Metaverse Roadmap doc is out

  8 Responses to “Metaverse Roadmap doc is out”

1. Ola Fosheim Grøstad says:

   June 23, 2007 at 11:15 am

   No, not there, but there.

   See? I can argue even before I set my eyes on it. *struts proudly*
2. Raph says:

   June 23, 2007 at 1:49 pm

   Thank you, fixed!
3. TCO Network - Metaverse Roadmap says:

   June 23, 2007 at 8:06 pm

   […] linked to. It’s really a great summary of metaverse, virtual world history and future direction. https://www.raphkoster.com/2007/06/2…map-doc-is-out/ __________________ Rodo Doneeta LotRO – Dwalthor – Dwarven Guardian/Prospector (Level 27) LotRO […]
4. Prokofy Neva says:

   June 25, 2007 at 9:44 am

   Firefox didn’t work to pick it up, had to use IE. I’ve seen some previous versions of this, and as you know, I was a sharp critic of how the very first meeting around it was structured, as it was convened mainly by geeks and gamers and virtuality virtuosos so it has the feeling of a tent revival. Most people will focus only on the technical aspects of the work, although there are profound social and political aspects as well.

   I’m always struck by a lack of any kind of philosophical or humanitarian approach to these issues. Lifelogging is referred to — as if neutrally — as “recording” or “a documented life” but the implications of invasion of privacy, and the sort of Big Lie that occurs by snowing the world with documented truthyness isn’t discussed, nor can it be in a document of this scope. The same technology making it possible for people to be “empowered” or “express themselves” or “lifelog” or augment/mirror/enhance reality — technology that the authors say, in a democracy, will be used to make “behaviour changes” and “make people better,” is the technology that can be used to block, mute, suppress, eliminate — in democratic as well as non-democratic hands.

   Even organizationally, the 4 horsemen of “augmentation, mirroring, lifelogging, virtual worlds, seems arbitrary and not terribly useful for understanding that you do your lifelogging inside the virtual world; that the virtual world can be used for augmentation, etc. You could just as easily make another four points to the compass: business, entertainment, socializing, education. Or: user-generated, company-generated, company/user limited co-participation, company/user unlimited co-participation.
5. Michael Chui says:

   June 25, 2007 at 11:24 am

   First, I haven’t opened IE in the past week, and I skimmed the roadmap. Firefox worked fine for me.

   Second, there was a basis–not necessarily stellar, but a basis nonetheless–for the four technologies, in the form of the two axes of External/Intimate and (geez, I have to look it up) Augmentation/Simulation.

   Third, there was an entire section devoted to crossovers, entitled “How These Combine”. For instance, to quote from it, “A link between the lifelogging and the virtual worlds scenarios is the emergence of a consistent digital identity allowing for seamless interaction between in-person and virtual representations of other people.”

   Fourth, the next two sections, “Cross-Scenario Issues” and “Big Questions” do indeed tackle, if superficially, problems such as privacy. They say things like “Not all of these impacts will be good” or “Most ominously, Metaverse technologies could be used by large institutions, particularly major corporations and governments, to maintain and worsen social, political, and economic inequalities in today’s only partially democratic societies.” That really doesn’t sound like your concerns weren’t discussed; we can agree they weren’t answered, but they’re hardly qualified to do so from the top.

   I’m not defending it, partly because I’m entirely unimpressed by it. (I haven’t read anything in there that I didn’t know more about beforehand.) But it’s a pet peeve of mine that someone will criticize something they haven’t read. My only criticism of it so far is that it’s too abstract to be useful; but hell, it’s a roadmap (minus the road..), what can I really expect?
6. Jerry Paffendorf says:

   June 25, 2007 at 9:25 pm

   Hi guys,

   Prok, I know you didn’t like the summit meeting being invitational, but bringing together experts in these fields to get in deep with each other is a really good way to start the process. We did a bunch of other events and meetings at conferences like GDC and ETech where we got more input, and you even spoke at the free Metaverse Roadmap event at Eyebeam and have been over to my house and written ideas on my living room walls during the NY Metaverse Meetups, so, like, talk to the hand on that one. :p

