoned ass.

This isn’t news, if you remember the tenure from Rodvick Humble (Rodimus Prime).

Instead of moving forward, we see a company taking steps backward in their application of understanding the virtues of virtual worlds, while others are sailing ahead with innovation.

When I was giving my presentation at OSCC, I brought up Dual Universe as the winning baseline for the future of virtual worlds specifically because of its innovation in single shard technology. Allowing thousands of people to simultaneously be present in a single location persistently is a major factor.

Though that opportunity is now missed when it comes to Linden Lab and SANSAR due to its baseline model. In Dual Universe, you have a shared, persistent virtual universe that you can build in like in Second Life, but more importantly you can build a spaceship and literally fly, seamlessly, off planet and go land on another one.

That is absolutely incredible – a word I’d love to use about Linden Lab and SANSAR but is not justified.

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What about Second Life?

Here’s an interesting tidbit about Second Life versus SANSAR that most probably wouldn’t know:

You can create a sim in Second Life that is comparable to SANSAR if you know what you’re doing. Just like you can use 20 year old ActiveWorlds to create worlds that would be comparable to Second Life.

That’s it… the big secret. See, if you baked all of your lighting and exercised control over the sim settings, you can come up with something similar to SANSAR. Will there be lag? Well, that depends on a lot of factors.

If you know how to create content that is game optimized, use standard tricks of the trade to do mesh and bake in lighting effects instead of forcing it on the high-end machines only, then Second Life can look absolutely stunning and on par with AAA titles. Albeit you don’t get things like HDR and God Rays in your shaders with Second Life, and sure you prolly don’t have Bloom effects like in SANSAR, but let’s be honest -

We already have shaders in Second Life, and adding HDR, Bloom and God Rays (etc) to the Advanced Lighting Model would put it on par with SANSAR.

But what about the lag, I hear you say?

I’ve already outlined here how to remedy the situation with the single shard technology approach that Dual Universe is using. However, that being the case, I’ve previously outlined how Second Life can retool their server approach on the back end to virtually eliminate that lag on multiple fronts.

1. Have the idle servers kick on to help co-process simulators that are popular. Much of the problem is that a single region is on a quad core server, which is fine until you push it to a breaking point. If they get to that level, there’s no reason why you should have thousands of idle servers and countless processing power just sitting there twiddling thumbs about it.

2. Remember SLGo? Linden Lab totally dropped the ball on that one. Yes, it was a third party system that Linden Lab wasn’t in charge of – but the take-away should have been crystal clear if they were paying attention. The cloud streaming system which allowed even a crappy tablet or phone to run Second Life on Ultra Graphics should have been built into Second Life itself as a Premium option. This is added value proposition in a nutshell. It was a unique added value proposition that wasn’t replicating pre-existing services from their community – and that is what counts.

3. The Fu** Off  button. Yes, that’s what I originally called it when I jokingly asked for it on Twitter. You have one now in your viewer and it simply derenders everyone in the room except friends. Why is this important? Well, because a majority of you lot have no clue about optimizing your avatars for looks and speed to be considerate of the sim and surrounding avatar resources. All of your high-end mesh attachments and high-resolution mega textures for skins and items may work when it’s just you and one other person, but it absolutely tanks a server and other computers when there’s a group in the same area.

4. Content creators need to up their game (collectively). The very thing that makes Second Life awesome is the organic nature of user created content and world creation, but it’s a double edged sword – because those same content creators are making things without the explicit understanding of optimized game assets. So we see these high poly, massive texture using, monstrosities being sold for all manner of use which in turn brings anything but a NASA launch console to a screeching halt. Then on the other side of the coin you have badly designed assets that look like absolute shit. Because of this dichotomy of melting pot mentality, we have a mixed bag in a virtual world where one minute you could see a breathtaking sim and the next a bunch of assets from the turn of the century.

As I’ve already said, I don’t see any reason why Second Life couldn’t look as good as SANSAR here and now, and even be optimized enough to drastically lower lag. To do that, it’ll take a concerted effort on our part as content creators and world designers, as well as on the part of Linden Lab to apply better management approaches to how SL runs.

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Final Thoughts

SANSAR for all the hype isn’t special, however much it may look pretty at this time. The publish model alone harkens back to the early 1990s with Worlds Inc, and more recently BlueMars. In my opinion, it is the theme park to our virtual world lives.

Which is to say – it’s a nice place to visit, but we live elsewhere. When you want a short term experience, SANSAR is a good vacation (though Sinewave Space is still better at it), but when you really want to spend time in a virtual world that is organic and user-generated – you should stick to Second Life.

If Linden Lab understood the reasons why we love Second Life, they would have never made SANSAR the way they did, but instead made a true successor to Second Life.

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Fame

Is it any wonder, I reject you first?

 

There are (as one may have it) a number of things which strike me as an oddity of juxtaposition within my life. Through situational awareness, it can be said that I am suddenly surprised by how people react to my presence. It isn’t to say that I suddenly just now became surprised, but it is something that I consistently forget and then am reminded of.

 

To this end, the topic of this blog (journal rambling) is that of perception and (for lack of better word) fame.

 

 

 

I’ve never considered myself famous in the more common sense, but more often than not I am treated as a sort of celebrity depending on the circumstances. It seems to rear up when I least expect it – for instance when talking to actual celebrities and while I find myself flattered that they take the time to speak with me, I come to find out that they are actually a fan of me.

 

That takes a while to sink in, to be honest.

 

I don’t think it ever really does sink in to my conscious mind too long, but it does just long enough to make me go “Oh... wow...” and then in a few days it wears off and I somehow manage to repress that memory like it never happened.

