Life In the Metaverse

Second Life creator Philip Rosedale never seemed to imagine that his virtual world will be the only virtual world. When I've interviewed Rosedale, he's said that his ultimate goal is something like the metaverse in the sci-fi novel Snow Crash. Avatars and virtual worlds will be the way people navigate the on-line space -- not destinations unto themselves. And as part of that, various virtual world platforms will have to interact, so you can flow from one to the other. In a way, it will be like choosing to use Explorer or Firefox to navigate the Web.

Anyway, I bring this up because a virtual world start-up, Multiverse, just launched. Multiverse is being portrayed as a competitor to Second Life. To some degree it is, but in the long run, that would be the wrong way to look at it. These things should be able to co-exist.

The real test will be if various virtual worlds find a way to let people move among them. Right now, Second Life is something like AOL in its self-contained "walled garden" phase. That works for a while, but not forever.

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