   Michael, thanks for the little clarifying write-up there. I’m sorry you weren’t impressed with the doc, I know you’re very far into virtual worlds so maybe it wasn’t deep enough there for you? It is a future-forward doc and a work of synthesis so it aims to open up questions and put structure around areas of development and their big uncertainties in a manageable model. The most important thing for me about the project so far was connecting those four big areas of Virtual Worlds, Mirror Worlds, Augmented Reality, and Lifelogging. I originally wanted to start the project because most everything I found about virtual worlds and virtual reality was way way too narrowly focused.

   There’s that saying, “All models are wrong, some models are useful.” I find the roadmap model of how we’re bringing the web out into the world and bringing worlds into the web to be exceedingly useful. Now I can start plugging lots of things I see happening within information and communication and interactivity and simulation silos into the four-square metaverse model and start looking for attractors between them. For instance a popular social network like Facebook, which is the kind of thing people sometimes try and generally fail to bring into the virtual worlds-only discussion falls into Lifelogging in this metaverse model. You can see Facebook as the start of something like avatar identity for 6+ billion people (1+ billion currently online in some form) on a planet that’s only 25,000 miles around that we’re pretty rapidly simulating (Mirror Worlds) and finding new ways to feed information into and retrieve from and mix on the fly (Augmented Reality) at the same time as we’re creating digital environments to interact with those real avatars who are spatially and psychologically separated from us (Virtual Worlds), just to riff on and ball up the four corners in a (long) sentence.

   The doc hasn’t been publicized yet and the HTML version is still being put together by the designer (small team) which’ll make it easier to point to and talk about specific things when that’s up. But no need to shake your fist at the heavens over things you don’t like, the authors are all around and the process is really transparent and open to input. We’d like to see the model challenged and added to, and we want people to participate and contribute to future MVR events, so just hit us up: roadmap[at]accelerating[dot]org.

   Co-author Jamais Cascio has his thoughts here. I echo him and definitely feel proud handing this first doc to anyone interested in the mixed-reality future that virtual worlds are prototyping inside of today’s computer boxes. Show me a better, more provocative, informed, and concise stab at this and I’ll come drooling. Better yet just hit me or any of the authors up if you have input or want to be involved and that can happen.

   Rock on,

   Jerry
7. Ola Fosheim Grøstad says:

   June 26, 2007 at 6:05 am

   It’s nice to see that you try to get people to focus on a common vision, but do you manage to get companies to commit themselves to this fully? Or are they just tagging along half-heartedly in order to get exposure of their own vision and products? The latter case would be more in line with how businesses think… unfortunately.
8. Prokofy Neva says:

   June 26, 2007 at 10:53 pm

   >Prok, I know you didn’t like the summit meeting being invitational, but bringing together experts in these fields to get in deep with each other is a really good way to start the process. We did a bunch of other events and meetings at conferences like GDC and ETech where we got more input, and you even spoke at the free Metaverse Roadmap event at Eyebeam and have been over to my house and written ideas on my living room walls during the NY Metaverse Meetups, so, like, talk to the hand on that one. :p

   Yeah, I will talk to the hand, Jerry. The Metaverse Meet-ups are just that — meet-ups about the um…Metaverse. They aren’t drafting sessions to sit with these actual documents and help draft them. So I’m not seeing how presence at this or that meet-up suddenly incorporates one into the erm mad and wonderful and wonky process of making the Metaverse Roadmap when…we didn’t get to see drafts of the document (well, a few got some early peeks but by then it was pretty much set). They were never described or designated as somehow related to the Map project itself. And that’s fine. I just don’t think you can then credit what happens at these informal meet-ups with “being part of the Map process”.

