Web 4.0

Tweets mapped on Google Maps

Web 4.0 is going to be the next major extension of the Internet.  To date we have moved to Web 3.0, first putting data in the web, then social contacts, and now locations.  Now the web is growing in its factual basis, able to ask Who, What, Where, and When.  But there is still the necessary imagination of the user to ask Why and What If or Why Not?

A imaginary heaven in Second Life

The next logical step for the web is to combine the imaginative powers of creativity and virtual reality with the real world datas of facts.  To not only know what is happening where and by whom, but to be able to transform these facts in to what every creative visualizations we might have access to.   To not only be immersive in a augmented reality, but to be able to translate that augmented reality in to a augmented virtual reality where the real world and the imagined world are as intimately connected as they are in our minds.

A realistic model

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

Anaglyph Images from Second Life

Anaglyph Images from Second Life

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

Second Life not empty yet

Though there is not question that Second Life is having some difficult times, its not fair to say its empty yet.  Certainly you don't see the same level of mass crowds as in 2007 as thousands of ordinary people came in to see the future, but you still can see a good sized crowd at certain quality events.

The void of Second Life

This one picture I think tells the entire story about what is happening in Second Life.  The project of Second Life is clearly in trouble, but it has left a large reserve of skills that produce interesting virtual spaces, even when it is just a mass void for sale.

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

Is Second Life entering a Dark Age?

Second Life has experienced the closure of a lot of SIMs.  So the effort the generate a kind of cyber Empire made up of regions, Republics, and Kingdoms which were to be united in a single Empire of Linden Labs, a purely economic Empire where Linden Labs got rich by providing a platform which was to support millions of users, and a planet of virtual land to extend as vast as a planet, and perhaps even larger than a planet.

Well the great Empire Dream of Linden Lab is dying out.  That is not to say that virtual reality is dying, its just that right now the Second Life project is getting smaller and smaller.

But its interesting to see what is surviving.  As for activity the universe of SL is becoming more and more dominated by sexual play.  Which should not really be surprising.  The Internet almost always gets flooded with porn, after all what would you really want to watch on TV?  But its interesting to not the kinds of SIMs that seem to survive.

I have notice that the SIMs that survive are not only sexual, but also often Gorian or medieval with castles and AVs wearing Barbarian outfits.  It is almost like Second Life is entering a Dark Age, a world dominated by closed inbred communities, castles, and barbarians.

The collapsing SL looking more and more like Western Europe in 800 AD as imagined on the History Channel or some B rate pulp novels.  Does this mean anything?  Is it the way the players imagine decline?  Is it a social reality of declining social structures that they becomes fragmented, paranoid, and feudal, or is it the case that this kind of fantasy play which has always had the great appeal?

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

Clashnagrave Castle, Clashnagrave

Clashnagrave Castle, Clashnagrave, a well executed SIM in Second Life

Castles seem to be the primary form that is surviving the current great death of Second Life SIMs, probably the entire grid will look like Wizards of Warcraft in a year or two at this rate.

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

All mixed up in Second Life

Smaller project without the revenues from sex generally have to share islands with other projects, which make for some interesting and a bit mixed up islands.

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

Sex Moon on Second Life

This amazingly execute SIM is a hardcore bondage role play SIM.  One of the things I have noted in Second Life is that many of the best executed SIMs are sex sims.  Probably something very Freudian there.


Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

OccupySL

OCCUPY WALL STREET SECONDLIFE

Perhaps an Occupy movement in a place like Second Life does not make sense, Occupy is about people who normally contact online coming to together in the real world to effect real changes.  But this site is s good source of information. 

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

Its a very dirty island

Leggo My Preggo - Breeder Bondage Babes in Paradise

I would not feel comfortable showing you what goes on inside this SIM.  The long distance shot is perfect, the people who made this SIM has good reason to seek out privacy.

I am no prude in Second Life.  Consenting adults have the right to create what ever kind of pornographic performances they agree to.  Lets be honest, porn is very big on the Internet and Second Life helps people produce more interactive porn outside of the control of a production house or concerns of human trafficing or exploitation that dog online porn.

But there is a great deal of lurid attachment projected in to Second Life's space from the fantasy space of thousands of users.  In this way Second Life becomes a kind of shared dream space, a collective fantasy where the more primal desires of many users get played out.

In this way SL engages users in their fantasy lives, while TV on the other hand tends to distance people. We all have guilty TV shows we like.  I love to watch Sex in the City and 16 and Pregnant because I hate them so much.  We project emotions and desires in to TV and in this way we consume our own desires, we thus get the illusion of detachment from our desires.  Second Life on the other hand allows us to act out our desires, which mean we can't disown them and sometimes are forced to confess that the desires being acted out our our own.

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

SL 11-11-11

Remembrance Day touches the virtual world of Second Life.


Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

Pirats - Art Galleries, French make the best Sims

Pirats - Art Galleries, an French art project in Second Life.  French SIMs are often so well executed.  This one is artistically one of the best.

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

Shemales on the beach

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Abbey%20Island/118/132/45

The Abbey: Shemales, Demons, Pub, Dancing, Dungeon, Beach

The fact that bondage shemales on a beach have such a interesting and well execute SIM shows you how Second Life's virtual world is evolving outside of the media spotlight.  Long gone is the ugly virtual suburbs of endless ads.  Uncool Second Life is developing in to a rich complex environment.

Now for something beyond cybersex to do with it!

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

BBC News - World of Warcraft suffers subscriber slump

"Almost a million people have stopped paying for World of Wa

rcraft in the last three months.

The sharp drop in subscribers was revealed by Activision Blizzard during talks with analysts about its latest financial results.

At the end of September, WoW had about 10.3 million subscribers, down from 11.1 million at the end of June.

Experts put the decline down to competition from new titles but said WoW was still very resilient."

BBC News - World of Warcraft suffers subscriber slump

Though this can be read as more proof of the fall of Virtual Worlds as a viable business, and there is some of that in this, it can also be taken as proof of the rise of the overall virtual worlds market offering more people more options. So a limited number of hard core virtual world users have an ever growing range of options.

Creating World's with Open University

 

Sometimes  a very simple implementation of an idea brings home just how powerful that idea is.  There is a well established idea that building and using virtual worlds can be tools in education.  Open University Inspiring Worlds is a fun and easy  to use app which illustrates how we construct a world can help us understand what areas we would like to study and explore.

 

The simplicity of the tool really illustrates who virtual worlds can help us to find areas of interest.  Inspiring Worlds lets you build your own world.  You can fill this world with various icons and images which you can put in various relationships.  The tool will then analyse what you world says about your areas of interest.

This analyse is not the Facebook analyse were seemingly random links are thrown at you out of almost nowhere.  The two worlds I created really did reflect my own interests in life long learning.  I have taken courses in science, humanities and art, and I have a strong interest in sustainable development.


Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life