Tag Archives: idea of the day

Idea on the next generation of virtual worlds

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A thought just came to mind less than an hour ago: the upcoming decade will see virtual world networks (within the "3D web") which are much less emphasizing of the "world" aspect (as in the "outside" environment of Second Life) and much more emphasizing of interconnected "rooms" (a bit like IMVU, but where the user creates one’s own persistent room in which to store models and widgets and simply invites or is invited to other rooms through hyperlinks embedded within the room).

This came to mind as I thought about how the World Wide Web had evolved in the 1990s and 2000s. In the ’90s, the emphasis was laid upon allowing people to create their own custom homepages, with a variety of template arrangements, on a number of ad-supported or user-paid webhosts (Geocities, Tripod, Angelfire, Freewebs, .Mac, FurNation, Furtopia). In the 2000s, most attention was paid to the rise of social networking sites which, while increasingly restricting the ability to arrange visual cues and templates within the page (i.e., from MySpace to Facebook), allowed users to post a larger variety of content by streamlining user publication of webpages. 

So, if the variety of 3D virtual worlds continues to increase in the 2010s, I expect that the ability to create 3D spaces/rooms and post models into them will become further streamlined and automated, but the spaces will also become further boxed in and increasingly uncustomizable in the process. 

This dynamic room publication will also allow users to make as many rooms in the 3D WWW as there are pages on the 2D WWW.

Speech and thought bubbles in the 3D Web

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 I was thinking about the difference between synchronous and asynchronous computer-mediated communication, and how synchronous communication has been successfully ported to fleshed-out, CGI-heavy "virtual worlds" like Second Life and IMVU (hence the oft-used descriptor "glorified chatroom" in regards to such virtual worlds).

Apparently, because of the enduring popularity and expanding capability of the World Wide Web, it isn’t likely that we’ll see a big move to a "3D Web" anytime soon, at least not in the way that we’ve seen such massive movements from text-driven mediums such as MU*s and (IRC, Yahoo, MSN, AIM) chat rooms to the modern-day virtual worlds. However, if synchronous text and voice chat have become mainstays of most active or ongoing MMOGs such as SL and WoW, then why is it that asynchronous communication – that which relies upon "boards" to contain persistent messages – has not been successfully reimagined in a 3D, CGI-heavy context? And what would a 3D Web look like?

I would think that the first measure to accomplish in the fleshout (or avatarization?) of asynchronous communication would be to flesh out the "pages" which are used to contain submitted information. Pages are text-centric documents, are presented as flat, 2D objects onto which information is appended, are encoded with a wide variety of strategically-placed visual cues (or "GUI elements") which allow for the web browser to perform just as wide of a variety of actions, and are accessed through devices which are best designed to interact with flat, 2D objects, i.e., keyboards and computer mice.

So a few ideas spring to mind:

  • Replace hyperlinked documents with hyperlinked speech bubbles/clouds
  • Augment text with 3D-native visual communication systems which drive any one person’s thoughts directly to the user without losing anything in translation or clarification.
  • Flesh the bubbles out into a 3D visualization
  • Design a variety of stationary or dynamic GUI elements which provide for smooth navigation between 3D speech bubbles.
  • Promote 3D-centric navigatory input devices

I think that Ted Nelson, the man behind the Xanadu project (also called "the longest running vaporware story in the history of the computer industry" by Wired magazine in 1996), might be right in his contention that Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s implementation of the WWW was a well-intentioned, much-too-document-centric oversimplification of his own ideas on hypertext. So perhaps a re-visualization of how we interact with asynchronous communication tools could lead to a translation of what we’ve placed into the 2D Web into a 3D structure that is much more fleshed-out and tangible.

I will think more about this idea for a 3D Web in the future.

Sentience + ARToolKit = AR done right

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sentience is a software library that allows for robotic stereo vision using stereo webcams (like Minoru 3D, which is of British origin despite its Japanese name), and is written in C#. Meanwhile, ARToolKit is one of the most widely-employed augmented reality software frameworks (and is also, like sentience, FOSS). 