 

But somewhere in the back of my mind, I know it is still there lingering. I didn’t actually forget that I’m a celebrity. I just seem to do a really good job convincing myself that I’m not and acting like I’m not. Maybe (despite opinions to the contrary) I am actually a bit humble. I know in my persona I act like I’m hot stuff but like Andy Warhol it’s really just a front.

 

I am (to the public eye) mostly just a persona. A fabrication of intellectual bad-ass propped up by perceptions of genius and brilliance. The problem is, I’ve never seen myself like that, even when I know it is true... it could be said that I am highly intelligent (MENSA level) and I wouldn’t deny that, and I’ve had an interesting, if not illustrious, career involvements that have had me in the right place at the right time.

 

Despite my disastrous luck in life, I’ve been an exceedingly lucky individual. My whole life is an ongoing exercise in polar opposite absurdity. I wouldn’t trade it for anything, really...

 

I’ve seen the after parties for MTV, hung out with actual celebrities and rock stars, and found myself in the company of some of the brightest and most talented minds in the world. For all of that, I find myself feeling honored to be there, and almost always surprised when I come to find that I’m usually the man of the hour. Celebrities and high-powered people acting like they are the ones who are honored to meet and get to hang out with me.

 

I’m still kinda weirded out by that...

 

 

 

 

Did I mention I’m not entirely a fan of Hollywood? They always came across as hollow and fake to me. No wonder David Bowie sang about it in his song Fame (for which the title of today’s post borrows a line). I’m not against celebrity and Hollywood... I just see past the smoke and mirrors and get right to the authentic people aspect of it. Which tends to either endear people or scare the living bejesus out of them. One of the many benefits of being an INTJ personality...

 

I see through the facade and they tend to relax a bit and stop putting up a front. That’s all Hollywood really is, just a bunch of smoke and mirrors. The ultimate of sustained persona versus sincerity.

 

All the while I play it cool and just try to stay down to Earth (and usually am). Approachable and an “everyday” sort of guy you could just hang out with. That’s how I see myself in my own mind. But my reputation precedes me in most cases and what I think of myself is rarely what others see in me when I enter the room.

 

This (in and of itself) is the crux of what being famous actually is. Meaning millions of people have the wrong idea about who you actually are, and no amount of contradiction can change their mind.

 

Of course, that internal image of myself goes to hell in a hand basket when I suddenly get a text message from an actual celebrity just to say “Hi” and to let me know they’re heading out for the next week and wanted to let me know.

 

I mean... at first I’m like “Hey, have a wonderful trip!” but then (about thirty seconds later) it really hits me.

 

I’m like: Wait a minute. Millions of adoring fans worldwide, television interviews, globetrotting, the whole nine yards... and you specifically think it is important to stop and let me (of all people) know that you’re heading out to Sweden for a week to visit family and you’ll be back soon?

 

I’m actually really speechless about that.

 

There is the understanding that this isn’t an isolated incident, either. I mean, somebody else (who I won’t disclose) took the time to let me know they were going to Hong Kong next month (visiting the wife’s family) and wanted to let me know ahead of time. Again, a really well known person worldwide... taking time out of their day to let me know they were going on vacation but would be back in a month.

 

As I sit here and think about it, I’m a bit flabbergasted. At what point in my life did that transition actually happen? But what blows my mind most is that while I’m sitting here thinking that I’m flattered and honored that they thought of me in all of this (enough to take the time out to let me know personally), I come to find out that they are fans of me.

 

All the while as I’m thinking they are the celebrity, they are thinking I’m the important celebrity to know.

 

That’s about the moment I realize (once again) that I actually am (sorta) a celebrity in my own right. Though I consistently try not to be, people treat me like I am and it never ceases to baffle me.

 

Sure, I can say that I’ve accomplished quite a lot in my life (so far). Been there and done that sort of mentality. I’m not entirely certain if the inner image of myself and celebrities has reached a point where I take it for granted or if I’m just in denial that I’m a celebrity as well.

 

Maybe it is a little bit of both?

 

When I spent a lot of time in Second Life, that persona had a chance to really take hold in the virtual sense. It did help that I had a PR department behind me, and that started the snowball rolling. I did interviews, photo shoots, a research paper, book chapter, and even spoke at virtual events.

 

My last “appearance” was as a panelist for the previous Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference, whereby it never ceased to amaze me what amazing people I was sharing a stage with.

 

 

 

 

But there I was, just as large as life (maybe larger).

 

One could say that I voluntarily made an exit from that scene in the virtual sense, but in reality it never stopped. All I managed to actually do was to lay low and go off the radar a bit for some peace and quiet. More or less I took the Johnny Depp route and moved to virtual France.

 

This can be evidenced by the continuation (even today) whereby a lot of SL folks are like “I’m a huge fan of you!” when I’m saying I’m a fan of them... But while I’ve scaled back the public appearances portion of my persona aspect, it only seemed to apply to the virtual world. In the real world that celebrity mentality continues unabated and completely to my surprise.

 

The actual reasoning for my absence in Second Life has been more along the lines of a recurring theme in virtual worlds users that I refer to as Groundhog Day Syndrome. Named after that wonderful Bill Murray movie, it is a perfect symbolism for just having total ennui and a loss of motivation/tolerance for something.

 

It comes and goes, so don’t think for a moment that I’m suddenly never going to be passionate about virtual worlds again. It’s just that after... I’d say about twenty years now, it all just gets repetitive and boring. You log in and see the same old things, that pattern recognition kicks in and you start to think “Why bother?”

 

Or maybe I’m a virtual God?

 

Of course, not the God. But, ya know... a god by the definition of Bill Murray in Groundhog Day? Maybe just a guy that’s been around so long he seems like he knows everything (but doesn’t)? Nothing is “new” and so everything (most things) are expected and seen coming a mile away.

