Those familiar with Natural Search Blog may remember some of my similar past work here outlining laser graffiti ads on buildings, roofvertising, marriage proposals in Google Maps, “earth art” geoglyph ads, and sponsoring town names as an Ultimate Local SEO tactic.

It’s not surprising to see guerilla marketing tactics finding their way into Google Maps. Not only does Google itself seek to introduce disruptive technology innovations, but I expect that as Satellite and Aerial photos may get more frequently updated in such interfaces we’ll be bound to see a whole lot more efforts from people trying to get messages conveyed through the Maps interfaces.

The real question I’m left with, is if Google resells ad space on pictures of people’s rooftops and billboards, would they owe anything back to the original property owners?!?

After returning, one of my friends saw my pics and remarked that Vint Cerf resembled the Architect character in the Matrix movies. It immediately struck me that he was right — so I knocked together a comparison pic:

Vint Cerf and the Architect in the Matrix share a number of feature similarities: similar age, dress, coloring, and facial hair. The biggest difference is that the Architect has a full head of hair while Vint is balding.

In the last two films in the trilogy where the Architect appears, the character is portrayed by Helmut Bakaitis.

Further underscoring the resemblance, the Architect in the Matrix is depicted seated in an armchair during the pivotal scene when he’s introduced, and Vint Cerf was seated on stage with Chris Sherman during the SMX Keynote:

As I recall, Cerf was not obsessively clicking a Bic pen the entire time he spoke with Chris Sherman, though.

Okay, I’m not the first to mention this resemblance — TotallyLooksLike mentioned it as well, along with a few others.

I wonder, could the Wachowski Brothers who wrote and directed the films have been somehow inspired by Vint Cerf when they created the Architect? I see that a number of others out there have mentioned Cerf in relation to the character, but no direct proof that the Wachowski’s knew who he was, much less based a character in whole or in part upon him.

Okay, am I a total geek airhead for posting this?

Will it be a SecondLife killer, as some have suggested? So far, no, since it doesn’t have one huge planet or room for interacting with everyone as SecondLife does.

But this is the first baby-step Google has taken into VR, and we can expect them to evolve it further, particularly if the service proves popular. I haven’t tried it out just yet, but the feature descriptions include adding VR rooms to webpages, pulling photos and vids into the VR environments, and tying it closely to Google Talk – Google’s chat service.

Check out their demo video and Google’s blog post announcing it:

This new feature will be well worth watching, I believe.

I find myself a bit skeptical, just because geolocation data has been around for so long now, and I’ve heard people saying that it will revolutionize how information is presented to us for quite some time. This concept is nothing new, though if you look at it from the perspective that Messina has provided, it’s a fairly compelling-feeling twist as a sort of infrastructure given that could and should be incorporated in the planning and development of any given internet site — particularly social ones — at their very inception.

What isn’t plain is just how integral all the locative information could be, considering the issues of unknowable error rates involved in geolocation data (see the section on “The issue of error rates” in “Geolocation: Core To The Local Space And Key To Click-Fraud Detection“) and consumer interest group resistance to pinpointing of users’ locations based upon privacy concerns (just today there was an article on how groups are complaining to the FTC about the ease of geo-pinpointing of users of mobile devices). I wish he’d touched on those aspects in some way, although I do like the techno-evangelist spin he’s provided on location as a foundational aspect in site design.

Update: Susan Mernit, formerly of Yahoo!, also points out that security is a major concern for applications like dating sites, and that there’s consumer irritation involved with some contextual advertising.

Having this covered in a mainstream rag like TIME is probably nearly enough to make the concept jump the shark, and the novelty element and guerrilla marketing value could be virtually annihilated by familiarity.

I’m not really complaining so much as noting the effect — and noting that the promotion value of the medium could become rapidly eroded when it’s too common. The novelty and amusement factor could give way to annoyance if laser displayed images on buildings became frequent. When a methodology hits mainstream, it’s no longer “guerrilla”.