Continue reading Sentience + ARToolKit = AR done right →

Idea: Secessive referenda

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 I have an idea for future referenda, at least on the state level:

If a state has a referendum/initiative and at least 30-40% of the registered voting residents of the state vote in favor of the losing opinion, then the areas in which the losing opinion is strongest should be guaranteed the right to secede from the state and not be subjected to the majority opinion.

I think that such a referendum would work best to settle acrimonious debates which split an entire population without resulting in bloodshed or violent disenfranchisement at the local level, as has happened in a large portion of referenda which have been held in the U.S. and other countries. I also think that it is a more procedural, cleaner process by which minorities’s opinions are protected from outright dismissal by a tyranny of the popular vote or tyranny of the court; we wouldn’t have to bring up such movements as that of KnowThyNeighbor.org and its anti-LGBT counterparts, and we wouldn’t have to hear the whinging of the other side over potential petitioner intimidation.

Tabbed browsing in Second Life

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I think that tabbed browsing, which has worked wonders for web browsing (and may work similar wonders in file navigation), can be a feasible, necessary addition to the desktop clients of virtual worlds like Second Life. Rather than the single-tasking that forces a user to view only one persistent virtual world location at a time within the client, tabbed navigation of the virtual world can allow the user, through the user’s avatar, to glide effortlessly between the tabs which contain open locations; the indication of presence can also follow the user between the tabs, allowing other users to know when the user’s avatar is in the tab or not.

This sort of browsing, which can also be applied to virtual earth clients such as Google Earth, can also allow the user to open other locations with a simple middle-click of a teleport link, which will then open in a separate, adjacent tab. This can also be deemed as opening separate instances within the client.

Tabbed browsing of virtual worlds may result in greater capabilities for user multitasking, and can allow for users to WYSIWYGially drag copies of virtual objects from one location in a tab to another location in a separate tab, alot like text links in Firefox.

LiveJournal-MediaWiki integration?

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 I’ve finally gotten the Navbox template done on WikiFur.

Also, I think that a MediaWiki extension that utilizes a LiveJournal code base is possible and replete with potential benefits, although it may be more for integration of LiveJournal’s core features into MediaWiki in the form of user and community blogs (with the obvious utilization of wikitext in blog posts and comments).

Finally, what relevance does augmented reality have to brain-computer interfaces? I have glanced over multiple articles where the two are included as examples of virtual reality interaction, but I honestly haven’t seen where the two can be relevant to each other. At best, I can assume that any combination of AR and (two-way?) BCI can result in something like what I saw in Denno Coil and its concept of "Imago".

Predominant themes in DC and Marvel Comics

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I’ve noticed that DC and Marvel have historically tended to derive their characters’ abilities from sources which are, more or less, specific to the companies and predominant as themes in their published works. DC’s supercharacters’ abilities have mostly been derived from various supernatural and/or otherworldly non-human phenomena (Superman, Womer Woman, Hawkgirl), while Marvel’s supercharacters’ abilities have mostly been derived from mutogenetic and/or otherworldy human phenomena (Spider-Man, X-Men, The Hulk).

Is it because Marvel, the younger and more financially-troubled of the two rivals, has historically sought to bring a predominately-human, predominately-current feel to the supercharacter, or is it because DC, the elder and more conservative rival, wanted to sandbox its supercharacters within almost entirely alternative histories and realities which are similar to ours but have much more of a fantastical and fictionally-flexible atmosphere for the writers?

As per above, the "superworlds" of the two companies are different: Marvel mostly retains real-world communities like New York and Washington, while DC creates such alternate-but-similar communities as Metropolis and Gotham City.

Heck, that may be a partial rationale for why Marvel also went the extra mile to bring pre-inauguration Obama in as himself in the current Spider-Man title (he did give Spidey a ringing endorsement), while no similar move came from DC’s running publications.

But back to the main question. If Marvel sought to push the superhuman into a greater quantitative status over the average supercharacter, then what will the next big comic publisher bring to the table?

Maybe, for that next publisher, the Internet and networking media will play a role within the framing of a fictional reality (or fictional virtuality, if you will), where the hubs of the Web and the so-called "Metaverse" will become framed as stages for superhuman ("superavatar"?) action, drama and wonder.