 

I think maybe in the bigger scheme of things, a lot of us are gods in that manner.

 

And just like a “god”, when I get bored of something I want to make something better and create something amazing. Something totally new.

 

 

 

I could sit around and talk about the virtues of Oculus Rift and all the great things it’ll do for the industry, but to be honest it is merely an over-hyped stopgap between virtual reality and mixed reality.

 

The real evolution and future of virtual worlds, and ultimately the Metaverse as a whole is in mixed reality/augmented reality space. So much so that even Neal Stephenson himself was recently hired by Magic Leap. So it’s not really an uneducated opinion I’m putting out there, but pointing out that the godfather of the Metaverse itself and a huge name in Cyberpunk is involved not in virtual reality but in advanced Mixed Reality.

 

Of course, I already knew this was coming. Not that I’m tooting my own horn, but I have been saying for the past few years now that the future is in Augmented and Mixed Reality, and that Virtual Reality is just the Gartner Hype Cycle to get us there.

 

 

 

Right now, Virtual Reality is back at the Peak of Inflated Expectations, and by the time Oculus Rift leaves the gate officially, it’ll likely be overshadowed by things like Magic Leap and similar mixed reality systems, which will dropkick VR back into the Trough of Disillusionment. Or maybe not... seeing as Oculus recently bought out 13th Lab, which is a company that specializes in augmented reality and has their own SLAM algorithm for real world mapping.

 

I think Oculus sees the writing on the wall already and is looking to shift gears to a headset that can do AR/MR before they launch so they’ll potentially have an “all in one” sort of headset.

 

But still, that sort of mixed reality system is still very limited in the bigger scope. It is localized and effectively tethered to smaller spaces and publish model experiences. The same can be said (ahead of time) for Magic Leap technology, and although their display technology is actually really fuck-all impressive, they still only have one piece of the bigger puzzle for the future. They (like Oculus) are (to me) considered just enabler technology in the stop gap to the future.

 

Which (of course) brings us to that all important question:

 

What the hell have you been up to, Will?

 

Whereby the reply is going to be that I’ve been focusing on the technology forecast concerning advanced mixed reality systems and how to actually build one that would meet my stupidly high expectations. I started drifting out of the VR sector and into the MR sector awhile ago, but keeping in mind all of the stuff I’ve learned from VR in the past twenty years. Not surprisingly, it applies to the mixed reality sector quite well.

 

After all, I think I’ve said pretty much all there is to say about Virtual Reality and The Metaverse. Though I am still the Vice Chair for the IEEE Virtual World Standard Group (P1828) and likely for a rekindled standard initiative stemming from P1828 at IEEE, I want to think bigger than that.

 

My general philosophy has always been that if the whole damned world is looking at something and it’s collectively “the future”, then I’m not looking far enough ahead at the trends. So that’s pretty much why I transitioned my attention from VR to Mixed Reality systems.

 

 

 

 

In the bigger picture, there’s a guy formerly at the Nokia Mobile Life Centre who was (is) working on his PhD thesis and project (Kim Nevelsteen). An avid fan of The Metaverse overall for the past ten years, he always wanted to focus on Pervasive Games and Mixed Reality. As per his update, he moved on to just being at Stockholm University in the Immersive Networking group but has had the opportunity to change direction and focus on pervasive games and mixed reality like he originally wanted (finally!)

 

 

“Your paper was a pivotal point because it just made me burn (pun intended) even more for working on the Metaverse. It also puts in black and white lots of things I have been thinking about before.”

 

 

He and I have had wonderful conversations on and off about the state of the industry and where we think the future is at, and it’s nice to know that he is finally able to pursue that future.

 

In all honesty, it is flattering to know that I am able to inspire people in the industry like that, and have a positive effect. I wouldn’t say I was the only thing that drove him in that direction, but instead (as it apparently wasn’t clear before), I see myself as one of many pivotal parts of the whole conversation and part of that inspiration and culmination of many things.

 

In and of itself, I am still amazingly flattered and humbled that I could have even the slightest effect in the industry.

 

Editor’s Note: Part of the problem with writing a blog as a stream of consciousness with little (or no) editing is that a lot of the time I miss things that I think are implied when they come across as meaning something else. Happens sometimes when you’re writing far into the morning, and so I’d like to make that clear on behalf of Kim in what will probably one of the first edits to this blog. He’s an amazing guy and highly intelligent, definitely check out what he’s up to via the link above.

 

Other than that, I’ve been tied up with a NASA project called Deep Space Blue about the experience of being a near future Mars inhabitant and replicating some of that atmosphere for the real world participants. Hashtag #JourneyToMars if that’s your thing... Which in turn has landed me smack dab back where I was before with the whole “dealing with Hollywood and celebrities” thing.

 

Except a lot bigger than before.

 

As part of the Deep Space Blue initiative, there is a major Hollywood agency involved (the people who represent the celebrities and talent), as well as a big production company. And so, I’m back at the center of that maelstrom again as the intellectual celebrity bad-ass of the group.

 

Without even giving it a second thought, we send out best wishes and condolences to Melissa (Rivers) while congratulating Ben (Affleck) on getting the green light on his recent indie collaboration. This is the sort of normality I’ve come to take for granted in my life. I’m just not surprised by it any more...

 

I suppose I’m an intellectual celebrity versus famous for simply being good looking and an actor... though I’m sure a lot of ladies out there will correct me about the whole “being good looking” thing... I’ll take whatever I can get on that front. Flattery is always an acceptable currency.

