Second Life: Second Lives Now through Avatars

This is a post I've been thinking about for a while. Lately, I've heard several furturist describing how humanity will change in the future. Now this is a big subject so let's narrow a little: specifically how technology will change humans.

Two themes are interesting to me. First, we're going to be cyborgs. OK, are you visualizing the TERMINATOR? Me too. I am going to stick with changes to the brain because across the medical spectrum there have been huge changes. But let's talk about brain implants. This has already a reality in medicine. An example is the cochlear hearing implants which allow the deaf to hear via an implant in the brain. Once the device is implanted, it is updated by external software changes. So once you've got a model, everything else is improvement. The field of medicine is so wide open, it may very well change our lives in the next twenty years- especially those baby-boomers who can afford it. I say that because I think much of this will be very expensive for a while.

On the subject of future brain changes. Most futurists have agreed we will continue to interact with our computers to the point that we will hardwire to them. You will have implants that allow your thoughts to interact with your computer. Wow, more ways for them to contact me from work. Great.

Beyond this, they are talking about computational and analytical ability being accessed through implants. No longer will people have to struggle through calculus, they'll just implant it. This made me think about the future workforce because that is my professional area. Think about a workforce where you just change your programming.

The second theme is virtual lives through Avatars. These are already happening. One of the most well know is called Second Life. A little side trip. When the name for this site was chosen, we had no knowledge of this virtual site. My lawyers had me write this. It is an Internet-based virtual world. You create an Avatar and you can do any kind of interaction there. You interact with others in this Second Life using your Avatar. Speaking of that, you can create yourself to look like yourself or be anything you want. Some organizations have held meetings in Second Life, people buy virtual real estate (no really, with real hard-earned cash, ok, I don't know about the hard earned). Damn, I wish I'd thought of that. How would you likt to buy some vitural swamp land in Florida? A friend of mine who works for a large software company in California know a woman who has done extremely well as a clothes designer for Avatars. Well really, do you want to walk around a virtual reality in what your wearing? I didn't think so. You have to buy her designs. I've been told that virtual sex is the biggest thing going right now in Second Life. But that my be changing. A recent speaker at my friend's software company discussed contract negotiation by avatars. You program your avatar to react to signals from another avatar to make your Avatar a tough negotiator. It just seems to me that your "opponent" will do the same thing. The point was you can become anything you want and that we will live parts of our lives virtually. Many of the futurists I listen to say that we will all have Avatars; they will be a common as personal computers, cell phones, etc. They will be a communication and life tool.