The Foresight and Governance Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center just released a great video Eco-Tour of Second Life which showcases how various groups are using virtual worlds to tackle real world environmental issues.   The video is part of a larger project with the Environmental Protection Agency to explore how computer and video game technologies can be applied to environmental issues. Among the projects featured in the tour:

Eolus One, a virtual world “energy management system” that monitors and manages energy usage in real world buildings via a virtual operations center in Second Life.  is reducing energy consumption in real-world buildings;

SciLands (as in, “Science Lands”), an archipelego of islands for science and technology based organizations, including the UK’s Nanotech Island and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), whose main attraction is a 3D weather visualization map that depicts real world real time weather data.

Green Islands Project, which allows Second Life landowners to offset their virtual world energy consumption.  It’s an interesting project: landowners calculate the energy used by servers to run a “sim” (aka, virtual land areas) and Green Islands Project charges owners (in Linden dollars, the in-world currency) for an equivalent quantity of renewable energy credits (RECs) which it then purchases from the Bonneville Environmental Foundation.

Etopia, an eco village showcasing real world examples of sustainable development, renewable energy,  and organic living including a magnetic levitation train, a wind-solar power generation plant and an aquaculture treatment system.

Second Chance Trees is an island that allows residents to plant trees in Second Life that are then planted in real life.  Eight different endangered rainforest indigenous trees can be purchased for 150 Lindens each; this triggers the planting of an identical species of tree in an endangered region in the real world.

As an update to this Friday Five post, two more interesting links about the future of cities:

Lagos La Vida Loca

Lagos La Vida Loca is a 15-minute video by Current TV about Lagos, Nigeria which provides a graphic glimpse into life in the one of the world’s largest megacities. In 1950 Lagos was home to 300,000 people; today it is the world’s largest megacity with somewhere between 12 - 20 million residents (there are no official population statistics) and an estimated 6,000 people arriving every day.  Often dubbed the “New York of Africa” Lagos provides a glimpse into the future when by the year 2030 two of every three people on the planet will live in an urban environment.  If you want to know what the future looks like, watch this.

Hub2 - Virtual Urban Design

One of the more interesting questions about the future of cities is where (and how) virtual worlds and real worlds will intersect.  I recently met up with Emerson College professor Eric Gordon to talk about the future of urban design and what role virtual worlds will play in it. Gordon is the co-brainchild of Hub2, a project that’s using Second Life to help Boston residents to articulate visions of public spaces.  Earlier this year Gordon’s students created 3D immersive models of Boston’s Government Center, an urban space that is the absolute epitome of soulless city architecture.  (note: the above screen shot is from the press event where Boston’s Mayor Tom Menino received the keys to the virtual city).

The prototypes are the test case of a methodology Gordon’s calls “rapid urban prototyping”.  Traditional urban planning is two-dimensional and cumbersome at best: intelligible blue-prints are drawn up, groups respond to them, plans are redrawn again.  Gordon’s idea is to use virtual worlds as a platform to allow community stakeholders to interact in real time to collaboratively design an urban space.  Using a virtual world space as a blank canvass, for example, a community wishing to design a park can bring together planners, architects, engineers and citizens to decide how the park should be laid out simply by moving around virtual objects - a swing set, some benches, a water fountain. The three-dimensional virtual space not only creates  an enhanced sense of the design options, but also should also significantly reduce planning time and costs.   Read more about Gordon’s work on his blog, The Place of Social Media.

FringeHog Friday Five: The Future of Work in a Flat World?

Work is being redefined by shifts in demographics, economic globalization (flat world), and technological advances. How these drivers are reshaping work is uncertain, complex, ambiguous and volatile. However, there are sign posts indicating how the future of work is evolving in the world of work today. Let’s take a look at a few examples.?

HYPER-LOCAL

Today we’re seeing an increasing number of independent free lancers working from home, at their local Starbucks, or gathering in the homes of friends to get a dose of the office social scene. Economics and technology will continue driving this trend and more workers will go hyper-local as Bruce Sterling calls it, when their office is their PDA and their place of work is where ever they happen to be at a given point in time.?

PLACE-BASED

Not all will go this route, obviously large corporations will still exist in 2030 and millions of people will go to the office to work. However, the everyday objects in the office and the buildings themselves will be networked and imbued with informatic capabilities. In short, things in the workplace and the buildings themselves will think.

VIRTUAL WORLDS

By 2030 going to work in a virtual world will be as common as going to work in the real world is today, probably sooner. Dr. Hunter, a law professor from Wharton specializing in virtual worlds; asserts that the globalization of services will happen in virtual worlds. He sees this as one of the most important employment trends in the 21st century. He confidently predicts that his kids (currently grade school age) will work within one or more of these virtual worlds.

SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY SAVANTS

Thriving in a flat future will require workers to be savants of social technologies like wikis, reputation technologies, yelp, gnutella, and facebook. Whether they are free lancers or working inside a corporation their ability to catalyze a team and mobilize resources to get the job done will in large part determine their value to their client or boss. Workers that demonstrate resilience, adaptability, cooperative work ethics and strong social networking skills will be highly sought after.?