 

It never ceases to amaze me just how many fan girls I actually have, or the various things they are prepared to do to and with me if only I’d give them a chance.

 

It’s enough to make me blush, and that says a lot.

 

 

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Cognitive Dissonance

Diagnosing Wonderland & The Future of Virtual Reality

 

 

The question was posed to me recently as part of the panel for Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education about what I feel the future of virtual worlds would be, and to define better what the next 18-24 months should focus on for companies like Linden Lab with Second Life. These are questions being bounced back and forth between the moderator and the panelists to sort things out prior to the panel this weekend.

 

My explanation for what I saw as the history and future of virtual worlds as a whole was a bit out of the ordinary in that I likened it to being a psychiatrist trying to diagnose Arkham Asylum. With the popular definition of insanity being “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” it is a perfect explanation and analogy.

 

What I’ve seen over the past twenty years is a textbook case of cognitive dissonance and quite possibly insanity, and so (even humorously) I relate to the Arkham Asylum analogy in that the only real explanation for the situation today and in the past has been a combination of cognitive dissonance and self-imposed insanity.

 

Nearly every case in virtual worlds up until today (not surprisingly) has a doppelganger in the past. There are a few very distinct phases that the industry goes through with each iteration, which makes it dead simple to predict where it will go and for what reasons.

 

But despite knowing this, it is much harder to convey this information appropriately in order to break that cycle. It isn’t because the information is wrong, nor is it because that information does not have enough evidence to support it. What it boils down to is flat rejection of new information due to strongly held belief to core ideals.

 

In this manner, the inmates are running the asylum.

 

If I were to define those phases, it would look something like this:

 

• Phase One – Introduction of a new client based system.
• Phase Two – Introduction of the VR in Browser system.
• Phase Three – Introduction of HMD & Related Hardware.

 

Each distinct phase leads to the next upon the trial and error of the prior. For instance, in the early 1990s there was Worlds Inc and their methodology of client as virtual world. You would download the entire world up front before you could enter and each space was a predefined area. After that was ActiveWorlds which was actually a technology spawned by Worlds Inc but rejected in favor of their other in-house client. ActiveWorlds had a dynamically downloaded environment and user-generated space in-client with the tools built in as a sandbox.

 

This was about the time that VR in a Web Browser arose with standards such as VRML/X3D and plugins to view those worlds emerged. VR on the Web, had an offshoot as Blaxxun 3D (B3D Today) and Cybertown was one of the VRML multi-user environments on the web that utilized this.

 

Later in the 1990s, we saw the popularization of virtual reality really take off, and HMDs and hardware became more mainstream. Companies such as Vuzix (1997/98) and VFX had headsets back then, in combination with peripherals and devices which today are the genesis of modern peripherals and devices.

 

Gaming companies during the Phase Three timeline also began introducing their own peripherals. You are most likely aware of Nintendo’s Power Glove, which was a stripped down version of a VR Data Glove from VPL. Jaron Lanier was actually the guy that was called in to consult Nintendo on making it. Sega and Atari also were slated to make VR Headsets for their consoles at the time, but obviously failed in more ways than one.

 

Jaron was actually pretty popular back then as he also consulted on stuff like Minority Report, Johnny Pneumonic and Lawnmower Man. However, this is really the tip of the iceberg for what his man is responsible for in the industry. For a more in-depth biography – check here.

 

The point of this observation being that when somebody says Jaron Lanier almost definitely knows more than you about the past, present and future of virtual reality, only a fool would challenge that. So in a recent WIRED magazine article when he stated it was like a weird time-warp listening to Zuckerberg explain what he thought the future of Oculus VR was going to be, we are really in no position to try to go in there and correct the man.

 

After all, Jaron is also one of the founding editors of WIRED magazine itself. This guy is like one of the godfathers of virtual reality, with an academic and accomplishments list that may as well be untouchable.

 

Interestingly enough, that doesn’t seem to stop virtual worlds enthusiasts from thinking they are going to do just that – once again showing the irrational decision making aspect of cognitive dissonance, and the blind adherence to the idealized future of virtual reality and Second Life. Cognitive dissonance makes you do really stupid things.

 

Seeing other analysts in that article also echo the same sentiments isn’t surprising, and it’s not because they’re just trying to be Debbie Downers or just suck up to Jaron Lanier... it’s because they have a long history in the industry and remember when it last repeated.

 

 

What you have to remember is that people have been making the same pitch as Zuckerberg for a good thirty years, and it has never come to fruition.

 

I didn’t hear anything that Zuckerberg said that hasn’t been talked about before in the VR community for a very long time,” says Brian Blau, an analyst with research firm Gartner was part of hard-core virtual reality community in the ’80s and ’90s. “It has always been billed as a next-gen communication technology — something that can provide a more immersive and deeper connection to somebody else.”

 

The truth, as Blau points out, is that most VR technology creates a very solitary experience. It’s something you do alone, not with others.

 

Recent history has shown that if you try to make it more than that, it struggles to find an audience. Second Life — the virtual world that received such hype at the turn of the millennium before falling into obscurity — is the big cautionary tale. And that’s what Zuckerberg and Facebook are eying: A new Second Life. They even talk of selling virtual goods in this world, painting this as a potentially significant source of revenue for the company.

 

 

If you think it’s just WIRED, Jaron Lanier, and an analyst from Gartner making these assertions, you’d also be wrong. Even UbiSoft and gaming companies are luke-warm to the virtual reality hype.

 

 

Might we one day see a new Assassin's Creed or Far Cry game that uses virtual reality technology? According to Ubisoft Vice President of Creative Lionel Raynaud, it's possible, but technology like Oculus Rift or Sony's just-announced Project Morpheus need to put up big numbers first.

