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!)
