By now you might have heard of the latest news surrounding the recent developments in the internet that reportedly would possibly bring “unfathomable speeds” throughout the entire webdom. I’m talking about CERN’s new development dubbed “the Grid”.

“At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds.”

If you’ve read the article (and related articles), you will encounter “online games”, “holographic images”, and “HD Videoconferencing” as being the types of services that could immensely benefit from this new technology. However, it’s interesting to point out that the term “virtual world” has not been included in the list of possible beneficiaries. Additionally, however, you read the following passages:

“With this kind of computing power, future generations will have the ability to collaborate and communicate in ways older people like me cannot even imagine,”

It’s interesting to note that the articles are filled of notions of “collaboration” and “communication” yet there is no underlying or comprehensively “binding” method to execute all this collaborative work in a graceful and efficient fashion. So stating that phrase again but this time, in the form of a question, it should sound something like this:

“With this kind of computing power, what will future generations USE, in order to collaborate and communicate in ways older people like me cannot even imagine?”

I personally feel that the sought-after phrase or word here is none other than virtual worlds or the metaverse.

With this new and unbelievably faster internet just around the corner, I began to imagine the exciting developments that would occur in virtual worlds, particularly Second Life (where almost everything is streamed from the Linden Lab servers in San Francisco), in the coming months and years. Take note that those who are seasoned Second Life users can perhaps directly relate to and appreciate what I’m about to say here, for these are some of the “wish lists” in SL users’ heads for some time now, so apologies to the uninitiated:

a) Less “lag” - lesser time to wait for textures, prims, sounds, video and other objects to “rez” (manifest themselves) in the world due to the increased stream speed…no more “baldie” or gray avatars (hopefully), even if these textures and sounds are “high fidelity”

b) More fluid distributed computing - Vehicles (and avatars) can now fluidly pass from one sim to another without the awful “hiccups”, and hopefully, the 31-prim limit on vehicles should be a thing of the past (internet).

c) More fluid and accurate physics engine - though largely dependent on the client machine, virtual world physics stills relies heavily on streaming technology to ensure that every falling card from that collapsing house of cards are doing everything in synch to every observer within the world.

d) Ability of avatars to have more human-like expression and communication nuances - again, admittedly tied to the current avatar 3D mesh, but with faster bandwidth, it makes much more sense now to redesign the based character meshes to allow more detail in movement (i.e. lips and facial expression) to provide for such things as “synched lips with SL voice”.

e) More “prims” (primitive polygons, the building blocks of virtual spaces in SL) allowed per simulator (server machine) - I can see 60,000 or even 100,000 prims per sim with a faster internet. Former limitations on builds will be shattered. Also in connection with this, more detailed terrain meshes–RAW files using 2048×2048 height maps (or greater) instead of the current 256×256 and more detailed sculpted prims.

f) Web-on-prim will be more efficient - everything a web browser can do, should now be available as a “paste on” on a prim–from YouTube to Flash-powered games, it can start to happen, because the stream is now a river.

g) many, many more (you can add to this list if you want)

Admittedly, some of these “dream” improvements eventually mean major changes in both SL server and client code. However, it’s almost crazy not to think about them considering that a substantial increase in bandwidth speeds only means one thing–the road leading to the blurring of the lines between the virtual and the real will start to appear, and those in the business community, those who are first to see this road, and willing to take it, will have a good head start.

I personally believe this is why IBM made major commitments into Second Life a few years ago–it’s almost like they knew this was going to happen. Today, IBM has over 20 of these “sims” in Second Life. But seemingly, IBM has been receiving criticism, even ridicule, for manifesting its presence in Second Life–a lot of other companies think it’s all just a gimmick. A good example is how some people have been skeptical about the idea of “3D Data Centers” and how they see it as a “frivolous” effort. Some experts believe that if you can do something like this in a 2D application, then why bother translating the entire process into 3D?

Well, the answer may not be evident now, but imagine a time when vast amounts of data, nth-fold more than previous volume, would flow through data centers–I personally believe that when this time comes, a 3D data center such as what IBM is currently testing, would come in handy for better efficiency in data management. So while some people are shaking their heads at IBM’s “kiddie” experiments in Second Life, IBM may just have the last laugh soon. A good analogy I have for this is like the story of Noah and the Ark. When Noah was building the ark, people observing the construction were laughing and jeering at him, because they couldn’t conceive of a situation where vast amounts of water would necessitate the need for a vehicle as large as the ark. but when the flood of water came, were these people still laughing at Noah? Flood of water…flood of data.

Strange that all this development was conceived because the world of nuclear physics needed a way to transmit stupendous amounts of data for particle research. They needed a new system of data transfer that’s super-efficient and super-fast, so that would not affect the existing operations of the current internet as we know it. Well, the way I see it, we need nuclear physics to help us answer the fundamental mysteries of the universe–we as thinking human beings desired and longed for these questions since the dawn of time, yet its [b]byproduct[/b] (the new high speed GRID) proves to be of practical and commercial value as well. It’s almost like digging for a carrot (carrot is food, to nourish the body, but can be equated in the case of this analogy as the seeking of answers, to quench the hunger for knowledge), and eventually finding a carrot. Yet while digging out the carrot, one stumbles upon a chest full of gold coins in the process (money as analogous to commercial and financial progress).

Also, it’s worth mentioning that almost eerily coincidental that CERN would choose the word “GRID” to describe this new internet. I know that the term has long been used to describe a linked system, say for the distribution electric power for a state or city, but one cannot help think that Linden Lab, the creators of Second Life actually used the SAME term to casually describe the virtual world of SL itself, and also the term to describe the web center for people wanting to conduct business in Second Life. It’s almost as if the metaverse has been waiting for its worthy groom, and now, with this new faster GRID in sight, the marriage (possibly even the honeymoon) is now going to be a reality.