The Batsignal, by Graffiti Research Lab, Barcelona, 2007

“We Love Laser”

You may not’ve heard of the Graffiti Research Lab (G.R.L.), but they were likely the source of inspiration for the artists who “terrorized Boston” with the little LED mooninite boards back in January. The G.R.L. first came up with what they call “LED Throwies” which are LEDs hooked up to batteries and magnets which can be thrown onto iron surfaces to form messages or decor. Apropos of their somewhat subversive goals, their manifesto reads:

“The Graffiti Research Lab is dedicated to outfitting graffiti writers, artists and protesters with open source tools for urban communication. The goal of the G.R.L. is to technologically empower individuals to creatively alter and reclaim their surroundings from commercial and corporate culture. G.R.L. agents are currently working in the lab and in the field to develop and test a range of experimental technologies for the state-of-the-art graffiti writer.”

G.R.L.’s newest creation is much more dramatic and compelling. The ability to project messages up on the sides of buildings is redolent of the movie scenes found in the film Blade Runner, based on a Philip K. Dick short-story. This sort of thing can’t help but send the imagination soaring for subversive artists — it looks like a quick shortcut into shouting a message out to loads of people with relatively low budget! If I’m understanding correctly, they’ve designed a system system to allow people to draw messages with a laser-pointer in real-time, even, and added on software to create some stylistic touches to make the drawn lines “drip” digital paint down the walls.

It’s not going to take long before commercial interests grab hold of this idea and run with it. Just like the Boston Mooninite Scare (which was a promotional gimmick for Cartoon Network’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie), it’s far more likely that commercial enterprises will sieze onto this medium and deploy it out in a massive way.

Are there any laws which ban this sort of thing?!? The GRL disappointingly didn’t share scans of their Barcelonan ticket with us nor explain what laws the police claimed when they were shut down outside of a Starbucks, so we’re left to presume that they may’ve been cited for creating a public disturbance, or hosting a public demonstration without a license (their demonstration had attracted a lot of people).

Here in the U.S., it makes me wonder if there are any existing laws which could stop such a thing… some might cite anti-graffiti laws, but those usually mention something like “unauthorized defacing of a building or public place”. “Defacing” would seem to have some overtones of actual damage involved, while this transitory medium leaves no marks and causes no physical harm. How is this materially different from shining a flashlight on a building, or swiping it with your car’s headlights as you drive by?

I’d somehow think that this would be protected by freedom of speach. It’s sort of like being allowed to say out loud anything you wish — you should be able to beam messages of light around, too, I would think. Not that I want to see the environment more spammed-up than it already is — I’m just thinking that technically, under our current law, it’s the sort of thing that good rights attorneys could argue in favor of.

Unsurprisingly, some companies have apparently done a bit of this type of light-projection advertising. Chase Bank was beaming their company logo out of their Manhattan branches onto the sidewalks, but they discontinued it at the end of last year after getting fined for “defacing” the sidewalks: $50 per day. That fine is so low that I’d think it was easily absorbable — it’s much lower than many other advertising campaign costs. I think I’ve heard of Gap and other stores using sidewalk projectors as well, and I’ve seen some companies project their logos on their own walls — Google does this during the annual Googledance, for instance.

I predict we’re only going to see more of this sort of thing going on. Are people ready for it? You may be able to say that a sidewalk or a wall has been “defaced”, but what happens when these images are projected up into the middle of the air through 3-d holographic projection systems, or when pizza hut ads are projected onto the moon?

Their motto seems ominous in context of recent-history political trends and frighteningly nationalistic: “Science Fiction in the National Interest“. I think their involvement is a bit horrifying, misguided, and more than a bit egotistically self-grandiose. Read on for more details.

Six writers – nicknamed the “Sigma Six”, after “Six Sigma” (a set of practices for reducing defects through process improvements – see related Dilbert cartoon), met with the Homeland Security group with members of the government’s High Impact Technology Solutions (“HITS”) program leaders to speculate on innovative ways that technology could improve the government’s ability to monitor individuals, identify and assess threats. The six writers involved were Greg Bear, Sage Walker, and Arlan Andrews, Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, and Yoji Kondo “Eric Kotaniâ€? (USA Today apparently failed to mention Kondo’s involvement).

