My Predictions for 2011

As I've mentioned before, I have ESP, but it's kind of a low-grade partial short-term ESP that doesn't always work so well -- kind of like Second Life itself. No matter, it's the enthusiasm that counts with us amateur clairvoyants, so here I am again making predictions for 2011, or rather, just giving you a report on the actual contours of the time continuum that I can actually see ahead, sometimes as a kind of coiled spring that might uncoil this way or that...

First, what I got right about my 2010 predictions:

1. Not only will LL not opensource the server code it will put in a fairly stringent set of rules for third-party viewers.

I went on as you can see explaining how these opensource thugs would fork and continue their criminality, and boy was I right, the Lindens *did* put in strict rules; they used them to permaban Emerald. And that was that. Most users then switched to Phoenix, where they continue to experience problems, such as Voice crapping out.

3. The teen grid will be closed.

No special need for ESP on that one, with concurrency at...300. And about 300 islands. It was ridiculous. And merging is ridiculous, too, because it's a handful of people. Most teens don't fancy a game that has no purpose, money, jobs or anything they can use to really rapidly have fun and socialize. SL is not for kids.

5. Community Partnership Program will quietly be retired or backburned, and instead Lindens will offer any community that can get the accounts to sign up and retain a $5 per recruitment fee

Well, half right there. Community Partnership closed, but there isn't any sign-up bonus.

6. A senior Linden will return to the fold (I admit having something more on ESP to go on here).

The Linden I figured would return did, and so did Philip.

9. Nothing will happen to Twitter.

Now what I got wrong:

7. The Lindens will not only make an application for the i-Phone, which is "where it's at", they will get into the Augmented Reality business

I'm moving that to 2011 predictions -- just a minute.

11. The Lindens will move land sales to a web interface like Xstreet -- and take a commission

Whew, we dodged that bullet. I hope I'm not putting any ideas into their pointy heads.

12. Philip Rosedale's "Send Love" Love Machine concept will get venture capital funding

I don't know *what* I was smoking on that one...

8. Augmented Reality will become the hugest thing

Again -- move to 2011. So here we go:

1. Augmented Reality will become the Next Big Thing  as I've been writing on my Wired State blog, citing Vernor Vinges. Tish Shute and co. have been crowing about this for ages, they long since dumped virtual worlds to go make AR widgets and gadgets.

See, Augmented Virtual got a lot easier once you stopped trying to put it into some stupid clunky googles, and just put it all  on our phones. (Second Life had the misfortune to traverse that epiphany of dropping the goggles and going to a screen before the advent of smart-phones). 

Sso it will be everywhere before you know it, and already is in a lot of places. The drug store where I do my regular shopping has a stand now that says AUGMENTED REALITY CARDS. These are birthday and Christmas cards and such that you can buy, open up near a computer that has a web cam to see a chip in them, and it makes a little guy seem to come out of your computer and dance or something. Or it interacts with some page on the Internet doing stuff. So it's already mass culture. If the Times Tech pages are already popularizing it, if the CVS pharmacy already has it, if i-phones have it, it will start to become uniquitous in ways virtual worlds never, ever will and never will be, until suddenly everything will in fact be a virtual world, and then all that VW stuff might come in hand again.

2. The Lindens will somehow get into Augmented Reality along with a browser game. OK, how will they do that? We all get that downloaded worlds and even browser worlds aren't the same as AR. But by having a pet game or pet...shall we call it..."capacity"...on a browser on an iphone, say, being able to display your SL pets on your iphone and feed them from your iphone or something, and of course, connected to some Facebook display miniworld or something, we will get there.All the Lindens have to do is to do the same thing various training pet toys are already doing, hooking up real-life toys to the Internet. Once you can use your iphone or webcame eye to train it on reality, and then have something in reality that triggers something inside a virtual world, you will have virtual worlds on the super metaversal highway of relevance again.

The marrying of the virtual world app with the smart-phone app, how could it look? I don't know, I'm thinking about it still. A visit to a RL museum, a scan of your ticket to show your teacher you were there, a sketch of an Old Master, a scan and a display of it inside SL on shared media -- the depths of the virtual interactive space have not been plumbed.

