A Second Life Resident Named Cory Ondrejka Predicts the Future of Virtual Worlds

The Flying Spaghetti Monster remains among us!  Only now, he tells me, under a new name.  Once the Chief Technology Officer of the company that gave Second Life form, Cory Linden often visited the world as a wriggling ball of holy noodles.  His time with the company has passed, and because only staffers with Linden Lab can use the Linden surname for their avatars, he's joined the throng of civilian Residents under a new title:  "Cory Ondrejka".  (Which happens to be Cory's name in both realities.)  When he does go in-world from now on, he assures me, he'll still be the FSM (among other avatars.)  Which is a blessing, because SL without the Flying Spaghetti Monster would be a greatly diminished world. 

During his time with Linden, he began a yearly routine at Terra Nova, in which posted predictions for the coming year.  He's happily maintaining that tradition on his new blog, offering ten predictions for 2008.  None specifically involve Second Life, though several have strong and interesting relevance, among them:

- In Europe, virtual world content will increasingly fall under country of origin rules, greatly simplifying the European Union regulatory requirements.

- As the actors join the writers [in the WGA strike], more AAA content will be developed for machinima, virtual worlds, and the web as a way to give audiences fresh material without crossing picket lines

- By the end of 2008 I will be building or working on something as challenging and interesting as Second Life.

Read the rest and comment at his blog, Collapsing Geography.

Comments

[Laetizia Coronet]

So his SL name is Ondrejka, and yours is Au. Excuse me for spotting a difference here between those who crawl across the virtual earth without the benefit of having been a Linden, and those who have been 'up there'.
It's nothing personal against either of you, but in the end the whole name business has to change, charming as it is at the moment. So, a belated prediction for 08: the introduction of identity verification will lead to new residents having the option to use their own full name instead of a pick from the list.

[Hamlet Au]

I agree choosing a unique SL name should be an option available to all-- indeed, the Lindens said that was going to be a purchasable option in early 2007... by the end of the year:

http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2007/04/04/second-life-to-charge-for-right-to-customize-avatar-names

[Patric]

Is there any reason to believe that cyberspace isn't keeping pace with outer space? The more 'outward' we go it seems the more we are going inward, at least in processing power. I see the future of virtual worlds getting more and more complex as artificial intelligence takes a bigger role, and more submersive qualities take place, such as having your senses 'hooked up' to the machine--your eyes and ears and even your nose one day--enabling us to "be there" as it's happening in the cyber world.
By the time we colonize a planet it's reasonable to assume we will have figured out a way to transmit our entire *consciousness* to a virtual world. Perhaps even our DNA.
We are going in two different different at the same time.
It seems to be our destiny.
Therefore, I see all trends in 2008 as baby steps leading to this inevitability: We fully inhabit cyberspace one day, consciousness and all.

[Alexander Burgess]

Why are comments turned off on the Scion City post?

[GP]

Wow Patric, this is a great vision. We have a group in SL (and Facebook, and...) dedicated to discussing and exploring such visions:

http://transumanar.com/index.php/site/slt/sl_transhumanists/

Feel free to come visit and join.

[Extropia DaSilva]

'Therefore, I see all trends in 2008 as baby steps leading to this inevitability: We fully inhabit cyberspace one day, consciousness and all.'

If that were possible, it would make colonising the other planets rather redundant. A far more practical approach would be to dismantle the planets and use the matter to construct a vast cloud of nanocomputing platforms communicating with each other via photonic technology and powered by the solar energy of our star. It is estimated that a future Internet able to utilise the entire matter/energy budget of the solar system and structured to maximise information processing would have sufficient computing power to simulate the equivilent of 10 billion people for every star in a thousand galaxies.

Extropia DaSilva- not one to let the technical deficiencies of SL spoil her technological ambitions.