Joseph Pine II – The Multiverse

On Mobile Monday Joseph Pine II talked about the multiverse model. I would recommend anyone in the location based industry to watch his presentation, since it gives us insight in the complexity of what we are dealing with.

http://www.slideshare.net/momoams/jospeh-pine-ii

“We’re in 1994″, says Joseph Pine II as he describes where we are now with the multiverse compared to where we were with the internet.

The Multiverse

Description | Dimension | Fabled Technology

Physical world | time, matter, space | Real Life Merger
Augmented reality | time, space, no matter | The Borg
Augmented Virtuality | time, no space, matter | Holo-Transmitter
Warped reality | no time, space, matter | Teleportation
Mirror world | time, no space, no matter | Mirror World
Alternate reality | no time, space, no matter | Telepathy
Physical virtuality | no time, no space, matter | Desktop Fabrication
Virtual world | no time, no space, no matter | The Metaverse / Holodeck / Martrix

Sigma Scan Highlights

The Sigma Scan, commissioned by the UK Government’s Horizon Scanning Centre, is a collection of future issues and trends developed by the Outsights-Ipsos MORI partnership. They have carefully examined many trends and made predictions for the future in a horizon until the year 2050. More information can be found HERE. We have collected the most relevant predictions and important quotes for IRL.

Tracking & Tracing
- Smaller, cheaper, more accurate sensors using nanotechnology promise to provide unprecedented access to information about the physical world.
- The large amount of material openly available online has increased people’s ability to find out about others.

Connectivity and Network Interactions
- One result may be a decreasing distinction between physical and virtual environments, for example by partial automation of the role of the vehicle driver. This has already happened with banking and online retailing, where complex systems include both physical and virtual components
- Network systems involving physical and virtual components will be likely to be used to run business and government, monitor the environment, develop new technology and for numerous other purposes. The Internet may become fully incorporated into physical infrastructure with numerous potential benefits.

Sensory transformation: life in a cloud of data
- Over the next ten years, increasing numbers of computational devices may be embedded in physical objects, places, and even human beings. These devices could sense, react to, and act upon their surroundings. Furthermore, a network of these sensing devices would provide considerable amounts of additional information about their environment.

IRL Commentary

When we analyze the implications and early indicators presented to us by the Sigma Scan, we may conclude that futurologists agree that the virtual world and the physical world will become increasingly connected with another and that the distinction between them may disappear over time.

Detailed vision of IRL: Reality Fusion

Some people have asked me about the vision behind our company IRL (In Real Life). Although the basic outline is described on our corporate

What is virtual?

From a philosophical point of view virtual is that which is not real, but may display the full qualities of the real. Translations of the real into the virtual are widespread phenomenon’s. The most prominent example of this is the virtual world Second Life which aims at imitating life without the boundaries of reality. Visionaries have made visual representations of what virtual worlds may evolve to in science fiction books, series, movies and art. The Matrix is one of those representations that showed in a dramatic sense what may be the result of artificial intelligence combined with virtual evolution. Of course it is hard to say in what way virtual reality and physical reality will fuse together, but we can start by looking at current developments.

The market

The metaverse roadmap shows the segmentation of solutions that are out there today. To get a better understanding of what you are seeing:

• Lifelogging is blogging, Twittering, Jaiku-ing, Flickr-ing, Youtube-ing and all other applications and websites that provide a platform to share your life with the rest of the world.

• Virtual worlds are digitally created worlds like Second Lifeand game environments . Many companies come to see the benefits of such worlds, because they allow them to try things in virtual worlds before practicing them in real life.

• Augmented reality is basically a combination of the digital and the real.

• Mirror worlds model the real world like Google Maps and Virtual Earth.

Of course this is a simplification. Please read the whole metaverse roadmap to get a better understanding about our vision.

What about IRL?

It is our believe that these solutions will fuse together. Products that want to achieve this should have the right mix of augmentation and simulation while enabling users to be both identity- and world-focused. We came up with our service IRL Connect based on needs we came across and the metavers space model, which will be a geoweb service (see article in The Economist and geoweb on wikipedia) that integrates lifelogging in a social context. From there on we will take our users and guide them to augmented reality. We start with a geoweb service instead of augmented reality or a virtual world for many reason, but the main reason is timing. Although the majority has adopted social networking, mobile devices, Google Maps, direct communication and started creating their own content, they technologically trail behind to initiate the full experience we are aiming for.

We could use your help

I hope the IRL vision is clear now. If you are interested in joining us and help us realize this vision in any way possible, please do contact me through our corporate website www.irlcorporate.com. We are always looking for programmers and people with useful advice that can enhance the user experience for our service IRL Connect. It is scheduled to be released in February 2008.