I was just wondering what you "techies" knew about secondlife.com and other virtual world websites. Do you see this as the future trend and what all do you know about stuff like this. I know some but not much as I am new to it.

Virtual environments of one sort or another have existed for decades; it was inevitable that one or more of them would get to this level eventually.

In general, I prefer not to participate - I simply don't have the time at this point - but I endorse the concept: where does it say that we have to spend our entire lives in one single world?

Yeah, I knew they existed for years such as the "SIMS", etc. but the level that they are at now just blew me away. I did not know such things existed as they do. I've been reading about them quite a bit today and am blown away with the whole concept and what people are doing out there. I was introduced to the idea by my church who recently started a beta campus on SL. I found out about it coming across a blog. For more info you can see the lifechurch.tv thread in the religion section of this website.

windowphobe or others, do you see this trend continuing and becoming the norm? even for businesses, etc.? I was blown away how much time people are spending in virtual worlds and what they are doing there.

This following excerpt is from a techy blog: You can even pay real money to get virtual money that can be spent on virtual land and other virtual things. In the last 24 hours over $1.5 million in real money was spent on Second Life! That’s truly astounding!

I thought the secondlife idea was cool until I realized it cost me real money. No thanks.

Inevitably, the IRS is trying to figure out how to snag some tax revenue from SecondLife and other such places. (Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, H&R Block now has a SecondLife presence.)

I think eventually (perhaps not within my lifetime) it will be possible to stay in a virtual world 16/7. (You gotta sleep sometime.)

How about a firstlife?
Get a First Life: A One Page Satire of Second Life

__________________
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind
Albert Einstein

That's funny!

CMSturgeon you can SecondLife for free and create a free account, that is what I have done. windowphobe do you think these virtual worlds will evolve into more sensory perceptions or perhaps virtual holographs, etc.???

Both are in the works, although not at industrial-strength levels. There's a piece in Wired this month about a sort of acquired synaesthesia: you train your senses to respond to stimuli otherwise outside their purview.

got a link to the Wired article? I also understand that voice commands/chat are coming soon to metaverses such as secondlife. additionally mtv, dell, microsoft, and others already have a retail presence on secondlife.com.

Here's your link:
Wired 15.04: Mixed Feelings

We're in for some fascinating times ahead, although I suspect the real fun begins about the time I shuffle off this mortal coil.

LA Times had a story on Second Life, including the emergence of virtual churches like LifeChurch.tv's presence in that virtual community.

My favorite quote from that article:

This is just too The Matrix for me. I will stay away.

Eventually you will probably have to stay away from most sites on the internet because it is slowly evolving this way. Even your basic websites you will "Virtually" navigate through them, just like you would in real life.

After reading about it, I've signed up for a free account and played around in it for a bit. Really, I'm just lost. I'm not sure what there is to do that makes this so fun. I don't have any money (lindens?) and I don't know how to make any so I guess I'm a secondlife hobo.

It's not really my thing though - I was never into Sims or any of the Everquest types of games so, "meh".

__________________
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind
Albert Einstein

I'm 100% in the same place you are, MadMonk, on this whole thing. I just don't get it.

Not only commercial activity - I found out yesterday that IRS is looking into the real money exchanges going on through secondlife. Money laundering, anyone?

__________________
Unions - the folks who brought you weekends!
Proud Army Mom

Not really feasable. The money is one-sided. players "buy" items in game for real money. No way to launder that money and give it back.
They just want to see who is making money (billion dollar a year industry, virtual trading) and if they are reporting the income properly.

The bulk of them are Chinese, it is a huge industry there for college students, who get paid by the company by the in game monetary unit. Say they get $5 that day if they meet the 5000 gold piece quota.

You mean linden? I'm not sure what you really mean. You can spend real life dollars as someone said and convert them to linden. You can them purchase stuff for real life on second life. You can do your taxes in the virtual HR Block and rumor has it you can file your taxes next year on SL with the IRS.