The Tech Lab: Lesley Gavin

BT futurologist Lesley Gavin looks ahead to a time when real and virtual worlds mix as easily as making a mobile phone call.

Second Life
The virtual and the actual world could merge in the future

Social networking sites are essentially communication spaces where you can see and talk to friends, but in a slightly different way than you would face to face, or by email or text.

The fact that these sites have become increasingly popular suggests that this "slightly different" way of communicating fills some purpose or need that we have. They give us an extra awareness of our friends and of the context or mood they are in.


WHAT IS THE TECH LAB?
The world's leading thinkers give a personal view of future technologies

They allow us to choose whether or not to interact with them at that moment or later.

In parallel, we've seen enormous interest in 3D virtual environments as communication and meeting spaces, Second Life is just one example, where people have fun creating avatars, developing role play and spending virtual money.

It's also interesting that as users become older (the original virtual world users are now in their early twenties) we are seeing a trend for real world mega-clubs such as Oceana, offering numerous different themed environments under one roof.

These are places where you can dress up and role play in a real world environment. Virtual worlds are great for meeting lots of people from around the world while sitting in your favourite comfy armchair at home.

However they don't yet meet the asynchronous communication requirement we have as provided by Facebook, Bebo and Myspace.

In the future these environments are likely to merge. Interfaces will improve, and more specifically, personalised applications will be built on top of them.

Virtual worlds will also become integrated with real environments. Buildings or public spaces may offer virtual world counterparts.

Perhaps the local cinema will offer the latest sci-fi world, or historic sites will offer us worlds where we can go back in time.


Lesley Gavin
Virtual worlds will also become integrated with real environments. Buildings or public spaces may offer virtual world counterparts
Lesley Gavin, BT Futurologist

Rather than view virtual worlds on devices, in the future you could use active contact lenses .

These would of course allow you to see the real world - but you could adjust them to see the virtual world, or a mixture of the two.

For example, you may be walking along the street and get a call from someone in a virtual world, and instead of talking on your mobile phone, you instantaneously switch into the mixed reality environment.

Alongside these developments we will have fully networked homes with embedded sensors. These sensors will capture movement and speech, so that when you are travelling, and away from loved ones you could pop in your virtual contact lenses and step into your very own virtual home world.

In an instant you could be on your sofa with your kids watching Tracey Beaker. Of course as soon as your child hits teenage years you are going to be unlikely to find them, as they will be wearing some T-shirt that interferes with the houses motion capture system.

And what of the skills our children are learning in these 3D worlds? Role play means that duality is commonplace and easy to deal with.

Multi-channel communication is another skill that is becoming highly developed, as is cross cultural understanding within these truly global environments.

As new technologies integrate more closely into our real lives I'm interested in the developing social norms that go alongside this.

It is now illegal to use a mobile phone whilst driving - it is recognised that our mind is at least partially in another world, a different communication space.


Second Life


My friend has created one that follows her around the virtual world complimenting her

People on mobile phones often walk a bit strangely, sometimes pacing up and down the pavement without fully realising what they are doing.

With increased use of mobile, alternate worlds this will increase. What will our pavements be like when people start waving or hugging their virtual friends?

The next stage for virtual worlds is embedded intelligence. For example, in some worlds you can create 'bots'.

These are avatars you can programme by adding behaviours or giving them tasks.

My friend has created one that follows her around the virtual world complimenting her - 'Barbara, you're looking great today' - a great boost to her confidence.

In the future these bots will be able to collect information for you, store it and process it. Perhaps your bot will go round the world making friends, so when you are next online there are a whole host of interesting people for you to meet.

As these worlds become more familiar and sophisticated, we are likely to use them as communication spaces for work as well as play, perhaps to collaborate with remote workers or encourage new kinds of creativity.

A fully functioning, easily accessible, intelligent, well hosted, knowledge based global communication space would be a great invention.

But hang on, wasn't that the Holodeck?

Is "http://www2.clustrmaps.com" is down?!

When I'm going to view my page visits on http://www2.clustrmaps.com i get message like this:

"couldn't connect to the mysql server

the database is over-loaded at the moment, please try again later

http://worlds-greatest-questions.blogspot.com is not a ClustrMaps (reg or +) user"

Proposal for porn domain rejected

The Icann board rejected the proposal nine votes to five

Plans to create an internet domain specifically for pornographic websites have been rejected.

The proposal for the .xxx domain was voted out by the overseer of the net's addressing system, seven years after the ideas was first put forward.

Board members said they were concerned that approval would put the agency into the position of a content regulator.

Backers of the .xxx domain said they were disappointed by the decision and would pursue the matter further.

It is the third time that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) has rejected the bid.

Law-makers

The idea of creating a net domain for pornography was first floated in 2001 and was given approval in June 2005 by Icann which oversees the net's addressing system.

Final approval was scheduled to take place in December 2005 but this was delayed until May 2006 when the proposal was abruptly dropped over worries about how sites signing up to use .xxx would be policed.

We are extremely disappointed by the board's action today Stuart Lawley, ICM Registry

At the time, ICM Registry - the backer of the .xxx scheme - gave pledges that it would ensure sites signing up did not hit users with spam or spyware.

ICM also had to give assurances that it would put in place systems to prevent children seeing the sites and that no .xxx sites would contain images of child abuse.

A final decision on the domain name was taken at a meeting of board members in Lisbon, Portugal.

It was rejected by nine votes to five. Paul Twomey, Icann's chief executive abstained from the vote.

"This decision was the result of very careful scrutiny and consideration of all the arguments," said Dr Vinton Cerf, chairman of Icann. "That consideration had led a majority of the board to believe that the proposal should be rejected."

Many on the board voted against the proposals because they felt that accepting the domain would mean Icann would be seen as a regulator of content, deciding what is pornographic and what is not. This was not the role of the agency, they argued.

"My decision turned on one point and one point only," board member Steve Goldstein told Associated Press.

"The last point in our board's resolution that under the revised agreement that we, Icann, would be forced to assume ongoing management and oversight roles regarding the content and that is inconsistent with Icann's technical mandate."

Others, who backed the schemes, said that content could be managed by local and national laws.

"We are extremely disappointed by the board's action today," Stuart Lawley, ICM's president and chief executive told Associated Press. "It is not supportable for any of the reasons articulated by the board."

ICM Registry argue that a .xxx domain would act as a quality control for the industry and would allow individuals and families wishing to avoid adult content to easily filter it.

Critics have pointed out that use of the .xxx domain is entirely voluntary and some suspect that few sites would sign up to use the suffix.

Icann said it would not take any more proposals for so-called top level domains like .xxx at the moment, but did not rule out more in the future.