   Again, I don’t think a process that involves digitalizing the entire world, and moving the known wired world in a sense “indoors” should be something crafted in obscurity by tiny groups of people all in the same sect. It’s not an easy thing to try to get broader input, but there are LOTS of issues that are barely touched, and as I indicated, they are all in the humanitarian end of the pool.

   Michael, I don’t see how this “two axes [sic]” somehow makes up for my point, which is that it’s an arbitrary framework. It’s the kind of framework that gets made up on somebody’s Powerpoint and sticks, often shaping and warping “mind-maps” for evermore. That’s why I question it.

   Sure, there was a section on crossovers — but it’s not at all what I was talking about — which is something Jerry himself has actually *done* with things like his DTV project, which I suppose came a bit too late to get into this version of the Map (or maybe I missed it).

   And you know, I’m really getting tired of this constant constation of “seamless interaction” and a “consistent digital identity” as some kind of “value” or “necessity”, as if this value of only some geeks is something that has to drive the technology development.

   >Third, there was an entire section devoted to crossovers, entitled “How These Combine”. For instance, to quote from it, “A link between the lifelogging and the virtual worlds scenarios is the emergence of a consistent digital identity allowing for seamless interaction between in-person and virtual representations of other people.”

   It’s *some people’s* idea of what “is required”. They bring a most fervent and religious zeal to propagating this faith. But as I asked at 57 Mile’s discussion the other day, why isn’t anybody worried about the ill effects of game/world globalization? So often I hear geeks *insist* that we have “seamless identities” that can walk through all the worlds — people whine that they can’t hike from Guild Wars to WoW to Second Life and think this is a value. Huh? Why would you need to? And would you want to?

   Raph has raised the problem of the inherent logic of closed games and how you wouldn’t want to impose open-endedness on it — to arrive suited up in your suburban blingtard best from SL in WoW, where you’d be out of place, or to interrupt a Harry Potter RP type situation with a RL-type of intrusion. NON-seamlessness and integrity are what gives worlds their heft and weight and immersiveness. NOT having to merge one’s identities is important, too. For example, Facebook forces you to put up a “real life identity” connected to your college and such. I turned heads by joining LinkedIn at someone’s invitation and putting up my Second Life avatar and his business. I should have put Ivory Tower of Prims for the university. I think we simply must have the right to construct a series and a variety of alternative identities online, and merge or diverge them as we wish. If that bothers some business suits who think alternative identities breed crime, they’ll have to get used to having less customers.

   >Fourth, the next two sections, “Cross-Scenario Issues” and “Big Questions” do indeed tackle, if superficially, problems such as privacy. They say things like “Not all of these impacts will be good” or “Most ominously, Metaverse technologies could be used by large institutions, particularly major corporations and governments, to maintain and worsen social, political, and economic inequalities in today’s only partially democratic societies.” That really doesn’t sound like your concerns weren’t discussed; we can agree they weren’t answered, but they’re hardly qualified to do so from the top.

   Oh, SO glad you mentioned that paragraph. What a tendentious bit of tripe! I’m sorry, but I don’t think this leftoid wonky take on the world, with its blasting of countries as having “partial democracies” (they ought to try really living in what is really a partial democracy) is at all what is intended by concern about privacy that I and others might have. Hey, all they care about is “the worsening of inequity”? That’s *all* you can take home from a concern about privacy?! They cannot take privacy on its own merits, as a right, as even law in some countries?! They cannot take privacy and proprietary matters as the bedrock of the system of private property *that makes their own game and virtual world companies and metaversal service companies possible? Huh?

   I find this stuff stridenly ideological in ways that the writers have completely lost touch with — and I find that truly scary.

   I’m not worried about governments and large corporations frankly; they aren’t the things that suppress my speech and strip me of property. I worry more about game corporations, virtual world manufacturers, and their paid-for blogs.

   OK, I think I’m over my limit of the Terra Nova Terrabyte 400, so I’ll stop now : )

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