In 2006, IBM Wrongly Predicted a 3D Internet by 2011 - But Thanks to Kinect, Social Games & AR, Not Totally Wrong

Toward the end of 2006, IT Business helpfully reminds us, IBM published a technology forecast which you can read here [.pdf link]. Among the "five innovations that will change the way we live over the next five years" was this confident prediction: "There will be a 3-D Internet". As the report puts it:

But after being Second Life's most prominent corporate booster, with an in-world campus that was once the focus of real world labor protests, IBM has all but left Second Life. The problem, Douglas Heintzman of IBM's Lotus division says now, is Second Life “needed to map back onto first life much more immediately.” (Which is to suggest it has not significantly done so yet.)

Does this mean IBM was totally wrong? At first I'd say Big Blue's departure from SL proves that is the case. But looking at broader trends going on beyond Second Life, I'd instead say this: The 3-D Internet is steadily emerging now, but not how IBM originally predicted.

Consider:

• Thanks in large part to the iPhone, Augmented Reality is fairly quickly becoming a mass market technology, which depicts the 3D Internet not in a standalone world like Second Life, but layered on top the real world.
• Microsoft's Kinect is gaining rapid adoption, bringing mainstream acceptance to a new model of interacting online that is literally 3D, conveying your physical gestures and facial expressions onto the Internet.
• Thanks to rapid growth of social games, which count at least 200 million users on Facebook alone, the concept of virtual goods and avatars in a shared, digitally simulated space -- three essential aspects of the 3D Internet -- are already mass market.

So while it's safe to say IBM was wrong on the time frame and the deployment platform, we're certainly much closer to a kind of 3D Internet being important to the broader Net. So IBM deserves some credit for the forecast. Somewhat ironically, however, IBM isn't leading the development or adoption of that 3D Internet - at the moment, credit for that belongs more squarely to Apple, Microsoft, and Zynga.

Comments

[Tateru Nino]

I remember that report. Whoever wrote it originally apparently had a bit of trouble getting their history right, so I'm not so surprised that the predictions aren't sound either.

[Steve Memotech]

What about this Gartner prediction? http://www.slideshare.net/licoreis/avatars-in-the-working-environment-perfect How did it fare?

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

I'll take that flying car and lunar vacation I was promised by Popular Science in 1968, Mr. Au.

[Extropia DaSilva]

Something like this, Ignatius?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo0MEQSGW8w

[Dizzy Banjo]

Agreed, the prediction is sort of correct if you translate it to todays technology and experience design paradigms. I believe that the current incarnation of the 3d web is a sort of mongrel descendant virtual worlds and other converging technologies.

However one thing that's interesting for me in that translation are words like "remote". I think the current wave of AR / 3d internet overlay technology is much more focused on providing services and information tailored for the local / individual. It struggles to deal with remote interactions - or perhaps developers are just no longer trying to implement them.

Virtual / Immersive environments are very good at facilitating remote 3d shared experiences and collaboration, but often mean that the user is physically 'alone' and ( through the act of immersion ) quite detached from their physical environment.

On the other hand, mobile / augmented applications seem to make the user extremely connected to their physical environment but loosely / asynchronously connected to a remote community.

Perhaps these remote abilities are the USP which differentiate virtual environments from their augmented virtual offspring.

[Stone Semyorka]

If only Linden Lab management had been capable of taking Second Life to the next level. If only IBM in this century had been a visionary mover rather than a lumbering giant. If only somebody with visionary thinking and corresponding 21st century management and development capabilities had bought LL back in '08. If only . . .

[bongo]

same prediction in 1996... ibm hotmedia....
predictions not, marketing yes. yoda

[Arcadia Codesmith]

To become the metaverse, the virtual world needs to grow to critical mass and become a de facto standard for interaction.

Second Life has backed itself into a corner by selling land to middlemen rather than directly to residents. This ties them to an ultimately unsustainable revenue model that has already hit a hard plateau, and puts the space to develop anything really interesting at a price point far beyond what most amateur developers can afford.

Consequently, it's become next to impossible to attact and retain anything that's not a hardcore commercial venture... and even commercial ventures are eying cheap OpenSim real estate and weighing that against potential sales figures. Break-even in SL is a looooooong road...

I've said it before and I'll say it again -- if I were running Linden Lab, I'd be working on Third Dimension or Third World or Third Base, a new VW with no backward compatibility worries, integrated state-of-the-art creation tools, physics and rendering engines that scream rather than whimper, and a land system that values epic vision and innovation more than the thickness of a person's wallet.

And while it'd be a hell of a lot of hard work to create something like that by myself in my bedroom, if these deep-pocket dolts don't step up to the plate, I just might.

Don't mess with a Codesmith.

[Gary Hayes]

Don't think it is fair to pick on a small company like IBM and its predictive abilities - we all get it right but mostly wrong.

I think though we are still in a transitional renaissance less to do with tech, companies or one or two services (eg: early clunky virtual worlds) but more to do with a shift in user behaviour towards Experiential Needs - covered in this post http://www.personalizemedia.com/the-value-of-experiential-new-augmented-worlds/