Someone is going to make a lot of $$ here (or: why haven't MMOVSG taken off?)

If you ask yourself what are the real basic needs or killerapps that people will probably spend money on endlessly no matter what, you will probably narrow it down to something like : gambling, sex, sports, shopping (on a slightly different note - my good friend Gil once quoted his father's saying allegedly a relic of the communist era- "there are three things people can look at tirelessly: flowing water, dancing flames... and someone else working ;)

I have been troubled for quite some time with the question of the seemingly underserved market for online-virtual-multiuser-sex/porn (MMOVSG - Massively Multiuser Online Virtual Sex Games). With the massive popularity of "2D porn", the emergence of VW and MMO's and the ever increasing sensitization thresholds one would imagine that this would take off????

Yeah - there are some beginnings like RedLightCenter a lot of talk about sex in SL center (see this for some funny updates) but by and large there has yet to surface any major adult industry player and move in on this market. A good MMOVSG site (is that an oxymoron?) to see the current state of the industry would be this place.

so here are some thoughts:

• Geography 1 - this will happen in Japan - no doubt! Why - first they are really into technology, gadgets and all that, they are way up there on the social networking thing and because of cultural idiosyncrasies porn is absolutely mainstream there (when I was working there i was initially shocked to see serious adult business men in the subway in rush hour browsing through kiddie anime porn - and i mean this in the best of ways;)




• Geography 2 - Japan - obviously 3D visualization technology is not up to par with real live video. In the Japanese market there is already a great abundance of adult anime (called Hentai or Adult Manga) so they are already used to consume non-realistic forms of adult entertainment. I read somewhere that the Hentai adult market is 200Billion Yen (~1.8B$). I think that was a 2006 number.




• First wave?: although some MMOVSG's are already out there it is reasonable to assume that the first wave of mass adoption would be in single user applications that will mimic the conventional adult entertainment experience. As always web killerapps seem to be based on taking something that is already working great and just transforming it into a new venue/level and not changing the rules of the game totally. That being said - the ability to customize the experience and share it with others is probably a really strong incentive that, over time and with market education will drive users here.




• I/O devices...!: I have been saying for a while that the whole VR thing is highly dependant on input and output devices that will enhance the experience and transform it from a cool game into highly believable experience. Nowhere is this true as here - obviously the sexual experience is something that derives from visceral emotions/senses and not from enlightened thought so the more sensory inputs you've got working for you the better. Some people have decided to bud this field of adult remote sensory stimulation "TeleDildonics" (fancy that on your business card). I would start just by taking a look at Kyle Machulis' site slashdong



• I/O 2: beyond the "specialized" devices that i mention above, obviously stuff like 3D cameras and VR goggles with HD quality will probably be a big boost to the space of VR and of course to this area as well (I know of a few companies that allegedly work on the 3D one of which is my friend's Eldar MantisVision...)



• Pornnovation - A great place to look at if you are thinking seriously about this field is Arse Elektronika - THE conference about innovation dealing with digital media, robotics, the web and adult entertainment.



• A perfect fake - this is an amazing (really) and disturbing 60 min documentary directed by Marc de Guerre about the myth of the search for the perfect human drone/fake. Of course it focuses on the female figure and touches on adult entertainment but also airs some interesting views from academia and such - really a must see!

Some last thoughts on a slightly different note:

I have long held the opinion that loud music, violent movies and porn are great avenues for venting violent thoughts and have lobbied for opening up the Internet connections of our neighboring countries to stuff like that with the thought that if you are watching BayWatch you will not go to war. Some time ago my good friend (and serious economist and novo Zionist) Yoav found some interesting corroborating evidence for that...see here in his blog ;)



MC

Vertical model of VW?

So I'd like to share some thoughts about how I imagine the vertical of VW might evolve from its current fragmented form. Right now it seems that most VW (I am talking about "free from" VW and not WoW style) have adapted the following structure:

• Endusers – like in everyday life people consume services and goods in the form of entertainment, education, shopping, leisure etc. They also interact socially.


• Infrastructure and service providers – these could be stores, data centers, media outlets, financial services, project integrators (like ESC), marketers (like Centric ) retailers etc. Out of these some are extensions of larger RW brands and some are local "in world".


• World "owners" – these are the entities making the rules and deciding upon the theme, content and so on. At this point in time they are key players that drive the industry forward with new ideas and concepts.


• Platforms - providers of the basic engines behind the experience (like Forterra, SL, BigWorld and so on)

Obviously some of the current VW have a few of these functions merged (i.e. – SL is both platform and world owner and as such didn’t need someone to build their world at day one). As this is an emerging vertical there is still very little clarity as to where it might go. This will also depend on VW going towards Metaverse style models that are all inclusive environments or limited functionality theme specific outlets (like MTV Virtual Laguna Beach).

