It looks as though we're closer to developing the Metaverse than I thought, if this story is any indication. According to Lost in the Magic Forest, the Metaverse 1.0 project is being developed by a consortium of research institutes and universities to create a set of standards by which virtual worlds can interoperate. Among these entities are high-profile names like Alcatel-Lucent, Siemens IT, and IBM. This is a huge undertaking, and the site lists some of the challenges already in sight, including:
- No feedback-interfaces exist into / from real world
- No security, trust and privacy management
- Metaverse content cannot be ported between virtual worlds
- Metaverses are limited to "chat / text" oriented interaction
- Metaverses are imperfect and incomplete
(Thanks, Tao!)
1. This is probably as important an announcemet for the long term as Metaplace is for the medium term. Big week for virtual world futures!
Posted at 1:44PM on Sep 20th 2007 by Kei Mars