Roland Legrand's blog

(adding first results of an in-world discussion about this project, at the end of this text)

How important will virtual worlds become in the global village? In order to answer that question, one has to have an idea what the big issues will be the next 50 years, what "the big picture" will be and how it evolves. Often Virtual Worlds Roadmaps are being studied in splendid isolation from the rest of world history. References are made to the cost of energy or to the financial crisis, but often no attempt is made to describe the issues which will define our planet from now to let's say 2050.

In a previous post, Second Life, OpenSim, Web2.0 point to a different future for the global economy, I used some ideas of Immanuel Wallerstein to get such a big picture.

This time I invite you to consider various concrete aspects of the evolution of the world system, and to meditate what role virtual worlds can play for each of these aspects.

Even though still inspired by Wallerstein's text, the big picture I will present here does not imply one has to agree with his visions. Personally I am convinced that the next 20 to 50 years will be a period of chaos, of unexpected disruptive events, of important mutations in the financial and business world.

However I simply don't know whether this can be adequately described by Kondratieff cycles, or by Wallerstein's vision on the long term evolution of capitalism. I will just list a number of big issues, and I really would like getting feedback on these topics (which issues did I forget, which are far more important than others, extra information) and on the way virtual environments could be involved.

I think the work we would do in situating virtual worlds (and other new media?) in the broader context of the future of our planet, could very well complement work which is being done elsewhere, such as in the Virtual Worlds Roadmap group.

The "big issues" are based on a book and blog (in Dutch language) by Geert Noels, the chief economist of the Belgian investment bank Petercam.

Noels identifies six "econoshocks" which will have an impact on our lives and which can be compared to the Industrial Revolution:

- demographics (including urbanization in Noels' book, but I'll propose to create a separate entry for this phenomenon)

- the shift to the East

- the information- and communication technology

- energy

- the new capitalism

- the green economy

I will briefly discuss those issues, not necessarily sticking to what Geert Noels says (for instance, I added my own take on urbanization, adding the security and geo-political risk stuff, I lumped the green economy and the energy/raw materials stuff together, I have another take on the New Capitalism etc).

I think studying the possible evolution of virtual worlds in relation to the global context can provide new insights, and I invite you to contribute to this text on the MixedRealities Wiki. Of course, all contributors will be free to republish the evolving text as they see fit.

From the Department of Wild Hypotheses

(update: providing a concrete example at the end of the text)

Second Life, OpenSim, web2.0, open source stuff are pointing to a possible different future for the global economy. In a very negative sense, this future announces itself through the current financial crisis. In a positive sense, extreme customization, collaboration and more egalitarian organizations make part of a bifurcation of the development of capitalism. However, there is a very considerable danger that the other part of the bifurcation may prevail: a more protectionist, authoritarian version of capitalism.

The basis of my hypothesis is the text The Depression: A Long-Term View from Professor Immanuel Wallerstein.

Leading venture capitalists are inciting Silicon Valley companies to switch to survival tactics. Om Malik on GigaOm writes that

Sequoia Capital, arguably the smartest venture capital investor in business, is sounding the alarm and asking its portfolio companies to buckle down for what could be the worst economic downturn of their relatively short lives.

GigaOm is not the only one to report these developments. Mike Arrington at TechCrunch reports that angel investor Ron Conway, who has backed start-ups such as Google, sent a letter to his portfolio companies suggesting they lower their burn rates.

Are the prospects for the Valley, for web2.0 and virtual worlds companies gloomy?

My social web life seems to go down the drain because of the banking crisis, which makes me work day and night covering the endless stories of banks going bust, regulators and politicians scrambling to save them, the doom and gloom spreading and making consumers and investors extremely nervous.

It makes me aware of the fact that connectedness has its idealistic, hopeful face, like one can experience in the online Connectivism course but also a more ugly face, of spammers, griefers, online communities which seem to deal in hatred and stupidity.

