Inflection Point?
Back in June, beta testers successfully teleported an avatar called Ruth from Second Life to an OpenSim server. Brian White, who also blogs at Virtual White, writes about how this transfer technology is evolving in MIT Technology Review. To my mind, this is a very significant development, that of virtual worlds interoperability.
Interoperability allows a person to maintain their avatar across worlds, a bit like OpenID does for websites. This is an important first step towards creating a truly navigable virtual terrain and is likely in the long run to be viewed as an inflection point in the rapid evolution of virtual worlds. Extrapolating from the current situation, within five to ten years use of virtual worlds will make the Metaverse look puny by comparison.
I’m currently researching the likely security implications of this expansion, which are considerable, but more on that at a later date. Roderick Jones is doing similar work and in a recent Metasecurity post asks when do virtual threats become real? I would argue that virtual threats are real and that our ideas of what constitutes violence require modification.
It might look clunky now but this is the future:
Ruth arrives on an OpenSim server.
