Statement
In order to break through and really augment our lives, the 3D
virtual worlds technology should:
1. make access to private virtual
spaces affordable,
2. permit the convergence of our physical bodies in virtual
spaces.
Mind in virtual environment
Our society is moving with big steps towards virtual
environments. Emerging virtual worlds give an additional dimension
to our real world. Not only entertainment and gaming will fill up
this new dimension. For the greater part creativity, business and
social life will inevitably be moving to virtuality. In fact, now
more money in the world is earned with brain work (with the help of
the ICT) than with handwork. That is, a considerably bigger part of
the gross world product is earned in the "virtual environment",
although not yet in what is now being called virtual world.
Indeed, virtual environments seem to be an ideal place for
innovation and deployment of creative activities in small and
flexible groups, a kind of "Virtual SME." These are established by
individuals from all over the world for a definite period of time
with the aim of creating products, offering services, and earning
money. After that these entities can easily be dissolved to allow
the cooperating individuals to go on with new collectives.
Innovation and intellectual production, which are considered to
be the main engine of the economy, will become fast, flexible and
almost free of the usual overhead. This namely because the
instrumentarium for the intellectual production is already, and
will remain, virtual - this is information and software.
Thus, it is obvious that in the near future even more activities
will move to a virtual environment: virtual cells and teams will
dominate the creative universe, people around the world will find
like-minded individuals to deploy together their ideas and
business, help others and compete in peaceful manner. There is
enough space in the virtual world for everybody. Right? Maybe not
quite.
Affordable private virtual spaces
The virtual environment of now is dominated by Second Life and
the like, which are latifundias of today's virtual universe. You
wanna go virtual? Choose a latifundia and join it by obeying its
order, currency, and laws, and do not forget to sell your virtual
soul to the landlord behind the curtains.
This situation does not really encourage a person to throw
oneself into a virtual environment.
The situation might change as you get the ability to easily and
quickly build up your own virtual spaces, furnish them according to
your own taste, change them to your current mood, adjust to work
circumstances, communicate 'conventionally' and in 3D with the rest
of the virtual universe, allow others in your virtual spaces, and
'physically' attach your own space to those of others when you
like.
Take a simple scenario: Create your own private space - make it
your working 3D virtual office. Install work tools like databases
and applications with 3D interfaces, so that you can accomplish
complex data handlings, manipulate, streamline and visualize
information, i.e. help your creativity flourish.
Alone you cannot accomplish what you can in cooperation with
others, so you set a part of your space open to others -
colleagues, business partners, clients. Or you can merge
environments with individuals or organisations in order to show
things to each other, process information together, see the same
things, give common access to visualized data, 'touch' and
manipulate information, and cooperatively design new things.
In order for the 3D-technology to reach masses and to enrich
people's lives, the barrier to creating private virtual worlds and
interconnecting them on demand should be as low as possible. It
should technically be as easy to set up a virtual space as it is to
set up a website or blog, or even easier. It could take the form of
a do-it-yourself package.
Even more important is ease of interconnectivity between private
virtual spaces. I mean here not only habitual teleporting or the
currently common linking of worlds, but also 'physical' attachment
of private spaces to each other, to many others simultaneously, to
public spaces, etc.
The dichotomy of course is that this should happen in a fully
decentralised and yet secure environment. Remember, security is a
real challenge in a de-centralised environment.
Body in virtual environment
It is well accepted that we have placed at least a part of our
mind in virtual reality already. Some sources even assert that this
began long before the information revolution (link). Others say mind is central to everything
else and therefore virtual by nature. Anyhow, we already know, more
or less, how our mind can be utilized in virtual reality..
What about our body?
We now see some tentative steps towards Augmented Reality,
blending computer generated images into our physical environment.
This will certainly have some impact on the tourist and
entertainment industries, but may not reach the extent and impact
of virtual reality on our lives. Augmented Reality does not provide
an additional dimension to our existence as virtual reality does.
AR is merely stuffing our physical environment with some images and
data.