OK, I'm mixing up browser, Facebook, etc. And that's just it. What is augmented reality, anyway? It's stuff overlayed over reality. It's going to a scene in real life, and seeing through the viewer on your pone elements of it that are pre-tagged and display as information or commentary (that's why Google is taking pictures of everybody's streets, see). It's what we have called "mixed reality" with virtual worlds and real scenes -- isn't the real scene augmented by the virtual reality? Is the only reason nobody is yet saying that about "mixed reality" is because it isn't on an i-phone yet?

I have LOTS of question about that, of course, and not the kind Tish and friends have, generally, because the people who get to code and write the copy for the interface are going to win, like they win when they write negative hotel reviews on Yelp.

3. Web GPL will seem like the Next Big Thing, but not really be. There will be lots of geeky, edupunk and tech blogger bloviation about it, but it isn't the same as an interactive world, and once people realize you can't quite shop there yet, nor do that other stuff like have pets and cybersex (in that order), it will not be SUCH a big thing, but still, preoccupy everybody, and loads of SL cynics will say, "See? We told you so. Virtual world technology is obsolete". More coming on this in the next post.

4. Philip will come back to Second Life, and do something with artificial intelligence (pets or flowers or something). This is all connected. I am the Sun. You are the Moon. We must all bathe in Beingness.

5. Second Life will not be go public; it will not merge; it will not be bought out. It will just go on bumbling along. Someone will have decided that the new guy from the Sims (EA.com) should be given a year to turn it around, so he will have that year. Good!

6. Search will not be fixed. Boy, you sure don't need ESP for that one! And here's my prediction for 3-5 years from now: Google will buy just the search for virtual worlds and games and create some Youtube like property where there is search for virtual goods to buy. Google takes over everything. They can't have helped but notice that Second Life is the only new media/virtual world/thingie that makes any money -- all the other things, including their own Youtube, lose money. So they will figure out that all these Farmvilles and Sims and Second Life and Blue Mars and stuff needs a marketplace that manages the economies better than they are managed by the clunky searches inside these worlds -- it will embrace gold-farming not as an aberration, but as opportunity. So they don't have to buy Linden Lab or Second Life itself, they just have to buy its search or marketplace.

7. SionChicken's Sion Zaius will either make a comeback or will be bought out and the new owner will emerge to create v. 14 (he would have to skip the unlucky v. 13) with new capacities and rares. The company will merely send one legal letter to the other breedables that he is claiming his patent and all the other lawsuits like Ozimal and Amaretto will collapse.

8. Dusan Writer will sell or pass on Metanomics to another owner or close it, and won't leave SL exactly, but will announce some Augmented Reality related story-telling business.

9. Dave Winer, the Calyx guy, Doug Rushkoff, and even Tim Berners-Lee, plus a lot of "progressives" from Daily Kos, the Nation, and Huffpo, will create and populate a new Darknet to get away from evil corporations that "place a chill on free speech" blah blah. Mitch Kapor will pay for it for awhile. Nobody much will show up. It won't have shopping. It may only have WikiLeaks. It will be DAMN boring. Also, no pets.

10.  And speaking of places without shopping, the edu sims will fail on OpenSim and Hypergrid will not grow by much. Few people will populate them. They will not have audiences. They won't be fun. They will not have any commerce or community beyond the same tired politically-correct librarians and opensource geeks. Meanwhile, those edu sims that stayed in SL proper will do better.

11. Mesh will be implemented too soon, badly, and will be buggy and laggy. It will flush into SL some of the 3d swiped stuff out there, but it won't sell much. A middle class that already has an inventory in prims may not budge on buying Mesh.

12. The high-end merchant class will be certified and offered faster cashouts, faster response time on complaints about copyright theft, access to discount or free advertising, and other perks, most likely streaming of the newbie signups, possibly through a chit-earning strategy that will have games or skill contests for newbies that pay them chits to use in select merchants' shops. LL will cash out these chits at some certain rate if merchants are above some certain volume of sales and cashouts already. Some caper like this.

I may think of some more soon.

