Second Life and Open Source [LWN.net]

Second Life and Open Source

Posted Dec 21, 2006 17:47 UTC (Thu) by mikov (subscriber, #33179)
In reply to: Second Life and Open Source by drag
Parent article: Second Life and Open Source

I think you may be missing something here. A "true" virtual world, like
the one you describe, would be no fun at all - people wouldn't want to
spend any time there. No matter what we do, we are bound too strongly to
the physical reality - the notion of "moving beyond reality" is just
something that you see in SF novels. So, in a virtual world people want to
pretend they are in the "real world". You are right that it is a game of
sorts, but so is life.

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Second Life and Open Source

Posted Dec 22, 2006 9:23 UTC (Fri) by JohnNilsson (guest, #41242) [Link]

If you truly believe that a world limited only by what people create will be "no fun at all" you obviously never experienced what the rest of us would refer to as "imagination".

Second Life and Open Source

Posted Dec 22, 2006 19:01 UTC (Fri) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]

Big words. Obviously you think that people can enjoy themselves in a
virtual environment which is not based on the real world; to exist as pure
thought without form or boundary, sail freely limited only by imagination,
exchange untethered ideas, etc, etc (bla, bla, bla). What a beautiful
idea, sadly without much substance.

People like to eat, to have sex, to dance, to play sports, to own a nice
car, or at least to pretend to. It all boils to basic, primitive things.
In a virtual world they want to experience things they can't really do in
the real world - it is a form of escapism.

I predict that the next step for virtual worlds will be to make them
resemble the real world even more - wearing 3D goggles, special gloves,
etc. Let's not kid ourselves - the ultimate goal of course is to make
cybersex seem real.