On the other hand, opportunities offered by virtual reality seem
to be unlimited. Why not to try to embody our bodies in virtual
reality? Instead of moving around a doll-like avatar in virtual
space with a keyboard and mouse, would it not be better to get in
there with your own body, under total control of your mind, without
all these unnecessary intermediaries?
Consider the scenario described above, where instead of the
avatar you yourself step in your virtual space, move around, adjust
it, work and entertain, using your 3D-applications with the help of
sensorized interfaces on your hands and other parts of your body.
Adding a couple of video cameras which can film you and project the
image into your virtual space can do the rest.
There are already many sensorized control tools developed or
under development: starting from famous Nintendo Wii controllers,
through haptic interfaces and developing MRI tools of NeuroSky, to the continuing research on extreme
variants of brain-computer interface of professor Kevin
Warwick. Much is also being done in the field of the ultimate
visualisation of virtual spaces: display in a contact lens (The Guardian), 3D plasma projection, retinal
laser projectors, etc...
Again, as discussed above, there is considerable added value in
communicating with and coupling to other virtual spaces. With this
setup you can move yourself into virtual spaces of others -
friends, colleagues, partners, clients - or let them in your
spaces, or meet in a third party virtual world, not with avatars,
but with an on-demand projection of your actual body.
Say goodbye to RSI, obesity and other modern illnesses due to
sitting in front of your computer - your are physically moving in
virtual space! Just try to spent a couple of hours playing Wii and
trying to control the game with your body, and you will catch a
glimpse of what I mean.
This is what can be called Real Augmentation of our lives.
This seems to be more attractive than projecting some images
into a real environment as offered by Augmented Reality. I predict
that people likely will escape from their everyday virtual
environment to the real environment in order to relax and do less
exciting things. So forget Augmented Reality, long live Real
Augmentation!
Social responsibility
Since it is certain that the virtual environment will soon play
an important role in our lives, there is a potential risk that not
all lives may be able to enjoy the benefits and the convenience
provided by virtual environments. Large groups could be excluded
from this progress, leading to an even broader gap between 'haves'
and 'have-nots', and then to even more tension in our society. We
must try to avoid this by making the virtual worlds technology
accessible, secure, convenient, independent from politics and free
from monopolies. Developers of this technology and their eventual
financiers have to take responsibility for the future of our new
mixed world, and at least try to answer for themselves the
following questions:
- Do we want to bring the real world adversity into the virtual
life?
- Do we want inequities in economic prosperity to grow?
- Do we want the established powers to rule virtual worlds as they
rule the real world?
If the answer is "no", the technology must from the very
beginning guarantee accessibility and fundamental freedoms to
virtual worlds inhabitants, that is, to all of us. Obviously the
potential of this technology is immense for business, social
interaction, and gaming. But this potential will never be realised
if we only have public virtual places like Second Life at our
disposal. If you imagine a real world in which you may only exist
publicly, without any individual and business privacy, you have a
glinpse of this kind of horrible 1984-scenario.
I argue that being able to create your own virtual space and
keep this, as well as communication with other virtual spaces,
private and secure should be a basic human right, even as the right
for privacy we have in the real world, although widely recognized,
is even more widely violated in real life by government bureaucrats
on all levels.
Therefore, along with assuring accessibility to virtual
environments, the virtual world technology must help to keep our
lives, including virtual lives, private and confidential.
Conclusion
The big perspective for the 3D-technology lies not just in
providing virtual spaces to communities of people. People are first
of all individuals, and then social animals. Thus, a much bigger
perspective lies in providing possibilities to easily construct,
manage and interconnect private virtual spaces, both individual and
corporate.
These thoughts, IMHO, should be taken seriously by developers
and financiers of the 3D-technology if they want this technology to
widely propagate and allow virtual reality to become the Real
Augmentation of our lives.
There are many initiatives underway to address the challenges
outlined above, such as standardization of transport and
communications protocols and "hypergridding" which allows users to
seamlessly transport themselves between independent grids. It will
be of great interest to see how these evolve over time.