 

"VR would need to sell at least 1 million units to be viable for development," Raynaud said tonight in San Francisco during a roundtable interview attended by GameSpot.

 

 

Of course, that was amended shortly afterward because making a statement like that in public would cause a shit-storm in PR to HMD makers who desperately need the big support. Having people not drinking the kool-aid and saying how great it is will hinder their adoption, and so everyone needs to get on board. But you get the real thinking in the first quote before they got that call from Sony ripping UbiSoft’s president a new one, who in turn had a pleasant talk with Lionel the next morning.

 

But it doesn’t stop there... even Business Insider is making similar calls about virtual reality, albeit a little less direct. Just saying that Facebook buying Oculus was just a throw-away at worst because it doesn’t matter if it fails.

 

 

 

 

Well, it matters to me and probably you if Oculus tanks because the wide reaching implication is that the industry falls back into obscurity and relegated as a fad once again, as we rinse and repeat back to Phase One. But that’s pretty much what is awaiting Oculus VR going forward...

 

This time it’s actually a little easier to see that coming, because Phase One is already tipping it’s hand prematurely in the form of hifidelity from Philip Rosedale. There’s your next Phase One “VR as Client” kickoff.

 

It’s starting to blur together at this point, as the industry is just throwing everything together in a pot and hoping something makes a recipe.

 

So the take-away here is that when Phase Three runs its course, it is usually about this time that we cycle to Phase One again, to repeat the history.

 

Looking at this logically, we can see the correlations quite clearly and unmistakably. It’s a matter of historical comprehension and not speculation, which is what analysts are citing when they are making their assertions about the current situation.

 

When we find historical doppelgangers to modern day industry, we can therefore trace the historical context and outcome to the modern attempts as well. Looking into the future involves looking into our past, so long as that present and future insists on borrowing from it heavily.

 

Take into consideration Avatar Reality/Blue Mars. An updated carbon copy of Worlds Inc as a model and software. It followed the same premise and operation, and therefore was subject to the same outcome. When this was explained to them, there was cognitive dissonance as described above – and so it was impossible to avoid that outcome.

 

Both models existed based on downloading pre-made worlds prior to entry, and as a matter of course, both existed on the premise of content creation fees for creating and storing those worlds.

 

 

 

 

But what of ActiveWorlds and Second Life as doppelgangers?

 

They both exist as dynamic user-generated virtual worlds, they both thrived on a simulator business model, both had a hard time justifying their Premium accounts, both offered personal houses/spaces as a benefit, both famously spent much of their time saying that updating their software was impossible or not feasible, and both suffered from not investing in that re-write to update their systems properly.

 

Both ActiveWorlds and SecondLife surround themselves with favorable opinions, pass the buck or make decisions not based on feasibility but on unwillingness to do so. Both are notorious for implementing things only after users find a way to hack the functionality into their viewer or repurpose existing methods for new methods, and both are notorious for dragging their feet or trying to bury dissenting opinions while rewarding only favorable opinions (cognitive dissonance).

 

I could go on all day about the similarities of practice and outcome between the two, and even the community itself shadowing the past, and how ActiveWorlds is the doppelganger of SecondLife, but the only thing that ultimately matters is that the outcome is the same if you are mimicking a past iteration.

 

So if we want to know what will happen to Second Life and ultimately Linden Lab, we merely have to ask what happened to ActiveWorlds as a result of this sequence of events.

 

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When the Phase Three of the 1990s failed, it recycled back around to Phase One again, and so we saw another round of VR as Client initiatives which again borrowed heavily from the prior generation. There.com, Second Life, etc all found their roots historically and had no problem copying it with a little more polish this time. But each one of those iterations succumbed to the same outcomes as the generation they were mimicking.

 

Again, we’re talking about blatant examples of cognitive dissonance and popularized definition of insanity.

 

So, too, it wasn’t a surprise to see Phase Two arise again a few years ago with the re-popularization of VR in a Web Browser, since the introduction of WebGL standards. But again, if you’re going to follow the historical route, you are already doomed to conclude the same way. It was no different than the rise and irrelevance of VRML/X3D and the companies that had a vested interest in VR on the Web in the 1990s versus the rise of WebGL and VR on the Web again a few years back.

 

In this generation, the version of Worlds Inc methodologies were mimicked with BlueMars, and the methodologies of ActiveWorlds have been mimicked by Linden Lab with Second Life.

 

It is actually eerily uncanny how this is repeating itself. Even the discontent with Second Life leading to reverse engineering it to make independent versions under OpenSim mimics what happened in ActiveWorlds with third parties rushing to make their own virtual world system altogether or via purchasing a white label version of ActiveWorlds license and them differentiating themselves as their own independent universe/galaxy.

 

The latter isn’t surprising to me in the least because a certain Adam Frisby (SineWave), who you might recall is one of the people responsible for OpenSim was also known as Gwala in ActiveWorlds at the same time as that independent universe/3rd party offering rush came to pass. So when the same discontent happened in Second Life, or maybe that virtual worlds frustration carried over from ActiveWorlds, it’s no surprise that Adam was on the forefront of OpenSim in the beginnings.

 

This is why knowing your virtual world history means so much.

 

 

“I really can’t believe nobody else sees this happening.”

 

The take-away from all of this is the answer to the original question posed at the beginning. What do I think the future of virtual worlds will be, and what can be done in the next 18-24 months to put a company like Linden Lab on the right course?

 

Well, the answer to that question is a quantum answer. It exists as a failure and success simultaneously depending on what choices are made going forward. It’s not something that can be reduced to a sound bite or explained in a few minutes, because the answer to that question is a monumental amount of reorganization, education, and execution across the board – not to mention it is entirely at the mercy of people who experience insanity and cognitive dissonance to enact, which is a nice way of saying it more than likely will be ignored or completely half-assed if considered.