Sigma has previously consulted with Sandia’s Advanced Concepts group on future national threats. Many Sigma members have already been involved in industrial and Federal consulting over the years, at the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Association (DARPA), the CIA, and NASA.

The Sigma Group apparently has two primary criteria for membership: potential members must have written speculative fiction, and they must have a doctorate degree in a science/technology discipline. I think their membership criteria is rather snobby and elitist, considering that three main factors define a writer’s ability to write prophetically futuristic fiction and come up with innovative ideas that are within the realm of scientific possibility. Those three factors would be: good scientific/technological knowledge; the ability to project out societal/economic/business/political trends into likely future outcomes; and the pairing of both of these to imagination – the intuitive leap to make connections in ways that others have not. These three factors are not gaged by having a Ph.D.

I would think that to have any credibility and advantage whatsoever, Sigma would’ve needed to also have William Gibson and Neal Stephenson in the group advising the government. Perhaps they should consider allowing existing members to nominate other authors to join up, and vote on their individual merits.

But, my main criticism about Sigma’s advising the federal government on security really isn’t due to their obvious and stupidly limiting elitism, nor from their egotistical and narcissistic need to prove their intelligence by promoting themselves in this way. (It rather reminds one of how movie stars are constantly pushing themselves into political involvement, despite any credible experience in solving complex problems, and in many cases a complete lack of post-high-school education in anything other than acting.)

No, my main beef with the Sigma Group doing this is the apparent total lack of any consideration about the long-term ramifications of their assistance to the government. There’s no website that I could find which outlines any sort of ethical considerations which the group might have, and based on the various news stories and author’s statements about the group, it would appear that they’re just naively lobbing snips of their disruptive tech/scientific ideas over to the government to use in any way they see fit.

They apparently are more concerned about trying to promote themselves and reassure themselves that they have scientific respectability than they are concerned about the welfare of the human race. One would wish that they had learned the lessons of scientists and engineers of the past who later saw that the willy-nilly deployment of new technologies could cause more destruction and problems for the human race, sometimes outweighing the improvements they originally intended. One great example would be the scientist Alfred Nobel who invented dynamite, and later sought to counteract the negative effects of his life’s work by founding the Nobel Prize.

It’s odd an astounding that they would now lend their support to a government which has used fear-mongering to erode human rights and expand the military-industrial complex more extensively than any time in the past.

Security experts such as Bruce Schneier have pointed out the folly of many of the Homeland Security policies which have been more focussed on addressing a single symptom than looking for holistic approaches to addressing real problems. Of course, many intellectuals have pointed out that doing things like requiring people to take off their shoes at the airport doesn’t reduce risk whatsoever, and is ultimately more about giving the false appearance that something substantive has been done while perpetuating citizen’s illogical perceptions of relative risk. One lunatic on an airplane in the UK tried to set off a bomb in his shoes – a very low percentage risk considering how many flights happened up until that point, yet now convenience is impacted for millions across the board as all shoes are now X-rayed. Yet, individuals could carry loads of plastique explosive taped to their torsos and fly right through checkpoints with no problem.

The idea of being able to eradicate all risk in life is completely irrational. Once you face that fact, you should be able to see that more and more little fixes may not be good for sustainable, long-term solutions to security concerns. You will lose in such arms races as more and more privacy and rights are eroded with each intrusive innovation. The abusive misuse of governmental power against innocent individuals is not worth the false perception of improved security. Do these authors not see this as a problem?!?
The general public is unable to understand math, and is therefore unable to effectively assess most risks. With the government perpetuating bad risk assessment as a pretext for reducing privacy, reducing individual rights, and increasing hassles for all citizens, it’s really bad for otherwise brilliant intellectuals such as the Sigma Group to fail to have really assessed the current trends, ethics, and societal implications of their involvement. They are helping the expansion of a police state and an erosion of the very sorts of rights and idealism that they normally would promote through their writing.

Harlan Ellison wouldn’t have fallen for this naive and egotistical temptation! Shame on these guys for doing so.

