This was a first RL trip to a 3D world conference for metaLIFE team (if you don't know yet - it took place in Amsterdam, Netherlands) amazing experience, we met a lot of people that we knew from Second Life but haven't yet had a change to speak in person - trully amazing crowd. From my point of view conference achieved it's goals!
During the conference we listened to many great speakers, telling us about various news and tricks and possibilities that lie in the current and the future of 3D worlds! Both Second Life and other 3D worlds were touched, many companies and individuals experimenting with this tech, some already making money, some still testing the boundaries of the medium. Off course metaLIFE also got a chance to tell a story. So we did, we looked at the things going on around us from a macro scale, seeing what's happening on the big picture, explaining it from our point of view.
Mostly the talk was about the challenge - that we as humans have to unlearn what was learned in the previous stages of our civilization evolution, and learn new ways of engagement! Our conscousness starts to acknowledge the fact that we are surrounded by most natural way of managing this society and the world surrounding it - ecosystems! And these ecosystems form everywhere:
Ecosystem is probably the most natural way of organizing all the activities in one or many interconnected industries. Now with the rise of digital technologies, these ecosystems are starting to become more transparent, we start getting more tools and services understanding and even managing it, new ways of influencing the outcome are appearing right now(wikipedia, Digg, Facebook, Internet... )
So my guess is that emerging digital technologies will further empower and fuel evolution of these ecosystems. The best part is that we can be active participants if we want. metaLIFE is participating actively, creating technology and opening it up as much as we possibly can now. In the future we will open it up even more, using open protocols and standarts, so that you could use it in any ways you feel like.
