Metaverse by 2016

from ACM technews - today
I found these types of predictions interesting. Glasses for everyone by 2016
Meet the Metaverse, Your New Digital Home

CNet (04/13/07) Terdiman, Daniel

A report compiled by the Accelerating Studies Foundation, a nonprofit
organization focused on changing information gathering and communications,
outlines the predictions of academia, video game companies, virtual-world
publishers, geospatial engineering departments, and the media for Internet
use and technology during the next 10 years. The report suggests that
people may wear glasses that record everything around them, and there could
be little difference between real-world interaction and interactions in a
digital, 3D world by 2016. The report describes the Metaverse, a term
previously used to describe everything from 3D virtual worlds to digital
geospatial environments, as four main scenarios called augmented reality,
lifelogging, virtual worlds, and mirror worlds. Augmented reality is
immersive, location-aware, self-tracking technology that allows users to
receive instant information about places and other subjects at any time.
Lifelogging is recording daily communications, memories, and observations,
creating a permanent, daily, 3D blog. Virtual worlds are areas or
disciplines where the physical world and the Metaverse are still separate,
allowing a great deal of the community's economic and social life to
flourish and focus on issues of identity, roles, and human-human
interaction. Mirror worlds are "virtual models of reality," that, like
Google Earth, create digital renderings of the world, potentially layered
with detailed and pertinent information. Member of the Metaverse Roadmap
team and futurist Jerry Paffendorf said the report creates the scaffolding
to define the space, and the objective of the report is to "connect the
four areas together and try to make them make sense as mutually
reinforcing."

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