I’ve written before in somewhat glowing terms of some science fiction writers, particularly in their ability to predict future technological advances and their impacts on our day-to-day lives. (See here and here.) I like Sci-Fi writers, and I think it’s good and helpful to society in general for people to write speculatively about possible futures. If we can foresee possible impacts of new and emerging technologies we might be able to figure out how to make such things work well for us, in non-destructive ways. But, Sigma’s efforts appear on the surface to be devoid of any ethical constraints, and lacking of wise consideration of whether technical advances might be more beneficial than destructive in the balance. I expect more of science fiction writers, particularly if they’re moving out of the realm of entertainment into active involvement with the government and military.

I’m not alone in criticizing Sigma’s involvement. The Chrononautic Log also ridicules the SciFi writers, and John C. Dvorak also criticizes both the ability of SF writers to predict the future, and the way the government simultaneously lauds them while making them out to be borderline crackpots. Techdirt sums it up eloquently:

…the likely result is more pointless methods to try to combat specific scenarios brought up by the writers, rather than anything more comprehensive or useful. While it’s at least nice to hear that Homeland Security is willing to listen to those with “outside the box” ideas, it’s tough to have much confidence in the idea that they’ll do anything useful with the information.

Sigma Group should post a webpage to state what their aims are, and what, IF ANY, ethically progressive policies they use before pushing tech/scientific solutions to societal problems. At best, their involvement currently seems short-sighted and more about pushing their own self-interests rather than altruistic goals of improving the human condition. If they had any ability to be visionary outside the narrow fields of science and technology, I don’t think they could be involved at all with the Department of Homeland Security – an agency which has focussed upon reducing privacy and individual rights while increasing oppressive policies.

The Yellow Pages Association‘s annual report and other research indicates that consumer usage of print directories is on the decline while usage of online yellow pages and local search are increasing. The main divergence of opinion seems to be in how long it will be before print dies completely – ten years, fifty years, or a century? Simba research indicates that profits of core yellow pages are down while independent publishers are increasing at double-digit rates, indicating that advertisers continue to see value in print YP exposure. Even though the print biz still has lots of money and usage, those who have watched tech trends during the Information Age know that transitions of this sort can often reach a tipping point rapidly, perhaps rendering print YP irrelevant at the closer end of the timeline estimates.

In all the rush to sound the death-knell for print most folks are looking upon it as merely a dinosaur, soon to die as a result of the meteor-strike of internet search technology. But, could there be another future in store for print directories?

I’ve been watching developments in a number of converging lines of technology for a while now, and I foresee another potential fate for the print directories: nanotechnology. Read on and I’ll explain.

There are a lot of reasons why consumers with internet access are increasingly turning away from print in favor of internet. I’d say the three prime ones are: having more information available to base selections upon, having broader access to service/product providers not found in a limited-area book, and the ability to search in a number of ways.

The main reason that some people continue to use print yellow pages instead of IYPs or local search engines would appear to be that there are people who still don’t have ready access to the internet. Lack of access is a situation that seems destined to wane, however. PC costs may continue to be pushed lower by tech improvements and market competition. Cellphones may increasingly offer internet access, and associated costs may also be pushed lower by competitive market pressure. And, free WiFi access seems destined to increase: more and more businesses offer this service for customers at their premises, and some cities are even experimenting with providing it for citizens. Google has even been experimenting with providing WiFi, paid by advertising fees, with some people suspecting they could even intend to rollout such service nationwide, what with their purchasing up the dark fiber throughout the US.

An advantage that hardcopy books may have over internet is ease of reading coupled with the tactile sensation of easily holding the content in one’s hands. For this reason, printed novels and other books continue to be preferred by consumers far above e-books.

So, what if a yellow pages directory book could combine the best of both worlds? What if you could hold a directory in your hands which contained all the same information found on the internet? What if you could locate nearby providers, read up on details of their offerings, view user-ratings for them, then see a map of where they’re located, all in a book you hold in your hands?

The concept doesn’t seem all that far-fetched any more. Theoretically, it should be possible now to create a book where the pages can electronically change display, and the book could hook up via WiFi to the internet to access all the same info that people are now getting through their laptops and cellphones. My PDA already does this, but the experience isn’t great just because of the size of the display screen, and the display isn’t similar in experience to viewing info on a printed page.

