Second Earth: the World Wide Sim
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 07.10.07
We know flying is dying and that all transport has a cost in carbon, so how will we travel? Wade Roush, in MIT Technology Review, describes "an immersive, 3-D visual environment that combines elements of social virtual worlds such as Second Life and mapping applications such as Google Earth" and asks what happens when the virtual and real world collide.
It is already happening; there is a virtual island in Second Life where Jeff Corbin of the University of Denver feeds data from hundreds of weather stations to reconstruct the real weather over a map of the US- your avatar can walk inside a weather map. Second Life is getting more real all the time.
Meanwhile, back on Google Earth,
In this image the author inspects a live weather map built for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Second Life.
there is an "explosion of user created content such as travel photos and blog posts pinned to specific locations". Di-Ann Eisnor of mapping site Platial says "I can imagine a time when the base map is just a frame of reference, and there is much more emphasis on the reviews, opinions, photos, and everything else that fits on top."
Additionally, more real world data are being added to Google Earth; weather conditions, webcams, even "nest-cams" of birds nests in nature reserves.
"Google Earth itself is really neat," comments Jamais Cascio, co-founder of Worldchanging. "But Google Earth coupled with millions of sensors around the world, offering you real-time visuals, real-time atmospheric data, and so on--that's transformative."
It hasn't happened yet; you can't bring a Second Life avatar directly into Google Earth. But it is coming and the implications will be huge.
"What I want to do one day is represent the Grand Canyon or a national park with such fidelity that you could essentially go there and plan your whole trip," says Michael Wilson, CEO of Makena Technologies, the company that operates the virtual world There. "Or what if you could model a Europe where the sea level is 10 feet higher than it is today, or walk around the Alaskan north and see the glaciers and the Bering Strait the way they were 10 years ago? Then perceptions around global warming might change."
Read the entire remarkable article at ::MIT Technology Review (free registration required)
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With Google Earth, it is now possible to zoom inside Berlin's Reichstag building, as shown in this image and the next few.
We know flying is dying
We do? I thought that was simply the hyperbolic rhetoric of air travel demonizers.
I find this whole article a bit disturbing. While we are dealing with things like global warming and the impact of carbon dioxide on the planet, we're also dealing with the increasing mass of human beings who sit on their butts all day in front of a computer screen, already.
Now, consumers don't even have to travel to see the world. They can do it from their home computer, with a virtual person. Oh goodie. I can't wait to send my mom a e-postcard from my virtual buddy in E-Siberia.
The beauty of this is the ability to engage the world in a whole new medium.
We can save the fuel hogging trips and save some cash to see any place we like on earth.
It should serve as a tool of inspiration to go out and see places in reality rather than chain people to their computer screens. It just adds to the whole environmental experience.
No need to backlash on innovation for the only misdemeanor is human laziness. No one's to blame for neglectful behavior. Might as well ban technology for that sort of logic.