It's Time
In addition to all the other things you're doing, it's time to start spending part of your life in virtual worlds. No longer — never again — can you go to a serious online conference and not know what it's like to have relationships with other avatars. Joi will be a Level 60 soon in WoW. Millions and millions of people in Korea and China are waaaay ahead of you.
More importantly, beyond getting your competitive juices going, it's becoming clear that the talk about virtual worlds is very similar to the talk about the internet in 1995. Something very exciting is going on. If you don't want to be a space miner or an orc, that's fine — go create things in SecondLife (free accounts!) or There. Try fooling people in Eve Online ('the largest online game in the world').
The next move (as Richard Bartle suggests) will be towards open source worlds that you form on the fly for your friends. To get ready for all of that, you'll need to put in your time. Starting no later than now.
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I must say that initially, reading this post and listening to Professor Crawford lecture on virtual worlds today left me sick to my stomach. I could only imagine a real world where real people wasted real hours in on-line virtual worlds. A self-imposed Matrixworld.
Stuck in the cab on the way home, it hit me…in class we discussed how these things always matter more when commerce is involved…and that's it, commerce is the key. I realized that virtual worlds are NOT necessarily a waste of time.
I think back to all those times when I have needed to do five things at once, but the real world prevented me from doing so. The internet has made it possible to multitask in some ways (such as e-mailing while on the telephone). However, virtual worlds and the ability to take on multiple avatar personalities and robotic avatar representatives of yourself seems to have the potential to be the ultimate multi-tasking tool.
Well the ultimate multitasking tool has great commercial potential. Commercial potential means wolves knocking at the door. Who is going to protect the little pigs from those wolves and by what means is left to be seen.