When it will actually arrive is anybody’s guess. So what will it be? No one seems to be entirely sure, but the vision seems to be something vastly more interactive than we have now:
Virtual world: Others also speculate whether web 3.0 will eventually develop into a virtual world. Writing in About.com, Daniel Nations explains that it’s a possibility that Web users would eventually be able to walk into virtual buildings and stores online.
That would be interesting. Hopefully the predictions about more relevant searching will be right. Who needs a bazillion marginally related hits from Google? A quick search for ‘antique tarot cards’ brought up 579,000 hits in 0.23 seconds. Swell, it’s going to take me a little longer than that to sift through them all, and really who goes past the first couple pages anyway? After that the ‘hits’ rarely are what you’re looking for anyway.
As far as becoming addicted, like they mentioned, well for me it’s probably too late already! But, unlike television addiction, the Web still requires a good deal of reading. Will it in the future, though? Or will it all be pretty pictures we point to and are instantly transported where we want to go? Envision talking heads reciting blog posts, instead of words to read. Ugh. Hmm… getting an idea for story here…
fillingspaces.wordpress.com 
“unlike television addiction, the Web still requires a good deal of reading”
That characterizes the way we Filling Spacers surf the Web, but the I’m afraid that the post-literate future is already here for many websters, who just point and click at youTube videos and look @ photos while barely reading the text. Have you ever noticed how even those brief little CNN news articles are always accompanied by 3 or four sentence-long bullet points, because people are too lazy to read a 500-word article?
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Oh god, yes, I think I’ve railed online in the past about the damn videos they put up on CNN, instead of an actual article to read. I don’t always want to watch a video, I prefer to read the article which is generally more informative anyway. And in some cases (like at work) I don’t want to sit through a video, I can read it faster! 🙂
But yes, the ability to read will someday mark us as walking relics.
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I think many of this is possible already: walking into virtual buildings, stores online, and head recital blogs. Many of us do all these already. Shopping online is walking into a virtual building and shopping on line. Some people who are physical challenge have stimulation programs as if they left their home and is going to work or school. And the head recital blog it is all over youtube, lol, and other cite that have live blog. I think some of that cite has some crazy stuff because it is live on video and others are boring just watching people babble on or talk on the telephone.
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I hadn’t even thought of YouTube, and people using that as a blogging tool. I think when they talked about walking into virtual stores, they’re envisioning more of VR experience. Whatever happened to VR? It was huge years ago in a lot of gaming systems, and it sort of disappeared.
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I think VR was causing too many headaches and nausea. But I was surprised that more work wasn’t done with it. It seemed that it was going to be the first big step toward a Star Trek-like holodeck.
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Was that what it was? I was never a gamer, so never tried one of those headsets they used for awhile. I’d be willing to bet the idea hasn’t been entirely abandoned, and someone, somewhere is still working on it. Until they can announce some real society-altering success, however, we probably won’t hear much about it.
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Can somebody explain to me the diff between VR and Wii?
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True VR (Virtual Reality) would be immersive: you’d look around and see yourself inside the scene, as if it were the real world around you. That’s why they used those headsets years ago, that covered your eyes so all you saw was the virtual world. With the Wii, you see what’s on the screen but if you turn your head you still see the room you’re in, the couch you’re sitting on, the controller in your hand. VR replaces the real world, Wii is more like remotely controlling an avatar.
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The best explanation would be like the holodecks on Star Trek. Did you ever see the show “VR.5” years ago, with Lori Singer? They’d put on these headsets and be linked to other people’s minds. All the action took place in their heads where they were able to interact with eachother via the system. Pretty freaky stuff, really.
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I was never obsessed with that sort of thing, in reality or in fiction (the actual world is packed with such odd and amazing things, that I’ve got my hands full.) I’ll admit, though, I was fascinated with the movie Inception, in which Leo DiC and Ellen Page immerse themselves in other peoples’ dreams. Have any of you guys seen it? I think it would be right up Didge & Gypsy’s alley.
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Mary J, you stand correct: I loved Inception! 🙂
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I suspected you would have. What I really liked was how clearly it was set up, with the exposition in the dialogue, and the changes in weather/lighting/costuming, so you could always tell what level of dreamscape you were in. A story like that could have been such a mess, and instead it was dazzling, like 4-dimensional chess.
I also like how convincing Ellen Page was, as the only one smart enough to see thru Leo’s b.s./denial/self-deceipt – I hate when they cast some ingenue like Julia Roberts (well, she used to be an ingenue) to play an architect or a brian surgeon or somethining , and she gives absolutley no indication that this is a person of high intelligence.
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So is Ellen Page a 22-yr-old wunderkind? Wow, I just looked at the credits for that on Imdb.com. That’s some cast they assembled. I’ll have to see it just for Michael Caine.
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She is an up-&-comer, who seems very fussy (in a good way) about her choices of roles. Everybody wanted to cast her in everything after Juno (have you seen it? It’s not lifechanging, but clever & sweet) and she held out for some good stuff (ok, except for that Roller Derby movie with Drew Barrymore, but everyone’s entitle to one slip-up).
Michael Caine is the sh!t, isn’t he? I’ve loved him forever.
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I have not, but then I rarely go to the movies anymore. I didn’t even know what it was about, although I have at least heard of it 😉 “Brainstorm” from 1983 with Natalie Wood was an early look at VR, too. Actually that was a pretty frightening concept. Talk about your invasion of privacy! I’ll have to check out Inception.
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