 

 

Comments

[Cinder Roxley]

"11. Mesh will be implemented too soon, badly, and will be buggy and laggy."

andrew linden mentioned mesh shipping in early 2011. i don't know how stable that is, when i tried the mesh project viewer, it crashed in about ten minutes of idling though.

https://lists.secondlife.com/pipermail/opensource-dev/2010-December/004991.html

[Darien Caldwell]

I kinda had to laugh at #7, since nobody can patent pets. He may "merely send one legal letter" if he likes, but it won't stop anyone. GM may as well try to stop everyone else from building cars. They would have a better chance.

[Dimitrio Lewis]

Speaking of pets, I really hope the free market will take hold in 2011 and one or more creators will begin selling breedable pets that cost almost nothing to feed and keep. Prices will be forced down dramatically and any business that continues trying to extort money out of our residents will fail.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

The DMCA process cannot be sped up unless LL hires more lawyers. It is a legal process and requires lawyers. You cannot get around the requirement a lawyer looks at the DMCA and counter DMCA filings. It is simply not possible to speed it up.

However I agree LL will cull the merchant herd and limit the right to business to their select few friends. Then they will be investigated for racketeering and money laundering. The pressure will not be let up once LL shits on so many people. The police community is already openly discussing the problem of the south american drug cartels easily using SL for a laundry machine. There is only one solution to this of course. Change to the xbox model where LL sells your content for you, takes 50%, and mails you a check once a quarter for what they think they owe you. The entire "land and rental" business in SL has to be totally eliminated to get rid of the money laundering problem.

People thought this was a joke: http://blogs.secondlife.com/thread/53231?tstart=15#53231

It wasn't.

Happy New Year

[Quenya Jinx]

Yawn.

[Darien Caldwell]

"People thought this was a joke: http://blogs.secondlife.com/thread/53231?tstart=15#53231"

No they thought it was retarded. And it is. I like how every post you do is about someone getting investigated for Racketeering and such. You're really starting to come off like a crazy person.

Check yourself before you wreck yourself. (too late maybe?)

[melponeme_k]

In regards to Love Machine.

The stuff I read out there on the net in past articles and on the website indicates that Rosedale has something bigger in mind then pets.

[Prokofy Neva]

Hint to melponeme: *we're* the pets. sionchicken was just a trial run...

@Ann -- well, DMCA notices can be sped up by first reading them and acting on them pre-emptively for those special certified merchants, eh? They could do it that way. Plus, if they decide to create this in a sense in-house designer stable, they may add the lawyers as needed.

As for investigating in racketeering, um...have you looked to see who is running the FCC and who is at the FTC? These are California biz model technocommunists, essentially. They're safe there! As for trying to get some RICO charge, hmm, they're a private company that created a system to outsource design work. Whatever. Even if they have to send out 1099s, they will get around it. There won't be that many. Less than 2,000, right? Look at the old PMLF numbers.

South American drug cartels?! Wouldn't it kinda be like trying to launder your drug money through a soda straw? With all the difficulties in SL. You'd have to buy islands, hassle with them, or even just set up a store, then cash out and lose a lot. There are lots betters way, no? I'm not an expert. It seems far-fetched.

[Magnet Homewood]

Not bad predictions, the only one I wil add is, Prok will publish the FIC 2.7 list in 2011 lol yeah, I got crystal balls between my legs!

[Amanda Dallin]

There are a lot more efficient ways to launder money than SL. It might work for someone so small time the Feds wouldn't bother with them. Ebay would be better than SL.

[John Bogart]

http://www.secondcitizen.net/Forum/showthread.php?t=6934&page=15

[Prokofy Neva]

What's your point? I can't be bothered wth SC. It now has a system that times you out and won't let you look at more than a post before it forces you to join. They've always been coercive that way, forcing you to put on an avatar or be coerced into having the "spam" avatar, etc.

The hell with it.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

No prok. DMCAs cannot be acted on proactively.

You of all people should understand law and how it works. If anything it needs to slow down and anyone filing a DMCA be required to file 4 forms of legal ID before a DMCA is considered.

Each time cough up 4 forms of ID.

Funny thing about people that think they override law. They have this stupid idea they do. No. Hire a lawyer or stfu.