Nanotechnology has now enabled the creation of thin, flexible, full-color, electronic paper display screens which are poised to further transform our day-to-day lives and we view information in our environment.

Nano development has further decreased the costs of memory storage devices, enabling products such as Apple’s iPod and iPod nano’s to store thousands of audio files, images, and videos inside relatively tiny devices.

Wireless technology has progressed as well, allowing laptops, tiny cellphones and other devices like my PDA to link up with networks.

If someone were to link all these technologies together, it would be possible to create a dynamic, interactive yellow pages book which connects online to allow access to extensive information about businesses already found within internet yellow pages and local search services.

Ah, but wouldn’t the cost be prohibitive, you may be thinking? One might as well buy a laptop for that sort of price, right? And, yellow pages are given away to consumers! Well, the truth is that the cost barrier may disappear for this sort of thing within just a few scant years. Late last year, I attended a major conference on nanotechnology, nano TX, here in Dallas which was attended by international representatives such as the Duke of York. According to experts in the field such as James R. Von Ehr II, CEO of Zyvex Corporation, the costs of fabricating smaller computing and display devices is dropping so rapidly that it’ll likely become cost-effective to provide video games on the backs of cereal boxes within three years.

If you combine full-color, flexible electronic paper display screens in a book that is little more than a thin-client internet access device attaching via WiFi, you may be able to produce the next evolutionary level of hardcopy yellow pages books. There could be a lot of advantages to this. No more environmental impact to trees, and distribution costs could be slashed. The old, traditional practices of selling display ads on a price scale based on placement, column-size, and other features could also translate in some ways to this modern, new hybrid medium if YP ad specifications are evolved over. These directories could be ever-green, with the latest information, always up-to-date.

Considering the sheer profits and amounts of investment that many corporations have in the print directory medium, it’d be surprising if some of them aren’t already working upon a nanotech yellow pages book as I’ve described. If Von Ehr is right about how soon the cost of this technology will drop, then the time to be performing R&D on an eventual interactive YP book is now.

Can this concept really be called “print” at this point? Maybe not. But it’s clear that it could provide a path for evolving a new version of hardcopy directories, and the industry appears to be confronted with a choice of evolving or becoming extinct. I compare it to print because the viewing experience of the graphic page/display is being made much more similar to the printed medium by the new technologies.

Don’t write off the print yellow pages yet — there could be a surprising amount of life left in the old standby. Nanotech could be the savior of the legacy Yellow Pages print book business.

During the address, Page stated he thought that human brain algorithms actually weren’t all that complicated and could likely be approximated with sufficient computational power.  He said, “We have some people at Google (who) are really trying to build artificial intelligence and to do it on a large scale. It’s not as far off as people think.” Well, one of the top scientists in the world disagrees, if he’s talking about approximating a human-like consciousness.

I’ve written previously about how stuff predicted in cyberpunk fiction is becoming reality, and how Google might be planning to develop intelligent ‘search pets’ which would directly integrate with the human brain in some fashion. What might Google use this for and how soon might they show it to the world? Read on…

Writers and futurists have been exploring how artificial intelligence might affect our lives, but they’ve really only scratched the surface. I’d say that most of the fiction based on it has focused on the scariness of it or the “Frankenstein Complex” as some call it. Hal, the psychotically murderous man-made intellect in the film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, is perhaps one of the most famous exemplars of this archetype. One of the best fiction authors to tackle some of the ethical questions of AI was the sci-fi author, Isaac Asimov. In Asimov’s short story collection named I, Robot, he outlined some basic behavioral programming that he thought might be necessary for thinking machines, and used it as a primary component of the “positronic brain” that was the base for his AIs. These are known as the Three Laws of Robotics:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Many others have become inspired by Asimov’s Three Laws. The Will Smith movie, I, Robot, was apparently inspired by Asimov’s works, though the only Asimov story it comes even distantly close to resembling was “The Evitable Conflict”, from his I, Robot collection. Bishop, the humanoid robot in Aliens movies, was apparently programmed with these three laws.