Relating this to virtual worlds, I think there are some interesting similarities between banking, society at large and virtual worlds and communities.

I am almost through my first week of the Connectivism course. I must admit that I felt a bit lost, as most participants did, but I don't mind. I know that feeling lost can very well mean one is experiencing and learning something new.

The "learning" is partly an exercise in absorbing academic theories, but also a practice, and experiencing developments we were already aware of, but experiencing them in a more intense way.

Thinking all this over, I have a suggestion for my favorite group in Second Life, Metanomics: we should open up our activities, discuss and study broader issues than Second Life or even Virtual Worlds. Of course, virtual worlds are very important and illustrate dramatically crucial developments of this day and age, but I think we should think beyond virtual worlds.

Jeez! This is 2008, and contrary to my childhood beliefs (way back in the sixties of the previous century) there is not only no manned Moon or Mars station, but even very mundane things, such as integrated tools to collaborate effectively using texts, documents, pictures, videos, spreadsheets, databases, conferencing tools, poll instruments, wikis and meeting environments are as yet not available as a kind of a standardized, easy-to-use and accessible solution. This was a lament uttered today by a friend of mine, an academic economist, specialized in efficiency measurement and working regularly with ad hoc international teams.

I had not an immediate answer. Of course there is web2.0, and there are many solutions facilitating several aspects of collaboration. Virtual worlds are one family of such tools. But those tools are dispersed, many creative people all over the world are constantly proposing now solutions using social tools. But a one stop solution, familiar for many people all over the world and massively used, does as yet not exist. The sheer variety of tools makes people who are not professionally covering web2.0 desperate, even digital natives are overwhelmed by the abundance of web2.0 offerings.

So where is web2.0 going? I previously mentioned some answers given by Professor Tony O'Driscoll. Now I would like to introduce social media expert Shel Israel, who has some insightful things to say about where we are going. And finally I will call Microsoft or Google to the rescue!

Based on Gartner's Hype Cycle public virtual worlds are in the Trough of Disillusionment (after the hype), but hold potential for the future. In fact, Gartner's latest predicts that public virtual worlds will see mainstream adoption within 2-5 years, so Virtual Worlds News reports on the basis of Gartner's report Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies.

There are signs that maybe we are coming out of that Trough of Disillusionment. The latest ones are some positive articles in important mainstream media such as The Economist and BusinessWeek, Second Life being associated with business and creativity... Even more remarkable, I discovered that projects which were once mentioned as examples of the failures of Second Life, are now being presented as interesting showcases.

Young people are doing lots of things wrong, or seem to indulge in socially unacceptable behavior, such as griefing - read on this site The Devil's Advocate by AJ Tan and the response by Prokofy Neva on Second Thoughts Why The Kids Aren't Alright.

I'll tell you another story about deviant behavior by young people, and also why that behavior, while in itself is not recommendable, can also give us reasons to be less negative about the new generation. However, educators, institutions and companies will have to adapt and we will have to help those young people.

So, how can the new generation at the same time display behavior that is very promising for business and the economy but at the same time drives teachers and older folks mad?

Lots of people think about a better user interface (UI) for Second Life these days. There are the folks at Linden Lab, who are preparing, as CEO Mark Kingdon explained, an expandable interface, which grows with the experience of the user. There is Dusan Writer, who organized a User Interface Design Contest. The winner will be announced at a special edition of the Metanomics show. Prokofy Neva spoke out on his blog Second Thoughts in No, It’s Not Really About the User Interface, stressing the importance of the Search (or, more appropriately, the Find) function.

I felt reluctant to speak out about these issues, I am not a technologist. I do believe however that among the greatest assets of Second Life are the communities and sub-communities in that world. It seems obvious that changes in UI helping people to find communities and groups of people sharing the same passions, are crucial to increase the appeal of Second Life. But this does not only depend on the people of Linden Lab. Maybe more avatars should come out of the closet and unveil the identities of their real life typists, even to the point of giving detailed insight into what those typists are doing.

