Tuesday, February 24, 2009

The Problem with Pointing out Problems About the Metaverse

Yet another article pointing out how impractical it is to, say, order a pizza via Second Life. What makes it worse is that Skribe goes through a mini-history of pushing the tech. envelope for such mundane tasks...but not far enough to evoke how difficult doing this (now a routine thing) was when the Internet was in its nascent stage. The Metaverse will evolve, these complaints (which sound a lot like those of 20 years ago) will be addressed, and the Metaverse will emerge as the new Internet platform. I can't judge intent. If the intent was "wishlist/bug fix" in nature, then this is fine. But if, as I suspect, this is a whine that states the obvious, then I just lost 5 minutes I'll never get back... ;-)

1 comment:

Unknown said...

The intent was to point out the difficulties involved now and the hurdles that need to be overcome before it can become practical. It's also necessary to remember that while there are similarities between the nascent internet and current virtual environments it's not a direct correlation. As Twain said history doesn't repeat, it rhymes. Web pizza orders only took off because it was easier than using the telephone. Unless virtual worlds offer similar leaps in customer service then it's simply not going to work. There needs to be a reason to do things in virtual worlds, just as there needs to be reasons to do it on the web. Until that niche is uncovered and the technology able to deliver then it remains a mere geekgasm.