EMERGING ISSUE

Cosmetic Neurology or Pimping the brain is the use of drugs, surgery, or genetic intervention by healthy people to manipulate mood, memory, concentration, capacity to learn and general ability to cope. How will this impact the workplace? Will workers augment their performance by pimping their brains? Will they be required to disclose this information? Will employers require underperforming employees to pimp their brains? How could this effect performance evaluation?

FringeHog Friday Five on The Future of Work in a Flat World

Making a Living in a Virtual World

The Weird New Ways We Work Business Week Online(slideshow)

The Wiki Workplace

Future of Work Playlist

Philips Design and Rivers Run Red, the virtual world design agency, have signed a collaboration agreement to establish a Philips Design presence within the imaginary, on-line community known as Second Life. Philips Design intends to use it’s presence in Second Life to gain feedback on innovation concepts, engage residents in co-creation and gain a deeper understanding of potential opportunities in this virtual environment. In addition to exploring this virtual world to gain insights into potential opportunities, Philips Design will have a space on Second Life where virtual concepts can be tested and residents can participate in co-design projects. In this way, Second Life users can have a greater say in the kind of colors, ergonomics, functionality and other features of products they may wish to buy in this virtual world. This will allow Philips Design to find new ways of relating to end users. Having such direct feedback can significantly enrich the design process and lead to innovative and surprising end results. This fits with the Philips Design philosophy that design should be based around people and grounded in research. It also corresponds to Philips Design’s firm belief that the future of design lies in the co-creation of products. ?This sort of foresighting is extremely powerful,” says Stefano Marzano, Chief Executive Officer of Philips Design. “As the only things that actually exist within Second Life are ideas, it provides us with a real opportunity to better understand the dynamics of intangible value. In addition, value created in this virtual world can also be transferred to the real world. ?

Philips’ move is another example of real world companies moving into virtual worlds to capitalize on the real opportunities virtual worlds offer.

Oct 8 1:40 PM PST

There were several reports of self-replicating objects in-world. We are currently investigating. There are new reports of grey goo in-world, which may be causing teleportation failures and other slow downs. We have temporarily moved to Linden only logins.

Oct. 8 2:45 PM PST

We are still in the process of investigating the grid-wide griefing attacks; as such we have momentarily disabled scripts and ?money transfers to objectsas well on the entire grid.

Oct. 9 2:02 AM PST

A few moments ago, everyone in-world was removed and login was switched to Gods-only while we investigate further.

Confused What you just read were postings from the official blog of Linden Lab as they responded to the latest griefer attack. If you are not familiar with virtual worlds or gaming you might not be familiar with the term griefer, which refers to a gamer who abuses game features or exploits bugs to disrupt online or video games. This time the griefer chose grey goo as the weapon of mass disruption, blanketing SL with gooey grey self-replicating objects that overwhelmed Second Life servers.

This is not the first time Second Life’s grid had been downed by an in-world release of self-replicating objects. The first attack was in October of 2005. SL is particularly vulnerable to self-replicating attacks because content creation is free so the griefer suffers no financial costs for unleashing millions of objects into SL and self-replicating script is difficult for Linden Lab to see. Add to that Linden Labs drive to reach one million registered accounts with its free and recently relaxed requirements for new registrants; most significantly no billing information is required for free accounts although these accounts no longer receive 250 free Lindens. And you get the potential for registrants to enter SL for only one reason to ?rain terrorupon Second Life’s maker and customers as was threatened and carried out last week.

Denial of service attacks undermine SL’s viability as a place to play, work and invest. They cost Linden Labs cash and credibility. And interfere with commerce in world, which costs Linden Labs customers money. Since the attacks cause serious economic disruption Linden Labs has enlisted real world law enforcement, the FBI to help them find and prosecute the griefers.

Why is this important to non-residents of SL?

In the beginning Second Life positioned itself as a social virtual world where users were encouraged to treat SL as their canvas and built-in content creation tools as their palette. Today Second Life is positioned differently; as a platform for commerce and education bridging the gap between real and virtual world businesses, governmental, educational and non-profit enterprises.

So far this new position is working. Sixty schools and universities including Harvard Law School and Pepperdine offer courses in Second Life. Corporations such as Sony/BMG, IBM, Audi, and Sun MicroSystems are venturing into SL. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is developing simulations to teach the public about tsunamis and Play2Train, a federally funded bioterrorism-preparedness project has its own virtual town and hospital in SL. Just this week Vodaphone announced plans for its own Vodaphone Island in SL and Starwood Hotels opened its prototype hotel in SL called Aloft.

The denial of service attacks raises interesting questions. Are virtual worlds sustainable If so, what does sustainable development look like in a virtual world Is a virtual world a good place to invest if you are Harvard or American Apparel or NOAA, or a resident who simply wants to have their dream wedding in SL?

Mark Wallace of 3pointD.com a blog about the metaverse and 3 D web has taken a first step. He scheduled a meetup on Oct. 22, 2006, in SL to discuss virtual world sustainability. If you want to attend the meetup, RSVP by logging into SL and sending an Im to Walker Spaight, or leave a comment on the 3pointD blog.

You can now check out the virtual Aloft Hotel Michele mentioned in our Real Opportunities in Virtual Worlds podcast.
link