Comments on: Google Earth

Google Earth helps fulfill the version of the Metaverse becuase it provides a 2-D view of the entire globe, and presents various types of other information on many, many places. Some other types of information are 3-D views of buildings and terrain, labels of countries, regions, cities, buildings, businesses, and terrain formations, and wikipedia-esce information on many, many points of interest. Not only does it provide this information, but it lets you search the globe, moving forward or backward, left or right, zooming in or out, or panning your view up or down, left and right. It even has a search tool that lets you search for businesses, points of interest, and specific addresses. You can even get directions using Google Earth.

By combining this with Second Life, we could create a virtue universe (metaverse) the directly reflects the real one. In other words, people who own a building in real life would own the building in Second Life. For example, every store in the real world could have a second life account that owns their store in Second Life. In the Second Life store, they could advertise for the goods and services they sell in real life. While this is a cool idea, I don't think it will play out. As I said in my last post, 3D navigation of information is harder and slower than 2D navigation (the current internet). For example, it may be cool to fly through Google Earth to the pyramids and read information on them, you could get more information faster using the Internet. Also, becuase of its game-like graphics, I don't really take any current businesses on Second Life, that either sell virtual goods or advertise for a real life company, seriuosly becuase their structures and avatars look like they are from video games for kids, not professional.