Will Google’s AI be programmed with the Three Laws of Robotics as a core, involuntary restriction for its behavior?

That question is likely putting the cart before the horse. AI has remained elusive to computer scientists for numerous reasons including complexity, the need for fast computing, and lots of memory. It sounds as if Google likely has the latter two, but the complexity piece of the puzzle is still going to be a major hurdle. There are a lot of approaches to AI programming which people have explored: The building of basic building-block components, and the enabling of self-programming and learning/heuristics for development. Linguistic approaches based on the theory that intelligence in part rests with the ability to understand speach and language. Game theory, rewards systems, and neural nets. There are numerous theories and approaches, and any solution that would come anywhere close to creating a human-like consciousness would likely be some sort of soup composed of a few of these ingredients.

The biggest problem of all is in trying to pull all the various components together to create a gestalt that forms human or human-like consciousness. Some have suggested that parallel processing on a massive scale, perhaps even making use of quantum computers, could enable the gestalt effect. Sounds like Page’s people are exploring this route. Yet the human mind uses a lot of fuzzy logic for many different applications – a tricky thing to approximate through machinery. For instance, the intuitive leap at the core of much creative innovation defies the ability of programming to enable. The gestalt of the human mind transcends the mere sum of its parts. The best they’ll likely be able to do is to either generate AI which can mimic human-like responses and behavior, perhaps well enough to fool a Turing Test, or else they’ll create artificial intelligence geared towards efficient, complex decision-making and controlling of systems.

What I’m describing is the philosophical debate between Strong AI devotees and proponents of Weak AI. Believers in Strong AI suppose that it might be possible to create a machine capable of consciousness – self-awareness. Weak AI denies this as a reasonable possibility and posits that software can only assist with solving specific problems. The most compelling of the philosophers on the side of Weak AI is the esteemed physicist, Sir Roger Penrose, via his book, The Emporer’s New Mind. The title pretty well says it all – it’s implying that proponents of Strong AI are trying to sell “the emperor’s new clothes“.

The Weak AI pursuit – the creation of AI for the purpose of efficient decision making or control of complex systems – is the most likely immediate application for Google’s AI research work. Heuristics have been used for a while now in the identification of spammers and in the validation of performance-based advertisement clicks. I would guess that the application of AI which would most immediately serve Google interests would be for the identification of click fraud. Aspects of some paths of AI research – namely, heuristics and pattern-recognition – apply very readily to the growing need for better click-fraud policing.

Another approach could be the creation of an intelligent evaluation machine which could be used to immitate their ranks of human quality assurance testers who check out the quality of links appearing in their SERPs. If a straightforward algorithm could’ve been adequately trained to provide this function, they wouldn’t need the dozens of humans they are currently using for this purpose. The complexity of evaluating links for quality criteria really needs a human-like intelligence to some degree. Questions of aesthetics and the ability to view the two-dimensional page layout with visual-recognition comprehension would require that a machine have a much more robust system for this purpose than the much more simplistic algorithms used to compute PageRank.

It’s obvious, though, that Google really intends for more than just an immediately-applicable commercial use for Weak AI. They are likely working on AI as a pure research project with the intention of later exploring how such a thing might be best used. And, they’re likely approaching it with a bias towards Stong AI.

In his book, The Search, John Battelle reports that one of Google’s core computer scientists (and their very first employee), Craig Silverstein, has said “I would like to see the search engines become like computers in Star Trek. You talk to them and the understand what you’re asking.” Silverstein has also said that human-like intelligence is needed in order to know what information people are seeking – a sort of information retrieval “Holy Grail” that each of the major search engines has been trying to develop in some way.

When asked about the future of Search, Silverstein has also said, “The future of search will involve genetically engineered search pets that will understand human emotions — not just facts, but how people work,� and also, “We’ll still search for facts,� he says, “but in all likelihood the facts will be contained in a brain implant.�

Can this be attained through Weak AI? Perhaps. Yet, understanding human motivations sufficiently to be able to evolve search results toward the highest degrees of appropriateness matching up with each individual’s desires/needs is a fairly high-order level of comprehension. To adequately achieve this might require something bordering upon the gestalt of human consciousness. If they’re going for Strong AI, I think that Page’s statements were overly optimistic. Sir Roger Penrose says so.