 

But here’s some initial thoughts on what to focus on in the next 18-24 months, and by no means is it all-inclusive. That’s what having an advisory board is supposed to do for you over the course of long-term engagement versus trying to sum it up in a power point in ten minutes.

 

Because let’s be honest... if anyone could have fixed the virtual world industry in ten minutes, they would have by now. And if anyone could have fixed Linden Lab in ten minutes the CEO roster wouldn’t look like a revolving door, nor the company a graveyard of half-assed ideas, unfinished work and mid-life crisis.

 

So let’s start simply:

 

If the industry continues mimicking the past, it is doomed to repeat it. That means if we’re unable to truly re-imagine and evolve virtual reality into something new and exciting, something relevant to the real world on a broader scale, it is going to be relegated to repeating the same mistakes and we’ll have the same outcomes.

 

So the first order of business is to actually learn the history of virtual worlds/pop culture, and much of those outcomes, in order to avoid the same mistakes.

 

I’ve provided a link to a comprehensive paper on this exact subject that covers the entirety in detail. Subsequently, it’s my own paper from Association for Computing Machinery published last summer. I’m just nice enough not to make you pay for it. That being said, I can’t read and understand it for you on your behalf...

 

The second order of business is to get your own business in order. Figure out what actually is a Premium benefit and what you were bullshitting about (read: poaching the community). If you’re ripping off the community with it, you need to stop that and learn what the term “Added value” actually means.

 

The third order of business would be to resolve the company identity crisis. Realize that Second Life is a virtual environment platform in which all manner of things can be created for countless use-cases. Then realize that you’re not a video game company. Also learn the difference between virtual environment and video game.

 

If the platform itself were made more robust to cater to that content creation, Linden Lab wouldn’t need to make games independently as stand-alone products or purchase a content distribution platform. They already had both in Second Life if they chose to support it.

 

Instead of chasing their tails and playing “me too”, had they understood that Second Life is a universal platform that empowers creation in countless use case scenarios – they would have realized a few years ago that it would also be an excellent platform to empower an Augmented Reality future where Virtual Reality merges with Reality.

 

Some kid in Japan got bored and made this in his spare time. It makes what Linden Lab and the rest of the industry has been up to and trumping as the next big thing look like a monumental joke.

 

As an aside... I know how this is actually done in real time, and I also know how to build a better version of it that makes this one look like a toy. But it’s a sound concept nonetheless considering that there really is nothing else like it – unless you want to count Meta Spaceglasses... which are like... half as capable as this video demonstration.

 

 

 

 

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The most obvious evolution of virtual reality in the future looks nothing like the past but redefines the future.

 

When you no longer can find a doppelganger in the past for what you’re doing today, you are now making your own future instead of reliving history.

 

That’s my answer for the future of virtual worlds.

 

Repeat History or Make History.

 

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Pompous Circumstance

The absurdity of awards in a virtual world.

 

Couple of things on my mind lately in between project work and theoretical applications. There might be a link between them all, but I haven’t found it yet so bear with me.

 

There is (of course) the Avi Choice Awards! In which that single sentence is about as enthusiastic as you’re ever going to see me get about it. If awards ceremonies in real life are about as sincere as voting for prom king and queen, reduced to nothing more than a popularity contest where you might go home with a trophy, then my view on virtual world award ceremonies has been double the shallow and half of the accomplishment. A lot like going to Starbucks and ordering a decaf... people need to be bitch slapped for that.

 

 

Coffee with Kara Trapdoor while being interviewed. The moment itself was reward enough.

 

Don’t get me wrong, people should be recognized for their contributions in the creative space. But I would think simply being popular would do that as a recognition of your talent without taking home (metaphorically) an intangible digital object to glorify the popularity contest to boot.

 

That’s what the Avi Choice Awards are about, for the most part. It’s an informal popularity contest where people in a clique get together and vote for other people in that clique. I have a low tolerance to stuff like that because to me it’s ultimately meaningless (if not insulting). I speak from experience on this one and not from “exclusion”.

 

A lot of things in Second Life draw a similar parallel to older virtual worlds, but one thing that never seems to change is that the same things seem to arise from each community in a weird sort of hive-mind where you know they aren’t (as groups) really influencing each other or having regular meetings in a round table but still manage to come up with the same outcomes.

 

Case in point is the SLxB events. Ok, I get it... prolly more than people think. It’s a community celebration of the virtual world they call home and all the great things within it. That being said, it is really no different than AWExpo from ActiveWorlds... which is more or less the same exact premise and preceded Second Life by a number of years. Back in 2006 and 2007, I was a big contributor to the AWExpo when I worked at VR5 Online, taking home “Best of Show” both years.

 

People got together, built plots, booths, and whatever in a sort of celebration of community and it, too, was quite massive and varied. Wandering around SL10B all I could think about it was how eerie it was that ten years later I’m in an entirely different virtual world and doing the exact same thing.

 

The Avi Choice Awards aren’t exempt from that thinking either... since ActiveWorlds in the 1990s –> Today regularly has (had) the Cy Awards which is exactly the same premise and outcome of the Avi Choice Awards. Right down to the “let’s vote for our favorite...” blah blah blah and including the endless pandering and ass kissing to even get on that “list” for voting.

 

 

I’m no stranger to virtual worlds awards ceremonies... [Cy Awards: ActiveWorlds]

 

I could have told you who was going to win those Avi Choice Awards well in advance because the formula to figure it out is dead simple:

 

Those with the biggest groups, social media presence and highest ratio of personality to Linden Lab cheerleading will win.