After several talks to people in the industry my current thoughts are somewhere along these lines:

• Platforms are the most challenging technically and suffer the most form lack of interoperability. They take a long time to develop, witching costs are high and are investment intensive. For these reasons I foresee this as one of the places more likely to see the big names (Google, MS) so future consolidation and/or standardization is a probable outcome. With that in mind it is safe to assume that better tools for rapid deployment will lower the technical barriers to creating VW in the future.


• Service and infrastructure - right now this is a really segmented area, with some businesses just small time and others large brands. This sector could split up into two where the bottom is basic infrastructure (financial, V real estate, security, IT and so on) and on top of it a myriad of retail or consumer businesses. At the end of the day if these worlds are going to scale up most of the basic service providers need to consolidate and be big names that can support large scale operations. Moreover, leveraging their RW brand trust (say like banks or insurance) will make it easier to attract heavy clients in VW as well.


• Integrators - integrators and world builders today thrive on the fact that platforms are not easy to use and thus this function is critical for players who are not technology companies (MTV, BBC, WalMart). They make much less sense in a world where big players offer wide range services, interoperability is better and platforms are more ubiquitous. Current vertical players (like ESC or Chung) will either consolidate or shrink.
  
• World owners - right now they are the driving force (have the crazy ideas) in a wider perspective there is a very strong survivability bias - some will be big and others disappear or remain niche players. Here again big names might come up.
  

In moving from niche to global mass market VW will need to adapt their verticals to be coherent within the larger scheme of things and within RW sensibility.

MC

Ultimate frisbee, Net Generation and alternative forms of governance

Hokay
So as part of my never ending ultimate frisbee political endeavors I have been part of an ongoing discussion about the future of the sport in Israel (as board member of Flow -Israeli Flying Disc Association). Part of my ongoing struggle is transforming the way the sport here is played and viewed by its own participants. I wont delve into that too much just to say that one emerging theme has been that of how the sport is governed. For those unfamiliar with the sport (shame on you!) one of the main cornerstones around which proponents focus is Spirit Of The Game - which basically means that people take it upon themselves to treat each other fairly and respectfully and thus the rules are built around self refereeing. This has created a sort of "outcast" or "alternative" feel to the community. So when governance is talked about there is always the conflict between the "power to the people" crowd who don't want structure and want to leave the players responsible for everything - and the classic hierarchical structures that most of us (yours truly amongst them) feel are critical for advancing forward.
So...well I have started to think and look around and see what other forms of governance are available apart from classical delegative hierarchical democracy.
Thinking about the current trends in the business arena, especially the internet and new media one starts to think how the principles of coopetition and distributed co creation could impact how we do things here. Most of the material that I have come across deal either with commercial coopetition in which business entities have a vested interest in gaining traction for new technology, breaking some R&D barrier or pushing standards. In these cases they usually create a consortium or NPO or even a JV and usually declare their IPR to others, reveal some of their future plans and so on. Other instances of non classical structures often occur in international relations context (like the UN, EPI and others) some interesting thoughts on this type of interaction can be found here. In these instances national entities (which are hierarchical in and of themselves) interact as peers to try and govern hypernational issues.
Another interesting example is TakingItGlobal - a youth founded and centred NPO that encourages youth participation in political, social and environmental issues. TIG works through education programs created by its members in cooperation with partner organizations and has a heavy emphasis on web based participation.
It would seem that most of these forms of peer cooperation examples put an emphasis on deliberative process as opposed to a bargaining one. That is - instead of a bunch of disparate entities bargaining over the outcome as viewed from their perspectives, deliberation requires that prior to decision making the problems are well understood and articulated and clear metrics for the success of the process are put forth and agreed upon by the parties. This is in line with current thought regarding win/win or integrative negotiations as opposed to distributive negotiations.
What can be learned? Well it seems that no one has come up with a complete alternative to some sort of power delegation. This might have to do with the fact that deliberative processes are by their nature long. They lend themselves to important non urgent issues but fail with urgent matters need to be dealt with (think "in battle" or "in game" situations).

I would argue that the advent of connectivity and IT has not really changed the basic premise of governance - sometimes a decision needs to be made quickly and this means that very few people can be involved. Technology will however narrow the gap of applicable situations for using collaborative processes. Employing technologies like web polls, wiki's, forums and such will allow us to manage the collaboration across a wide audience and with shorter cycle times. Take a look at what the UPA is doing with the Ultimate Revolution - a strategic planning process with a heavy emphasis on member participation based on web enabled forums and data collections, as well as conventional meetings. The process chart lets you see how they have chosen to mix traditional with new.
So can we manage things differently? I believe there is much room for inclusion of new approaches into current thinking and mitigate some of the principal-agent issues that classic governance suffers from.

