Virtual Worlds and Globalization

Xavier_Jr

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Xavier Jr Riquelme
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Well friends, recently, I had a discussion inside my own society about the possibilities of virtual worlds in the future. One of my partners launched the thesis that Virtual Worlds, always, should be developed by private business enterprises as Mindark or Linden Lab. But to me it seemed like the Internet conceptualization and subsequent development, should come from the universities. My view included besides, there should exist standards for integration, which permit to any person or group of persons, such as institutions, companies or individuals develop a general environment that allows in the future, the true globalization of the world.

Universes such as Entropia Universe or Second Life have shown us that Virtuals Worlds can have real economies. And so, it opens the possibility to work inside virtual offices in many different fields; and besides interact with the real physical world. Imagine Engineers and Architects located in different countries of the world, developing a great architectural design proyect, for Dubai. Imagine there are universities and colleges where students from all over the world can share the best of the world's libraries. (and after that, go out to the playground to play with friends from different countries) Imagine a world of possibilities, where companies and institutions involved, are working together (integrating work), in a real way, with economy and real projects that generate a real economy in the physical world. Imagine that games that we know now, in such universes, are only a virtual land or world more. A Universe where you can work, study and fun, meeting people in an integrated manner. Imagine a world where discrimination does not exist, because everyone would be equal. Imagine our future.

This type of real virtual universe should not belong to a single company. However, similarly to the internet, should belong to everybody; but giving opportunities of life in different ways.

That was how I found the study group named Avatar from the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (my country). This group is studing and analizing this kind of worlds inside a university enviroment. I understand many other groups from different universities in all world is doing equivalents conceptualizations.

Also I discovered that there exists "open source software" that allow you to do 3D modeling and create your own virtual worlds and games. And I found a beauty of one traditional district of Lima, whose design corresponds to early last century (and the end of XIX century) having been a beach resort for wealthy families on that times. And to my surprise, this video won a contest Google's 3D city modeling. Which involved hundreds of cities of various countries from worldwide.

Without further ado, I show a video of our future: Virtual World. Here the Barranco district of Lima Peru, Google Video winner.

[video=youtube;wh9Fhi1020A]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh9Fhi1020A[/video]
 
Well summed up argument. This dichotomy however of state(the people) vs corporations doesn`t really stand out on most of the times. Some corporations might choose to make it open platform and have everyone create their own content and their own virtual space. They can capitalize with ads following Google`s example or selling some over the top benefits/bonuses. This is however a political debate at some level and as you come from S America I can see why you adhere to a so called socialist meme.

They way I see it however is that the state is just a big corporation, very similar any billion dollar corporation. The bigger they get, the harder they can generate growth. A big corporation is unable to generate growth at certain point same as the state. When it gets to that level, the only way for it to get more growth is by artificially pumping money into
the acquisition of smaller companies. These small companies are successful because they have a direct hands on approach on things and the boss is directly interested in making it a big success and has all employees on short leash. When they get bigger and start to delegate shit happens. The managers they elect don`t care about anything else then their own job and things start to get ugly, same as in the state the employees don`t really care about the product they`re working on and results more then always tend to be poor and messy. This is why you won`t see a good opensource software that could go head to head with Microsoft or Entropia or whatever. These open platform projects made by universities don`t get enough traction and are more then often excuses to get big budgets and waste money away because most just don`t give a damn as it`s not their own interest on the line. Would be nice ofc to live in a world where people are 100% altruistic but man is a selfish animal with very individualistic needs.

This video of some free platform virtual world is a very poor quality by all industry standards and we can never expect for it to perform better than the corporate counterparts for the reasons mentioned above. ...for the same reasons hierarchical soviet type communist countries failed because they mimic the structure of a big corporation. Only difference is that such a state can`t perform synthetic growth the way a corporation can by mergers or acquisitions.
Ofc you can also make the case that people can come together on their own not part of a state hierarchy or some catholic church university(a state hierarchy basically) in groups to create some good product. Ofc doing something as a hobby has very limited results and it`s very hard for that group to come together when there`s not enough incentive. This is why most of these attempts turn out to be failures in the end.

The bottom line to my argument would be that people would have to choose between a good product and an inferior product and the subsequent choice would be pretty obvious in the end, even if it comes at some extra cost.
 
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Mikass;bt2960 said:
The bottom line to my argument would be that people would have to choose between a good product and an inferior product and the subsequent choice would be pretty obvious in the end, even if it comes at some extra cost.

Your opinion is very intersting. However, my view is more about the existence of an integrated platform. The internet was born from universities, and, regardless of the origin of the browser, if it is IExplorer, Mozilla or another, sites around the world can be linked to each other (sites from bussines, organizations, or people in general ). But the internet platform dont belongs to any particular person; and this, i think is the main cause of its succesful. This is the essence of my view: A same avatar (with a same USD card) walking between differents virtual worlds (from differents Owners), and he can stay where he thinks is more beatifull, or is more usefull, for him (surely, some sites that he may visit, could be very more expensive than another, but could exist sites with no cost too). My view have not nothing to do with socialist worlds. (Besides because i think the money is, and will be for ever, the crude oil of our universe). - In fact the only countries that in latin america are socialists now are Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia. And Thanks to God that i am not living in anyone of them. - hehe.
 
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