Dawn of the 4D Web?
I’ve been messing about with Upcoming.org today after being reminded of it by IBM’s Roo Reynolds, and have finally created my own Upcoming page. (Friend me!) While poking around over there, I stumbled on a small event called Web Trek, which says it is “Exploring Space & Time — 4 Known Dimensions.” Cool. It’s a free event in San Francisco with just three speakers of an evening (March 28), but it sounds like there will be some interesing ideas knocking around there. The speakers are first Kent Brewster, Technology Evangelist at the Yahoo! Developer Network, who will be talking on “How to Integrate Where 2.0 Technology in Web Space,” and then Tyler Kovacs and Mike Geary, Chief Architect & Co-founder, and Senior Engineer, respectively, at Zvents.com, who will be talking about “How to Integrate Time in Web Space.” (Slightly more information can be found here.) Now, it sounds like this is the “time” of “event scheduling” and similar concepts. But even that could be interesting. And why not go further? Why not a 3D Web or world (or just region) that incorporates time on a more meaningful level. Why not (technological constraints aside) be able to scroll back and forth through historical time at a certain virtual spot? Of course, Hiro Pendragon’s 3D wiki for the virtual world of Second Life allows you to do much the same thing. Are there other ways to accomplish this? Are there even more interesting things that could be done if we were able to push the 3D metaverse out into the fourth dimension? Whew, this kind of futuring makes my brain hurt. But I love the idea.
Feeds
Cool post. Ice cream headache indeed. IMO, pushing the 3D metaverse into the 4D is an evolutionary inevitability with many deep, deep, deep implications/repercussions. Philosophically, it appears the evolving multi-dimensional metaverse is a gigantic mirror to RL: biology, human thought processes, the simulations that already co-exist in nature, processing in general. Through the budding metaverse, we are unconsciously accelerating the process of biomimicry and cosmomimicry through a centralized structure. This thing is a legit new ICT and will continue to diffuse at lightning speed (hence my SL / Google Earth diffusion rate belief set); just think about the relationships to exponential comm, tech and info curves… As the z axis is added to the equation (and eventually all other dimensions) and we head toward even better system quantification, the value of this ICT increases dramatically, is multiplied. Fundamentally, this seems to be a system wide behavior built of distributed local MEST Compression drives/instincts. As all of this goes down, it brings into play Bostrom’s simulation argument and Smart’s developmental singularity hypothesis, in a very real way.
It’s mind-boggling how much can be done with 4DVWs and Idea Markets. A better question might be, “What is there that can’t be done / simulated / hypothesized / learned / communicated / proliferated / diffused through emerging 4DVWs?”
btw — Fascinating what’s happening over at TN in response to your emergent behavior thread. Look to be approaching a record TN response level.
woah, I got headached just reading your post, Alvis :)
Yeah, the TN stuff is hilarious. Unfortunatley derailed by the Prok-Goon running battle, but there’s still some interesting stuff in there.
Yep, I’ve got my fingers crossed for the record comments thread. Have to check with Dan as to what the old record is, hehe.
you mean “Monkey SEE..Monkey DO..”?
…..lol
new blahg same as the old blahg.
cube3
It’s not at all derailed, Walker, don’t be so prissy. You were just hoping to gain ghetto-like street cred by writing about the noir, and you got thwarted, that’s all, because it’s not cultural, it’s criminal. It’s an important battle to have. It will be appreciated more in the future when it affects you more personally.
The Metaverse will not be populated only by leftoid professors and cynical gonzo game journalists.
Alvis, there’s no *automatic* to the idea that everything will “accelerate”. This idea that everything will always get better and better like lockstep is laughable. Surely it will and stop. Perhaps it has already stalled and plateaued, and you don’t realize it.
The singularity stuff is just a cult, as some have recognized. Perhaps it has some useful ideas to contribute. It is not ‘the truth’.
You all are so afraid of your own shadow. Something fourth or even fifth dimensional is generated and barks at you, and you declare it “derailed”.
Prok.
re: Wallace’s TN post — Props to Mark for opening that discussion thread. I agree with you that it wasn’t all derailed. There was a great deal of value generated there. The back and forth between you and the goons/griefers/scholars was illuminating. It is a very valuable conversation, although the sheer volume of the discussion is making it harder to follow and therefore diminishes the value a bit.
re: Acceleration — Technology and information are both on exponential curves, which strongly indicates that communication is also exponentially increasing. It’s not much of a stretch to see how the emerging metaverse / 3D / 4D web will enable these trends to continue for a while, is central to accelerating evolution. I’ll start to consider a plateau, s-curve when I see evidence. … In no way does a belief in acceleration correlate with a belief that everything is getting better and better all the time. Comm/tech/info are double edged swords that both hurt and help, as you are well aware. But they are inevitable developments. Hopefully things will get better, from a human-centric POV, as we move forward in time — but there is no guarantee, certainly not from a moral-absolutist standpoint. Hopefully VWs and 4D Idea Markets will help more than they hurt. There’s a lot of potential there, but how it’s all going to go down remains a mystery. Though, IMHO it’s all going to go down really, really fast.