Link: http://groups.sims.berkeley.edu/podcast/audio/Mitch_Kapor_UCiSchool_28Nov2007.mp3
Mitch Kapor gave the third installment in his series of Distinguished Lectures here at the UC Berkeley School of Information yesterday. His talk was entitled, "Disruptive Innovations I Have Known and Loved, Part 3: Virtual Worlds". Audio from the talk is here and some photos from the event are here.
Mitch talked about why he finds virtual worlds like Second Life so compelling. He illustrated this with an anecdote about a performance that Suzanne Vega gave which was mirrored in Second Life (here are a couple youtube videos of her performance and the making of her virtual guitar). Mitch realized while watching the recording of this performance that the capabilities of something like Second Life only depend on the limits of the human imagination. That's a profound concept; we can't even imagine how removing physical limitations on space and resources will affect what people can do in virtual worlds.
Mitch then spent a while talking about the business model for Second Life and about how it is slowly transitioning to a more open environment: from the client (which is now open source), to the architecture and even plugging your own segments of the Second Life Universe. In the Q&A, Mitch addressed issues with long-term business models of virtual worlds, the implications virtual worlds have for robotics and governance issues (both in the norms sense and in the underlying behavior and rules of the world).
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