Second Life, les autres nouveaux venus

Quand je vous dis que SL est « hot » en ce moment, la fameuse maison d’édition spécialisée en information technologique C/NET News, viens d’y ouvrir enseigne (via 3pointd). La prestigieuse agence de pub Britanique BBH qui a des clients telle que Levis, Vodafone, Johnny Walker et Sony Ericsson, y a ouvert boutique aussi (via 3pointd). On peut donc prévoir qu’elle encouragera ses prestigieux clients à en faire autant. Le Wall Street journal consacre un article à Second Life Now, Virtual Fashion, de même que Wired qui dans son édition d’octobre, qui présentera un guide touristique de SL (via New World Notes). Mais attendez, ce n’est pas tout. J’oubliais aussi de vous parler de The Economist qui lui aussi saute dans le bateau avec son article Living the second life (via secondlifeinsider). D’un autre côté, peut-être que j’hallucine et que je me laisse porter par une vague tendance du moment?

Non, à bien y penser, je ne crois vraiment pas.

D’ailleurs, voici quelques extraits juteux de The Economist

But Second Life is unique in that residents conceive what they sell. As such, says Mr Lanier, it is “probably the only example of a self-sustained economy” on the internet.

For all these reasons—its ability to change the real lives of its residents, its innovations in technology and in its business model—Second Life has become a darling of Silicon Valley. It promises to be “disruptive”, says Mitch Kapor, the inventor of the Lotus spreadsheet that played a big role in the personal-computer revolution of the 1980s and 1990s. He is now chairman of Linden Lab. To him, Second Life is comparable to both the PC and the internet itself, which started as something “quirky” for geeks, and then entered and transformed mainstream society. “Spending part of your day in a virtual world will become commonplace” and “profoundly normal,” says Mr Kapor. Ultimately, he thinks, Second Life will “displace both desktop computing” and other two-dimensional “user interfaces”. As “a hothouse of innovation and experiment,” he says, Second Life may even “accelerate the social evolution of humanity.”

(…)Henry Jenkins, a professor of media studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, thinks that Second Life deserves credit as “a world of hypotheticals and thought experiments.” From new approaches to corporate branding to education, Second Life is a petri dish for innovations that may help people in real life. Already, therapists are using Second Life to help autistic children, because it is a safe environment to practice giving signals to others and interpreting the ones coming back. Other organisations are using Second Life for long-distance learning. Overall, says Jaron Lanier, the veteran of virtual-reality experiments, Second Life “unquestionably has the potential to improve life outside.”

Je ne peux que rajouter un gros WOW, dans le sens de World of Wonders…

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