William Sims Bainbridge (ed.)(2010). Online Worlds: Convergence of the Real and the Virtual
Este livro é o resultado de uma conferência sobre o tema levada a cabo num espaço virtual – World of Warcraft. Os artigos coligidos na obra abordam temas como culturas de modding, diásporas online, vivências e emergência do espaço virtual como área de pesquisa científica.
A notar:
Medulla: A Cyberinfrastructure-Enabled Framework for Research, Teaching, and Learning with Virtual Worlds
Michelle Roper Fox, Henry Kelly, and Sachin Patil (86-100)
Propõe uma infraestrutura de criação de gestão de conteúdos educativos baseados em mundos virtuais que permite interoperabilidade entre espaços.
A Virtual Mars
Richard Childers (101-108)
Criação de um espaço virtual baseado no motor de jogo Cry Engine2 Crytek inicialmente pensado com um planeta Marte utópico, envolve museus e instituições científicas na recriação de realidades, espalos e animais virtuais.
Future Evolution of Virtual Worlds as Communication Environments
Giulio Prisco (280-288)
Traça perspectivas futuras de crescimento dos espaços virtuais. Pegando nas visualizações de Neal Stephenson e exemplos como o Second Life ou Blue Mars, mostra o realismo que pretendemos atingir e a convergência tecnológica necessária para níveis incrementalmente mais elevados de realismo gráfico. Anota desenvolvimentos em projectos imersivos – Open Sim, Croquet, anota o Lively da Google como uma experiência que ainda trará desenvolvimentos, e observa os espaços virtuais como espaços de presença, colaboração. Futuras convergências: maior realismo, interfaces cerebrais. Espaço digital como uma nova forma de telepatia e mesclagem do real e virtual.
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Medulla provides a glimpse of a world that will share a common metaverse for learning and training. The prototype projects in archeology, mathematics, anthropology, artificial intelligence, and public diplomacy are helping the Medulla technology meet the needs of different audiences and disciplines. By offering peer-reviewed models, reference materials, photos, sound files, textures, reusable experiences,
curricula, and assessments, it provides a new approach to building and using virtual worlds. (p:100)
Disruptive technologies change the world. They often even alter the very way we perceive the world. The emergence of the three-dimensional interactive web, what we like to call Web 3.0, is about to transform the way humans interact with technology. Just as the public has grown accustomed to an interactive 2D interface to the web, the three-dimensional structure of the real world is being transplanted into the virtual world and the end result will be transformative, not only to our technological society but to our entire society as a whole. (p: 108)
There is a trend toward more and more realistic graphics, physics, and AI-driven behavior. There is also a trend toward more and more sophisticated and immersive user interfaces. With much better graphics and VR glasses able to simulate a deep spherical field of view around the user, virtual reality will begin to feel much more real. There is also an emerging trend toward the development of neural interfaces,
that is, Brain to Computer Interfaces (BCI) able to read or write information directly from and to a user’s brain. Science fiction? Transhumanist wishful thinking? No, science fact: prototype BCI devices are already available since a few years. (287)
So, we will soon be able to think our way in virtual worlds. If a computer can read information from our brains, it won’t be long before it can also write information directly to our brains, and write it very fast: two-way neural interfaces that will make computer screens and headsets obsolete, a Second Life that goes directly to the brain bypassing the eyes, with today’s Instant Messaging replaced by direct telepathic communication between minds. And when our virtual environments will contain artificial intelligences, perhaps smarter than us, we will be able to communicate with them at the speed of thought. For the medium- and long-term future, probably within the first half of the century, it is to be expected that advances in neurotechnology will permit developing direct interfaces to the brain that can bypass sensorial channels to make VR environments directly accessible to the brain. This will permit creating fully immersive VR environments with full sensorial stimulation, indistinguishable from physical reality. (287)