A friend of mine just went through the process of some pathetic little asshole filing a false DMCA to competition grief. Fortunately her entire family is lawyers. Counter DMCA filed. 10 business days passed. No lawsuit. LL has to put the content back. Perjury proceedings to follow. Hopefully the asshole that filed a false DMCA will be imprisoned and die in the rat cage over a video game.

No. You cannot speed this process up. People can be put in prison over it. Only a fucking idiot thinks otherwise.

As for those that think LL won't restrict business in a manner that wipes out money laundering? We shall see.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

As for the police beginning to look at SL regarding money laundering? Your opinion means nothing. Do some research. I'm sure you might find the law enforcement forums (where you must be active law enforcement to post) discussing second life®. Have fun prok. They will not let you comment regardless of how many names you call them. LE only.

As for how? simple. simplest thing in the world lmao. duh.

[Prize bonds]

My vote goes to Google because it is the future and a kept preserved prediction overall.

[Cinder Roxley]

they already have restrictions and limits in place to prevent money laundering operations, ann. see:

https://secure-web32.secondlife.com/my/lindex/describe-limits.php

[Prokofy Neva]

I don't know why you are having such a rage fit, Ann. Of course you can speed up the processing of the DMCA. Everybody gets it that you have to go through steps, provide IDs, etc. etc. But then it stalls. I know several lawyers who have struggled with LL trying to get responses. Yes, we get it that it's also a violation of law to file false DMCAs. But of course, you'd have to prove intent. People may in good faith be filing them. Of course, they file fraudulent ones in bad faith too, in SL.

There is no question that this entire system could be improved and response time improved, and the motivation to do it may be with the certified merchant class that they may treat as their own kin.

[Amanda Dallin]

Any members of law enforcement who are seriously worried about major money laundering in SL should be fired for incompetence. The restrictions already in place prevent the laundering of large enough sums to make it worthwhile.

Just because a system can be used for an illegal activity does not give LE the right or even reason to shut down or change that system for law abiding citizens. Common sense regulations to catch and deter criminals is acceptable but LE should never be allowed criminalize the public just to make their job easier.

[Cinder Roxley]

"The restrictions already in place prevent the laundering of large enough sums to make it worthwhile."

exactly, speaking of which, yesterday when i tried to cash out a large sum of money through VirWox (i don't like to wait days for ll to "process credit".), Risk API denied me. on e-mailing them, i was told that "Risk API seems to be very restrictive right now" and they opened an exception for me to cash out a meager L$10,000 a week.

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

I'd agree with everything except for:

10. And speaking of places without shopping, the edu sims will fail on OpenSim and Hypergrid will not grow by much.

The edu sims are not after an audience, but *research*, and for that, OpenSim works perfectly. The very few educational institutions that require audiences will continue to use Second Life for that. So, no, they won't fail on OpenSim; rather the contrary. More and more edu-only OpenSim grids will launch to accomodate for all that research. Of course they won't be interconnected, they won't have many users (just a handful of researchers and a few students), they won't have shopping, and they will be utterly boring to anyone not involved in the project. But that's not "failure", it's just the appropriate use that researchers have for VW technology...

As for the lack of shopping in OpenSim grids, Hypergrid-enabled or not, the current trend is to launch web-based commerce sites where merchants can offer their goods on SL and other OpenSim grids — even using L$. This is a relatively recent trend which neatly sidesteps the issue, and it does not "enforce" interconnection via technology, but merely by encouraging merchants to sell the same items on several grids simultaneously. The cool bit is that you might not trust those websites with your credit card (or the independent small-scale grid operators), but since you can use L$ to buy content for other grids, this works neatly :)

Will it be a huge success? I don't know, but I can certainly see that a lot of content creators might not feel comfortable about setting up shops and such on "unknown" or "unsafe" grids, but if they can still sell a few items there and get their L$ to continue to expand their businesses in Second Life, they might make that small effort.

In the mean time, inter-grid currency like OMC (and others) continue to span more and more grids, and these days it starts to become rare to see a new grid that doesn't offer some sort of currency.

So, well, I'm not so sure about that prediction of yours. The only reluctance I have right now is about the time scale: maybe just one year is not enough to start seeing enough transactions on all those grids. However, it would be ironic if the number of LindeX transactions grows not because of increased content sales in SL, but on independent grids that just happen to allow payments in L$... :)