Online spaces: The new frontier

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The "Virtual Worlds--The Rules of Engagement" event is just the latest in a series of conferences and symposiums covering the social, economic and legal issues surrounding online games and virtual worlds.

Others have included State of Play, held each fall at New York Law School, the Austin Game Conference and the Metaverse Roadmap Summit, which will be held Friday and Saturday in Palo Alto, Calif.

On Thursday, there were more than a dozen venture capitalists in the room, a clear sign that investors are looking at virtual worlds as real opportunities to make money.

Some here argued that the view of virtual worlds as potentially profitable ventures makes a conference like this much more attractive than it could have been even a year ago. One attendee even said he thought the conference couldn't have happened at all until very recently, a sign that people beyond the inner circles of virtual-world companies are taking the space more and more seriously.

And part of that is what appears to be a real willingness by those deep in the virtual-world community to examine what they need to do to make online games, as well as metaverses like "Second Life," more attractive to mass audiences. Which brings the talk around to the massively successful MySpace.

While virtual-worlds enthusiasts acknowledge that MySpace and its ilk aren't games, and aren't virtual worlds the way that "WoW," "EverQuest," "Second Life" and others are, they do feel that the sense of community developed through virtual spaces means there are more similarities than many would think.

"I think MySpace is definitely a virtual world," said Reuben Steiger, CEO of a start-up called Millions of Us that hopes to build a business around creating dynamic projects in "Second Life" and other 3D environments. "Things like MySpace, which are big flourishing communities--what they lose in 3D experience, they make up in high degree of interoperability."

Steiger said that he'd like to see the spectrum of virtual worlds--"Second Life," "WoW," MySpace and so forth--move closer together by adding tools on each side that can give users more choices, more ability to interact on meaningful three-dimensional levels and more social-networking elements.

The more the tools, the greater the flexibility people will find in virtual worlds. That's important, Ito suggested, because such flexibility could give people the scope to engage in complex interactions regardless of whether they feel like going questing in a game like "WoW," hanging out in "Second Life" or having simple text chats as they can with instant messaging.

All told, he explained, such a wide variety of options for communications gives people what he called "polychromic time," the ability to have ongoing persistent conversations with many different people, independent of applications and time.

In the end, the conference Thursday was not a place where people were discussing any particular big new ideas. Instead, it was a forum where a number of ongoing conversations that have been held at a collection of previous events coalesced under one roof. And to those in attendance, the very fact that people are willing to continue those conversations and take these issues seriously is a very important thing.

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"GOT MILK?"

Flesh for fantasy! moving right along.....I should have stopped at the Mercedes dealer. I always forget to answer my email with a return stamp on it; sorry!

[209979377489953107664053243186]

where's the security rise to match that of online social networking

The increase in network technologies enable us, for better or worse, to have constant and mobile connectivity. With this increased level of communication (and subsequent increased vulnerabilities), there should come increased
responsibility for protecting information. Constantly "on" communication brings not only possible remote security issues but a certainty that issues will arise. If you look at current security issues statistics, it is inevitable that hackers will follow the social networking trend along with everybody else.
http://www.essentialsecurity.com/educationalfacts.htm

[209979377489953107664053243186]

where's the security rise to match that of online social networking

The increase in network technologies enable us, for better or worse, to have constant and mobile connectivity. With this increased level of communication (and subsequent increased vulnerabilities), there should come increased
responsibility for protecting information. Constantly "on" communication brings not only possible remote security issues but a certainty that issues will arise. If you look at current security issues statistics, it is inevitable that hackers will follow the social networking trend along with everybody else.
http://www.essentialsecurity.com/educationalfacts.htm