Yesterday and today I came across a few very interesting articles that reinforce my ideas about how the web is changing from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 and even to a 3-D web. The entire interface for interacting with computers, operating systems and the web is beginning to change and will likely be much different as time goes on in the future. The "Croquet Consortium" includes some impressive computer interface pioneers who are now developing a free open source software platform and a network operating system to create powerful and highly collaborative multi-user 2-D and 3-D applications and simulations... A Wikipedia page also provides more information about the Croquet Consortium.Google Earth may be the best example of socially useful geographic 3-D interface that in two years an estimated 250 million people have downloaded. The Google Earth Community is especially vibrant with users contributing all kinds of personal, social and technical information. We (Mountain Visions) have been producing immersive 360 degree panoramas and 3-D digital map fly in projects for a dozen years and immediately recognized the importance of the freely available Google Earth when it appeared two years ago. Now we and many others are in the process of creating kml files to hundreds of locations where they can visit web site panoramas, videos, multimedia sequences and still images.
Another popular 3-D web project is Second Life (7 million registered users) and several other similar projects that let people build Simulated artificial environments. Some big corporations and government agencies are experimenting with this kind of new project. I participate in Second life a little, but I prefer the reality of the environments that Google Earth maps and the projects contributed to the Google Earth Community represents.
One of the articles I read yesterday was titled "Second Earth" and suggests a combination of Google Earth and Second Life and other 3-D projects is a likely scenario soon. The very long and very good "Second Earth" article was written by Wade Roush and published in the July/August issue of the MIT Technology Review. I will include a few quotes from this article here.
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"The World Wide Web sill soon be absorbed into the World Wide Sim: an immersive, 3-D visual environment that combines elements of social virtual worlds, such as Second Life and mapping applications such as Google Earth. What happens when the virtual and real worlds collide?"
"For people who haven't spent much time in a 3-D world, of course, it's hard to imagine feeling comfortable in either. But such environments may soon be as unavoidable as the Web itself: according to technology research firm Gartner, current trends suggest that 80 percent of active Internet users and Fortune 500 companies will participate in Second Life or some competing virtual world by the end of 2011. And if you take a few months to explore Second Life, as I have done recently, you may begin to understand why many people have begun to think of it as a true second home--and why 3-D worlds are a better medium for many types of communication than the old 2-D Internet."
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Another article today on C/net News.com titled "Looking for life in virtual worlds" notes that IBM, MIT and the Nature Conservancy are working on a 3-D Internet project to compile better visualization applications and better information about important river ecosystems. A link in the article goes to another C/Net News.com article noting that IBM and The Nature Conservancy are working to compile better visualizations applications about important river ecosystems. The second article titled "IBM to crunch numbers for river conservation" contains a statement that "IBM intends to set up software and hardware that will allow conservationists to create what-if scenarios and make more informed decisions..."
