An Introduction to Virtual Worlds

Everybody in our society loves to get away. Whether through a vacation, movie, Internet chat, book, or even drugs and alcohol, just about everyone has a favorite way they unwind, relax, and put the stresses of our everyday lives to the back of their minds. Perhaps one day soon we will never have to leave our apartments to interact with one another to socialize, party, do business, and unwind - and considering the efforts of the makers of Second Life or Sony's upcoming Home game/virtual world, I think that day is closer than we think.

Of course, the credit for the original concept is largely given to Neal Stephenson, whose book Snow Crash presented the first virtual world (Stephenson called it a "Metaverse") where people simply logged in from home, and through a headset interacted with other people in a 3D environment, with both audio and visual coming through the headset.

What could the advent of Home and A Second Life do to our civilization? Perhaps it could make it a more bearable, enjoyable world to live in, if people could work regular jobs during the day (Stephenson's main character, Hero Protagonist, starts off the novel as a pizza delivery guy) and jack-in to these virtual worlds at night to relieve the stress and anxiety they carry with them in the real world. Virtual worlds would be an excellent environment for psychologists to test out new ideas about how people interact with one another and a plethora of other ideas.

This new technology is amazing, and the virtual environment within Second Life looks very realistic - predictably, the two biggest industries are sex and gambling (from a cursory look at the most popular locations) but since the users themselves generate the content, the possibilities are limitless. Reuters has even setup a journalist to monitor events within Second Life and started a Second Life News Bureau. While Home requires a Playstation 3 which may be out of reach for a great many people, Second Life has a free basic account that simply requires a computer and a broadband internet connection, something which many people worldwide already have. Indeed, according to Second Life's website, the service already has over 4.5 million residents, 1.6 million of which have logged in during the past 60 days. The biggest question to me is, is our society ready for something like this? It would be all too easy to build up a virtual life that is a great deal better and more fulfilling than our regular lives, and simply stay jacked in as long as possible. Reports of gamers becoming addicted to various online multiplayer games such as World of Warcraft (called MMORPGs, or Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games - say that 5 times fast!) are already becoming widespread, and this element of a virtual life would take the possibility of total immersion and addiction to your computer one step further.

However, in the end, this is an extremely viable business model, which at the same time would enable millions, even billions, of people worldwide to interact in a never before possible manner. New monetary systems, political frameworks, and educational endeavors would all be possible. Business meetings between people on opposite ends of the Earth would be easy and even fun. I'm cautiously optimistic about the future of online virtual environments and the upsides/downsides of interacting within one, but in the end, this just has too much potential. In Part 2 of this post, I will examine the financial/business side of Second Life specifically (since Home has not yet been released) and how it has the potential to revolutionize world commerce!