If you ever happen to be on Second Life and see this person, his name is Scottk Telling. In other words, this is me. I have been spending more time in the synthetic world lately and thought I would offer a few observations just as an update. Without a lot of fanfare, virtual worlds are growing quickly around the world and it we will be updating you constantly on the progress. Sure, this is a pretty future leaning subject, and yes, most people are still trying to figure out what it all means in the real world, we are convinced that in our lifetimes it will have as powerful an impact as the Web in general.

For now, let’s just look at the current state. The first thing you would notice is that it is a pretty complicated process to figure out how Second Life works. It is vastly more complicated than one might suspect. It must be learned in stages. First you have to figure out how to move around, then how to dress, then how to talk and finally, how to deal with Linden Dollars in order to buy things. The second thing I learned is though only a few years old, there is a tribal set of rules forming around what is acceptable. Many real world rules apply – for example, keep your clothes on in public places, and be polite to strangers. Then there are the differences… It is not difficult to copy the code from a building someone else has built in order to construct you own.  Advertisements can be put on walls so that you can buy products simply by touching the screen. I am actually somewhat surprised that we are not seeing more written on the social aspects of how a new world of sorts develops under a new set of physics and social rules.

The next thing one must learn is how to buy land, build buildings, and furnishings. There are constant auctions, and a busy market of buying and selling all of the above. In this other world, you not only buy the land, but also a certain amount of “prims” that come with the land in order to build whatever it is you want to build on the land. Since land is a restricted commodity, there are the normal market forces involved, including land disputes that have ended up in the real world courts. I know what you are thinking, where is this land? Can it really have value if you can’t touch it and feel it? I suppose the same could have been said about Website names 12 years ago. Today, some of those properties are selling for millions of dollars, e.g. business.com. And one more interesting thing, you may a monthly fee just to hold the land even after you purchased it. I am OK with this since Linden Labs needs get revenue to keep improving the environment.

The scary thing about that comment is that the Chinese have no such issue. The government is funding the building of their synthetic world and that makes me nervous because I suspect that they will progress much faster than the US. While this may mean nothing to people in the US today, it could be devastating in the future is the Chinese end up owning the virtual world that everyone works in.

Cool site of the Day: – this is the Chinese virtual world – at least take a look at the front page and see what they are doing… http://www.hipihi.com/

Scott