This needs to be done with caution - not every aspect can be freely translated into these type of processes and some aspects will not stand much to gain. The most probable areas for incorporating collaboration are:

• Strategic planning
• Rule evolution
• Fund raising
• Event planning
• League moderation
• Knowledge base creation
• Community reach out

One caveat that needs to be dealt with is the loss of "experts". Many times in collaborative processes there is equal weight put on each contributor. This means that more often than not popular views get acknowledged rather than views based on hardcore expertise (this problem arises with search engines like Google that rank according to popularity...). The UPA took care of this by manually putting in various expert groups and or decision milestones where management will be involved. This works well for a strategic issue that deserves detailed attention and planning. If we want to move a step further and create many other semi self governed processes we will need to devise an expert ranking system that will moderate the process effectively while still allowing the man on the street to push change ahead.
I will try to followup on this issue with David Barkan - who has been consulting the UPA in their process (as well as being a long time player/coach/prophet and friend of Flow...)
MC

3D I/O as VW enabler

For the past couple of months I have been pondering the issue of VW mainstream penetration as a 3D extension or hull of the WWW.

In the recent VW2007 in NYC, IBM rep was talking extensively about the 3Dnet - what he/they see as the future metaverse like internet.

So beyond the SF connotations what is really the key issue that might drive this development? Personally I feel that I/O devices are THE critical missing link in our 3D experience (of course things like BW, MIPS interop and so on are also not there yet). These devices were basically not even touched upon at VW and in a local gaming conference I attended, and are only lightly touched upon in the blogging community as far as I can see.

The 3D information revolution is mainly based on the premise that our brain processes 3D data faster and more efficiently than 2D as it has honed these skills over many years of evolution(very similar to the way color adds a lot to our image processing abilities such as depth perception, object recognition and so forth). That basically means that the optimal pre-processing of visual information requires that it be rendered in REAL 3D.
The problem is that the current 3D is a mere 2D projection of 3D objects and does not allow our brain to use the information in its fullest (e.g. - two eyes don't really have different perspectives, small head movements do not change the point of view and so on). I argue that when devices allowing REAL3D experience become more wide spread we will be able to harness the power of this revolution. I am talking about devices like haptic gloves and VR goggles and in the future probably brain implants.
The current state of such devices is that they are not there yet as far as price point, performance and usability (some early examples: PureDepth, Icuiti). They will undoubtedly debut in medical/military/research applications or in high end gaming platforms - but as the price/performance mix changes such offerings will become household favorites (just like WiFi, broadband, MP3's and cellphones). A recent article in SciAm featured two extreme high end devices aimed and the radiology field (read $50K a pop!) but it is not far reaching to think that at the rate we are going now we will have such CE devices gaining popular acceptability within the next ten years.

Most skeptics usually point to the fact that text comprehension and searching does not lend itself to 3D....I beg to differ!
Text is not only about reading. Most of what we do with text is search and arrange textual items within various contexts - like lookup something, schedule an appointment, edit a post and so on. To that end it is quite probably that 3D interfaces will drastically change the way we go about these tasks. just look at MSresearch demo to think about what could be next (and there are many others.
The reason that text is such is that it is the only form of information that is formally learned and not hardwired into our brain like say - recognizing faces. Thus text evolved together with the technology that we invented to make it (chisel - feather - fountain pen - ballpen - printing press -writing machine - computer - T9...).One has to wonder what type of text abstraction could be formed when 3D reading and writing is freely available....could we invent a new way to write and read that utilizes 3D?
MC

Mortality - is there hope...?

A colleague's father just past away a while ago. I believe he was 55 or so... it brought back some of my own thoughts in the past couple of years on the issue of mortality.
I guess a few things came together for me in a loud wakeup call:

I began to notice that my dad was not able to function his usual...getting tired quickly and needing my help with some physical stuff

My own health, although still great is not what it used to be... feeling my younger self slip away.

My 47 year old brother had some health issues - they were all benign..but still

Reading Eli Weisel's Night - especially the part where he talks about his father's dying moments and the emotional torment that he felt was the darkest part of his Holocaust abyss

But most of all I think it was the birth of my first daughter - Zoe. It was really a revelation and an incredible experience in many ways (I am sure every parent knows what I'm talking about) but it also brought a new sense to time - children are wonderful yet frightening metrics for our own demise and to the passing of time. Since they change so noticeably you begin to feel time flowing by. It also made me realize that no matter how good I feel now, how cool I might think I am Zoe will never really know me as I perceive myself to be at this point. For her I will be a 50 something old man most of his life behind him!

