Okay, so you’re a nerd, right? You’ve heard of the concept of the Metaverse, yeah?
Yeah, okay, maybe not.
Go read Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson. If you don’t have time to wait, it’s basically a digital world where people can create and mod anything allowed by the rules of the world. Some people compare it to the (shudder) Matrix, and, I suppose in a broad sense that’s true but (and it’s a big but) participants in a metaverse understand that they’re in a consensual reality and a lot of who you are in that reality is wrapped up in what cool stuff you contribute back to that reality.
We have primitive metaverses right now: Second Life and There are two well-known examples. Purists would argue that these worlds have more in common with the Matrix than with the Metaverse because participants aren’t actually free to do anything they want and they have to pay for the experience. I tried Second Life and, while intriguing, it ran like crap on my PowerBook and had a painful interface. So, what’s a nerd to do?
Sourceforge is hosting an open source metaverse project. It’s pretty bare bones at the moment but this open source stuff has a tendency to grow fast when demand is high. I think demand might just be high for this. The developers are aiming at creating a metaverse standard similar to the standard that governs the web. Eventually anyone will be able to run their own metaverse server that, I assume, will have the ability to hook into other people’s servers allowing users to skip from areas within a world or to different worlds entirely.
Exciting stuff, truly.
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Told Flip about this yet? She might do a pretty spifty job on the graphics (or other) parts if she puts her pubescent mind to it.
Pooh