 

Stuff the ballots and be a relentless fanboy/fangirl of the medium as a cheerleader.

 

That’s it... and it’s reflected quite clearly in the results, now isn’t it? It was the same thing years ago in other virtual worlds as I watched clearly superior works and people get ignored and passed over simply because they weren’t popular or the event organizers didn’t “like” them. Countless times I watched “popular” people march their fanclubs into the voting in order to stuff the boxes... which to me is pretty much like getting a Group Message in Second Life from somebody who is on the ballots telling you to go over there and vote.

 

I’ve won enough of those awards in the past and even then I didn’t think too highly of it. In a way, I suppose you could say I’m in the same camp as Crap Mariner with my opinion of the whole superficiality of it all. Which is to say that if in the unlikely event I won anything remotely like an Avi Choice Award in this day and age, I’d dress up as Santa and punch the audience. Even in the event that I even remotely showed up on one of those polls, I wouldn’t bother to show up to collect the pretend award that went with it because to me they are an insult.

 

I’ve been there and done that all before. It’s not an honor, nor is it particularly satisfying to be proclaimed the king of the prom – unless of course you validate your work and effort through an inanimate and superficial object as justification of your worth.

 

Hey, some people do... and for them it’s whatever cup of tea they wanna have. Makes them think they’re really accomplishing something. But to me, actually accomplishing something is the award...

 

Personally, if you pander for an intangible award based on opinionated popularity, it makes me think that maybe you’re being rewarded not for the work or effort but for being popular. In that sense you’re an excellent and shameless promoter of self.

 

What you do, and your works/efforts/contributions to the virtual world (and real world) should be self-evident and speak for itself. The outcome of your efforts are far better a reward than a hollow Collada file in a virtual world sitting on a virtual shelf in a virtual home for virtual people to admire and know you are virtually popular.

 

It’s about as meaningful as the VEJ (Virtual Education Journal) giving out award after award to Blizzard and World of Warcraft from a stage in Second Life, where Blizzard isn’t showing up for that award because they rightly couldn’t care less about it. I sat through that entire award ceremony and all I could think was “If World of Warcraft is so awesome, then why aren’t we having this award ceremony in WoW at a local tavern?”

 

So maybe you’re thinking “You’re just bitter cause you weren’t on the list!” – to which my reply is simply “No... I’m thankful I wasn’t”. I can’t convey that sentiment strongly enough at this point. Really... I have collected enough of these awards over the years and I certainly don’t need another one.

 

 

 

If you came over to visit me in-world, I have my own shelf and it’s filled with awards just the same and it also has accomplishments that are tangible such as a copy of my book, the research paper which was published in ACM over the summer to great acclaim. I did actually win a Cy Award for “Best Build” in which I built a photorealistic and functional gas station. The irony being that I entered it as a joke because it was actually just a project to teach somebody else how to build and pay attention to the complete atmosphere of immersion. When I entered it into the Cy Awards as a nomination, it was explicitly for the purpose of illustrating the very points I’m explaining here – and that the process can be socially engineered/rigged quite easily.

 

I also have an SAW award (Support AW) which I consider far more meaningful because it’s for “Best Use of Innovative Technology” referring to the fact that I had single handedly repurposed the entire AW Viewer (Browser) and added functionality nobody had ever seen before, and even successfully turned the online virtual world into a functional desktop paradigm in 3D in which you could launch programs on your local computer from the virtual world. I had done so through carefully reconstructing trigger commands (sort of like the precursor to LSL scripting) based on the idea that there was (back in the early days of AW) a version called the AW Hi-Rez CD in which the assets of the popular virtual worlds such as Alpaworld, Metatropolis, Mars, etc were double resolution and on a CD to pull from locally. Back in the day this was a big deal to go from 128x128 resolution textures to 256x256 due to the fact this was during the days of Dial-Up internet and 56k.

 

The premise was that there were commands that the viewer could recognize in order to access content locally. I did some more archeological digging in the world Metatropolis (one of the original worlds, and also one that I played a part in rebuilding twice) whereby I found an object with a local file command on it built by one of the staff members of ActiveWorlds themselves (JP McCormick to be exact) whereby it was a touch link to call an old Microsoft VoIP program locally on your desktop.

 

I got to thinking that if the viewer could still interpret that command as a local link, and the Hi-Rez CD code was still in there to handle local content in the configuration files, then wouldn’t it be possible to figure out the format for local or internet links and tag the configuration files for buttons on the viewer toolbar as well as objects in-world?

 

 

It took me four months, including countless denials by ActiveWorlds themselves that it was even possible, but I managed to create what today is still a pinnacle of ActiveWorlds in showing off what could be done – titled simply Metaverse EX. The toolbar was rewritten using commands that AW themselves denied even existing, resurrecting functionality and repurposing it in the modern age to run programs on your local desktop, open local folders (where you could keep shortcuts or your file downloads from the virtual world for easy access), external tools for helping with building, and even managed to make an online help system accessible instead of the CHT old style help file itself. The last version I made simply had access to Twitter and a few other things natively in the toolbar, and included a small version and large version to save space (which ActiveWorlds themselves adopted, among other functionality I had rediscovered). I didn’t stop there, either... because I went on to figure out a way to link an Object Path (like an asset server) to a P2P redundant content distribution network worldwide, making the object path nearly indestructible no matter how many simultaneous users were in the world.

 

That’s a big deal considering I managed to host a live concert and have 100 people standing in the same spot without the server crashing. This was back in 2005/06 and today I’d like to ask anyone what the odds are that they’ll be able to have 100 people show up to their event in Second Life without the server going under?