What makes the avatar tick? Is the avatar a rational being, a homo economicus, meaning, as explains Wikipedia, a rational, perfectly informed and self-interested actor who desires wealth, avoids unnecessary labor, and has the ability to make judgments towards those ends?
I thought this over when I listened to a presentation by Stephen Prentice, VP of Gartner, earlier this week.

I doubt that the concept of the homo economicus is very useful to analyze the behavior of avatars and their real life typists. My guess is that psychologists, anthropologists and philosophers have more insights to share. Desire and recognition by others may seem to be fuzzy concepts, but at the end of the day explain far better what really goes on in virtual worlds...

Rita J. King and Joshua S. Fouts of Dancing Ink Productions were last Monday on Metanomics to discuss the roles virtual worlds can play in global diplomacy and business. Discussing cultures is never easy, especially when it involves talking about God, so Rita explained. However Dancing Ink Productions ventures into projects such as Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds. It seems that virtual worlds can bring us a degree of mental liberty which makes dialogue between cultures more easy.
In yet another example of discussion across borders volunteer Jane2 McMahon of Netroots Nation talked about what this progressive politics organization does in Second Life. Jane is Canadian, but this does not prevent her from participating in discussing US politics.
These discussions reminded me of the concept of virtual citizenship, which I discovered in a paper written by Cory Ondrejka, the former Chief Technological Officer of Linden Lab. Maybe at some time in the future it will not only be possible to run virtual corporations (incorporated in the state of Vermont), but also to become a real "virtual citizen"...

I started exploring Second Life about a year ago. One of the main reasons I decided to stay was Metanomics. The show also helped me explain to colleagues and friends why Second Life could be interesting: creating platforms for cosmopolitan intellectual discussions, a place where cultures can meet, a place for concrete collaboration.

At first I just watched the show, passively. After a few times I could not resist the temptation to use the backchat to participate in the live commentary by the audience.

The inevitable happened: after a while I started to talk privately to other members of the audience, only to discover Metanomics is not just a show, but a community. I got acquainted and befriended to quite a few avatars, but I was in for a big surprise...

Last Monday I had the opportunity to bring the Connecting the Dots item for the Metanomics show. I decided to connect one of the main themes of the show, global diplomacy and relations between cultures, with my own experiences covering the opening of the Swedish Embassy in Second Life and with my fascination for the "deconstruction"-technique which I learned from the French philosopher Jacques Derrida.

[Note from the editor: Don't let the mention of Derrida put you off. As I said to Roland after the show: Congratulations on being the first one to refer to Derrida on Metanomics, and one of the few in any forum to do so, and still be intelligible! --Rob B.]

Last Monday Manpower celebrated its first anniversary in Second Life with a virtual conference about The Virtual Workforce. Archives and links for this event can be found at on this site. It made me wonder about the state of the virtual labor market, all the more so because Chairman Philip Rosedale of Linden Lab said that the price of labor in Second Life seems to move upwards.

So, what supply and demand factors determine prices on the virtual labor market? I use a number of elements of the Manpower conference, adding my own observations and thoughts.

Virtual worlds are all around us these days. Google launched its Lively virtual environment (yes, Metanomics has a room there), Metanomics will cover the Rocketon world and there was the Linden Lab-IBM interoperability announcement. Avatars were teleported from the Second Life Preview Grid into a virtual world running on an OpenSim server.

While M Linden (CEO Mark Kingdon of Linden Lab) did not focus on interoperability in his recent letter to the residents, avatar Zero Linden (vice-president Joe Miller of Linden Lab) unveiled some of the ambitions of his company regarding interoperability and the metaverse in a Reuters' interview. In the story it is said that:

The Linden Dollar, with a years-long reputation of solid financial backing, may be positioned to become the gold standard of virtual currencies.

A great ambition for the Linden dollar, which for the Linden Lab officials and the Terms of Service is just a product feature and a fictional currency.