Absurdities ?

Buying real estate in a large international multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) seems like an absurd idea.

Normally such games operate by purchasing the client software and pay a subscription fee every 30 days, “while the internal game economy is just that –- a game economy.”

But in project Entropia, “the gamer, Jon Jacobs, who bought a virtual space station for $100,000 (£56,200) says he wants to turn it into a nightclub to change the face of entertainment”, according to the BBC News Site He wants to call it Club Neverdie and sees it as the perfect vehicle to bridge reality and virtual reality.

Now this may not be such a bad idea. Virtual 3D nightclubs, with awkwardly dressed friends to chat with, listening to celebrity DJs while sipping your cocktail (mixed at home in your kitchen of course) … or what about “live” VR concerts with celebrity bands ? Imagine Madonna as 3D avatar in front of a virtual crowd, and you’re one of them. No sweat!

Or what about watching a virtual movie, that has been produced “virtually” with virtual 3D characters, with virtual cameras in a virtual forest …ok ..too much virtual here.. but nevertheless we are quite familiar already with "virtual" environments, grabbing articles, books, music, watching video clips online while chatting away with friends.

A multiplayer online environment doesn’t  have to be for playing Dungeons and Dragons all the time. You could also attend lectures, virtual concerts, buy and sell on a virtual stockmarket, or visit the general assembly of the United Nations. Chat rooms or even graphical chat environments (The Palace) have been around for several years. What’s fairly recent is that there is a  3D character under your control acting in a 3D environment, who opens the bank doors, walks to the teller and actually talks to a person -  you embodied by an avatar.

Thanks to broadband and enhanced PC graphic cards 3D interactive environments are growing. They are here to stay. I see plenty of work for future 3D designers, modelers, information architects, digital film producers, audio engineers, DJs, etc.

According to founding Wired editor Kevin Kelly by 2015 the internet as we know it will be dead, killed by a globe-spanning artificial consciousness, writes the SMH. He predicts that the web continues to evolve from an entity ruled by mass media and mass audiences to one ruled by messy media and messy participation.

We all become authors, producers, 3D actors, musicians, and writers as well as simultaneously consumers.

The real transformation under way, however, is more to what Sun Microsystem’s John Gage had in mind in 1988 when he famously said: “The network is the computer.” The destiny of the web is becoming one big megacomputer not only wired to our personal devices but also to our minds. We will think, feel, interact, command, control, play, relate, love and hate through this brain.

Kelly reminds us that “this gargantuan Machine already exists in a primitive form. In the coming decade, it will evolve into an integral extension not only of our senses and bodies, but our minds.”

Beyond the hype, there no doubt that there will be plenty of new opportunities.

Just never forget. You can always switch off, go outside and smell the grass again.