 

 

 

 

Of course, “concerts” are commonplace now in Second Life, but back then it was unheard of because it was a logistics nightmare. This was before that concert across the “Metaverse” happened as well, so here’s an example of doing something that changes everything... though quite arguably it wasn’t as good as the second concert we did a year later in 2007 when we went all out with a custom stage, choreographed lighting and fireworks, and a laser lightshow with particle effects... Geez I wish we had filmed that one... it was freakin amazing.

 

That’s what it means to deserve an award... when you not only create something awesome but manage to change the history of the company and countless citizens in a virtual world, influencing everything going forward. But the award itself isn’t what matters... the award (to me) was simply knowing it could be done and that I had altered the course of virtual world history for the better in doing so. Seeing what other citizens of AW were building based on my own inspirations and advancements (such as particle lighting and shadows), seeing citizens push their builds and set the bar much higher... that is satisfying. So it’s a paradox really... if you’ve done nothing to deserve an award, then you won’t get an award... but if you *have* done something great enough to deserve the award, then the award is pointless by comparison to the great things you have done... so why bother?

 

I’d be far more apt to give an award to whomever thought up Liquid Mesh versus the most popular DJ or Photographer in SL. Liquid Mesh changes the entire virtual world going forward and has a positive impact (even if I don’t necessarily agree with the circumstances). But was there a category for “Best Innovation” in the Avi Choice Awards? If there was, I didn’t see it.

 

The category itself could have been named “Stuff that’s going to matter in ten more years”

 

I think maybe the problem with award ceremonies like this is that they are based purely on subjective opinion and not anything that looks like objective fact. I might think Crap Mariner has amazing stories while other people might think he needs to take his meds and stop bitching about people standing on his lawn. Totally subjective thinking... and is that really the basis for an award that should be taken serious?

 

Hence the reason I’m writing this post today... and explaining the types of awards I’ve received in the virtual world and what they were for. Some weren’t subjective (SAW Award) while others were totally just popularity contest and (my own social engineering) – Cy Awards, AWExpo, International Flight Festival, and so on.

 

There was another award that I had gotten as well but it amounted to “Best of Show” from the AWExpo in which our booth was a photorealistic replica of a real world booth complete with banners and arcade games. But the big reveal for that year at the Expo was that we (as VR5 Online) had created a photorealistic avatar in mesh while keeping the polygon count reasonable. At that time it absolutely blew away the avatars in ActiveWorlds by a lightyear and likely still blows away the avatars in Second Life by comparison. Even the employees at ActiveWorlds stopped what they were doing and came over to see what we had done with their technology.

 

After that, ActiveWorlds as a company no longer participated in the AWExpo because whenever we threatened to show up, the entire expo (including ActiveWorlds themselves) immediately threw in the towel conceding defeat before we had even bothered to put our booth in. To say it was an unfair competition was an understatement... we felt like we were NASA competing in a High School Science Fair. So after our second year at AWExpo we declined to continue participating because we were showing up everyone else, and we didn’t want to do that... our goal was just to show off the potential of the AW System (and we did that by far).

 

I’ve had my share of the awards ceremonies and pandering over what is now close to twenty years in virtual worlds. Yes, I’ve been in virtual worlds about 20 years now and the thought hit me the other day when I was trying to think back to when I first got into them when I was much younger. It puts the Rez Day idea in a proper perspective in comparison... lots of people acting like 8 years in SL is seniority or something... which I suppose being a big fish in a small pond can definitely give you that boost of ego.

 

 

 

For me, the existence of tangible things in the world and knowing my efforts are having a positive impact on another person’s life in a profound manner is the only award I’ll ever need. When a PhD student in Stockholm at the Mobile Life Centre is writing a thesis for his doctorate and thanking me for the wonderful work I’ve done - when that happens and I find out about how I’m helping to enable such a profound change in thinking or advancement in the industry and academics, or that my work is fostering a new generation through a virtual worlds certificate course - that is my award.

 

I helped change the real world for the better, and my efforts will continue to do that in a meaningful way. Because of my efforts, the world will change for the better for years to come like a ripple cascading in a pond outward, touching millions of lives and (hopefully) leaving a positive outcome. My goal in life is simply to live it one day at a time and answer a single question:

 

What have I done in this world that, when I am gone, will be my legacy of positive change?

 

I believe I continue to answer that question satisfactorily. I may not entirely be the most personable character in the world, and I absolutely agree that I am a right bastard quite often. But despite that, I’m leaving ultimately a positive impact on the world for real. In twenty years nobody is going to really remember that virtual couch you made, or that skin... it’ll fade into obscurity just as much as that award you won when you were popular for your fifteen minutes.

 

I don’t want to be the rain on the parade, no matter how often I actually am... because ultimately my intention is to help people understand that what is truly important versus superficial is what matters. So every day simply ask yourself -

 

If I dropped dead today, how long would anyone remember me for what I’ve done in this world?

 

Live your life like that, and strive to leave a lasting and meaningful legacy of positive change on the entire world. As Steve Jobs once said -

 

Make a dent in the Universe.

 

If you’re awesome, you don’t need an award to tell you so. You simply are because it’s self evident. You see it in the people who tell you their stories about how the things you’ve done have changed them or touched them for the better. I’d rather people had donated to Immersiva in that moment to show appreciation to Bryn Oh instead of casting a vote for an award... and as Crap Mariner said in his own group notice – he’d rather people paid their tiers as a show of appreciation.

 

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Something I might consider writing about in the near future:

 

ZUI (Zoomable User Interfaces) and Hyper-dense Information or;

There’s too much **** on my screen!

 

Remember to pimp me out on the social networks. Because sharing is caring, no matter what the state of Utah says.

 

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