Of course everyone thinks of mortality, and this is not the first time by any means for me (my mother still recalls how at the age of eight I screamed from the shower saying something like "we are all gonna die - you, dad and me") but i think that having children changes everything including your view of life and death. For me it sort of symbolizes the beginning of the end.

Obviously this issue has occupied many minds ever since the dawn of man...and I wonder where exactly are we going with this. Reading some of the recent issues of Scientific American and other papers on robotics and AI it seems there are some converging trends in Nanotech Biotech and computing that will eventually change the way we live and the way we die.

Some of these advancements have to do with health issues like fighting cancer, anti aging, nerve repair or organ regeneration - but the interesting part for me is reading about augmented brain technology and the fact that we are not very far away from being able to engage not only in turbo charging our memory but maybe in actual mind uploading so what will the outcome be? The consequences of robbing man kind of mortality are of course not clear. Probably, at least for non religious crowd, the real issue lies with the continuity of consciousness (a la immortality test) and assume linear causality (unlike quantum immortality). Obviously the mere physical reincarnation is, by most accounts meaningless (popularized by motion pictures like Island and AeonFlux ). One wonders what would unending existence type of scenario do to the structure of so called humanity. Some accounts talk about stagnation and lack of any motivation others tend to look at the outcome as engineered heaven while yet others argue that existence that cannot be terminated will inevitably lead to misery as the conscious entity will not be able to commit willful suicide in cases where it no longer desires to continue an unwanted existence.

ultimately it seems that humans' philosophy that consciousness is what separates man from animals will be our demise. With that kind of definition it seems more than plausible that artificial entities with sufficient memory space, computing power and probably parallel processing and self referencing will very soon be able to be effectively self aware and will thus be effectively human under these terms (see Hans Moravec and The Singularity Institute for some data). Beyond that point we will need to face the very difficult questions of what constitutes life and death and re-examine our consciousness based theories. It might turn out that multiple consciousness and mind connectedness scenarios where an abstract conscious entity of super human intelligence and infinite existence come to "life". In fact proponents of this school of thought believe that web2.0 with its massive collaboration and co creation abilities is the beginning of such an occurrence. No doubt we are at an Archimedian point. Will we all be part of one big virtual entity (like Gaia ), will we be able to live multiple co-existence lives in virtual domains.

Whatever the future of mortality is I just want to end with a little story that my thesis advisor told me about Lev Landau (who was his doctoral advisor back in the good old days):

So Lev is sitting some really cold afternoon with Ginsburg in the Moscow Academy debating some issue in statistical mechanics. Ginsburg says something like "....but this is an extremely improbable outcome. It is like saying that this fireplace will spontaneously transform itself on the quantum level to a beautiful girl!" So Landau pauses for a second, then smiles and says: "that is true - but if that does happen the chances that she will have cloths on are REALLY zero!!"

So whatever it is, I hope the girls don't have cloths on!

MC

Race, gender and the future of intelligence

Came across this article by Malcolm Gladwell that was published 10 years ago in The New Yorker. Funnily enough this relates to a subject that has troubled me somewhat for many years, namely what is the origin of some of the seemingly strong ethnic or gender differences that we see around us. Unfortunately this indeed is a subject that most people find to be taboo. I have not run a search on Gladwell's sources (he doesn't reference them in great detail...) but indeed his argument is interesting, compelling and at least he gets some of this stuff into the open. Of course some heated subjects were not covered there and are somewhat not not in line with his argument, namely - what account for the big discrepancy in scholastic achievement between ethnic groups. Personally I subscribe to the theory that these differences probably stem mostly form the socioeconomic setting of our current time where white people have on the average better resources and an easier path to learning than some other minorities like African - Americans or Latin Americans. The same goes for women. Probably the strongest hint in that direction (at least in my mind) is the fact that if we look back in history many of the past scholastic achievements were made by non whites (mostly in the far and middle east).
This of course does not rule out the option that there is some ethnic or gender based difference. maybe there is some serious research in this subject matter - not sure.
I have recently read some material on William Shockley (Nobel laureate physicist - father of the transistor). It turns out he was an advocate of Eugenics and even donated sperm to a high IQ sperm bank. This issue is of course highly debatable (I am personally not even sure what my own thoughts on the matter are!!!) and has given rise to many new areas of thought in Bioethics (some of which centered around the great effort of the Human Genome Project to research moral issues surrounding their work).
And if all this is'nt complicated enough - I have been bouncing some thoughts in my head (more in another post) relating to human brain augmentation and surrounding subjects. I wonder how the clash of the Transhumanist movement (that advocates human augmentation towards a better future) with the Singularitans and proponents of superintelligent A.I. will pan out. Are man and machine the same?
I wish I was intelligent enough and had some more time to research all this.

MC