(If you’re interested in reading speculations on futurism, you might also read my article on the prophetic nature of Philip K. Dick’s science fiction.)

“So what?” you might say. So, how does this differ from World of Warcraft, the Sims Online, or EverQuest?

First, there’s no goal to Second Life, per se — users just go into the thing, hang out, and interact with other users and the virtual environments. Second, users can own property in this world, and they can sell the property for real money in the real world! (Contrast with EverQuest, where they’ve actively worked to keep people from selling characters on eBay and such.) Finally, people have begun marketing through this new media — like gangbusters!

Copyright 2006, Linden Research, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

People like Anshe Chung are now making hundreds of thousands of dollars per year by designing and selling the SL virtual real estate. Others are offering services like architecture, event planning, selling artworks, scripting, and even financial or legal services. Some universities are now teaching within the space, too!

Strangely enough, some science fiction authors have predicted the rise of virtual reality environments being used in these ways. Most particularly this was described with a lot of detail in Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson, published first in 1992.

Stephenson describes a virtual world where individuals buy and sell property, and where earlier adopters who purchased property in it were able to later make a mint in the real world by selling out to mega corporations or affluent individuals. Hackers scripted special creatures and behaviours into the world, and designed fascinating architectural wonders. Rock stars would put in appearances in the VR to promote themselves and to conduct business deals.

It’s actually not too clear that Stephenson predicted something like Second Life — as Penguin Books mentions, Stephenson’s book actually influenced the creators and participants into pursuing this vision — this is a case where SciFi actually steered the technological development towards immitating the fiction. I’ve previously blogged about how technology, the internet, and the real world have been predicted by SciFi, so chalk this one up as yet another example.

In this case, the fiction has predicted a major new paradigm where interactive marketing is concerned. Businesses and individuals are looking towards Second Life as a new medium to grab attention and promote their products and themselves. Wells Fargo Bank, Sun Microsystems, Coca-Cola, and Toyota have all started building stuff and doing stuff in Second Life as a method for marketing themselves online. In August, Susanne Vega became the first musician to perform a ”live” concert in SL space, through her avatar.

The cool thing about this is that Second Life is evolving online marketing directly towards traditional promotional tactics found in the real world before the internet took off. Businesses wishing to derive benefit from this new media will be performing the traditional analysis used in real estate in order to locate advantageous properties where they can build their VR presence. Location, location, location!

They’ll be hiring architectural designers to fix up their place, and they’ll hire VR event planners to create happenings to attract attention. They’ll pay celebs to be their spokespersons, and they’ll buy strange sorts of advertisements all over the metaverse space, in the unlikeliest of spots. Product placement is now possible on this virtual world in a big way — possibly even more effective than it is on TV or in movies, at least while this medium is still new.

If growth in this space continues as it has been, major companies will even pay fulltime staff to manage their VR presence.

Is this a trend worth paying attention to? YES! Second Life just topped one million users six days ago! That is months before their prediction of reaching one million in 2007. This trend is increasing rapidly!

What’s the natural progression for this trend? Imagine online users spending more and more time in this virtual world space, instead of in chat rooms and forums and such. Imagine travelling to a building with people in it who will verbally tell you about the information you’re seeking, instead of typing a keyword into a flat page. Instead of doing your product research on a company website, you might go into their virtual store and question their virtual salesmen until you’re certain of what you want to buy. A three dimensional space is far more compelling to people.

I think that online marketing and optimization has now hit the next level with Second Life. Online marketing is no longer relegated to just those puttering about in the dark of night with esoteric twiddling about in URL rewrite mods, eigenvectors, keyword analysis, and conversion analytics. Online marketing and promotional optimization have now sprung into the third dimension with a whole new dynamism.

It’s time to relearn all the classic strategies for promotion! Start optimizing for this new media.