After seeing the movie 'The Matrix', Philip Rosedale started a dot-com company in 1999 and attempted to build a full-body virtual reality rig. He soon pivoted to creating a virtual world on the Web. To this day, he's still come closer to creating the metaverse than Mark Zuckerberg ever will... https://cybercultural.com/p/second-life-metaverse-1999/#InternetHistory#Metaverse#TheMatrix
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@ricmac Second Life was never my thing, it did feature in an English class I took for my minor. "English and Social Media" as I recall.
Sims was more my thing. And then in my grind years of WoW I was dreaming in vivid Azeroth dreams many nights.
Zuck wants that market but all his money can't buy him the vision he craves. It is reserved for a certain hopeful naive quality to see beauty in worlds, virtual or not.
@clarablackink Well put re Zuck! And yes, I remember Sims being more popular...although it didn't have to contend with the technical limitations of the web like Second Life. Maybe SL over-reached a little, but regardless they still have a passionate community.
@ricmac They really do have a passion community!
I saw that via the class and our TA (who was very into SL).
I think "virtual reality" is mostly about how dynamically immersive a shared space can be.
The social quality of WoW, especially early on, made it so immersive. Spending a whole weekend in a shared world raiding was weirdly enthralling.
It seems like LLMs are an attempt to mimic this effect. Though it lacks the ability to have the in person socialization that elevated the experience.
@ricmac Second Life! Ah, that takes me back
@jake4480 I had a couple of logins over the years, but was never a big user. But it def has a cult following out there, to this day.
@ricmac yeah, I always thought it looked really cool but never got into it- the idea fascinated me though, loving Sim City etc as I do. Roblox reminds me of Second Life. It has that flavor. At the time, I was trying to get a virtual band going and thought it would be wild to have concerts in there, as a couple of bands did.
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