Everybody knows Virtual Worlds are the future of the Net
I meet people at Microsoft 
, Google , IBM , Accenture , Intel … just to quote the very biggest. All these companies now agree that Virtual Worlds are shaping the next generation of the Internet and that they will have a very deep impact on society in the next ten years, just like "the Net" did in the last 15 years (roughly from the days of BBSs , AOL and Compuserve to where we are today, with ubiquitous internet and mobile phones).
Here's another example, from someone who should know, the head of ICANN, and successor of Winton Cerf, one of the many inventors of "the Net" as we know it today:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/08/virtual-worlds-are-the-future-of-global-commerce-icann-ceo/
What I find most fascinating though is the comments of the blog post above - from a technically savvy audience, yet one that seems so incredibly afraid and reluctant to embrace change. Why is that ? What are those people finding so threatening ?
As we start to provide useful services in Virtual Worlds , and interact meaningfully with our consistuencies, how do we reach out to those who are afraid?
Mots-clés : Virtual Worlds
, Fear , ICANN , Towney 
I'm not sure about being afraid but more about caution...
This is really an excellent source of insights about the future of the internet... and I really enjoyed the power of the Web 2.0's discussion engaged further down the article... here is what he says in the comments full of other individuals insights... hence I could not resist in providing us with this addon which is just a piece of an entire flow of exchanges...
"Paul Twomey
September 9th, 2007 at 4:58 am
First let me say that ICANN does not in any way control or manage the Internet. It merely plays a coordination role for a community of some 10,000 or more people who manage the Internet system of unique identifiers, especially the Domain Name System and IP addresses.
While I appreciate the dialogue on my speech on this site , perhaps it would be worthwile sharing some of the text below. I do think, as I said as an aside in the speech, that the marriage of gaming type client functionality (such as we have seen in Keyhole which morphed into Google Earth) will have a big impact on customer interactions in a more broadband environment.
Some of the speech (in which I was asked to speak about the future of the Internet) appears below:
“In looking forward another ten years one can never have certainty. Indeed the comments in my next part of my speech are personal, not those of ICANN. This search into the looking glass is merely that of one individual.
While it’s difficult to be definitive about the future, here are some things I think we can expect:
• Usage of the Internet will be limited only by access to electricity. As many as 3 billion people may be able to enjoy a truly global Internet.
• Many, perhaps most, will access the Internet by using mobile devices.
• We’ll see a very significant increase in broadband access (over 100 mb/sec indeed up to 1 gigabit per second). Many developing countries such as Morocco, China and Malaysia are adopting accelerated broadband distribution programs to deliver the Internet to their citizens.
• A machine-to-machine Internet will overtake today’s person-to-person Internet.
• We will see billions of Internet-enabled appliances at home, at work, in the car, and in the pocket.
• Third parties will use the Internet to monitor all sorts of activities and utilities — from washing machines to cars to electricity meters.
• Geo-location and geo-indexed systems will be much more common and emergency services will be more precisely dispatched.
• There will be significant improvement in spoken interaction with Internet-based systems.
• We will see an even wider array of delivery methods for intellectual property (movies, sound tracks, books, and so on) than is available today. VoIP will be prevalent and SIP may be the principal protocol means by which calls are set up. Voice communication will be essentially free, except perhaps for calls that terminate on traditional PSTN devices including mobiles.
• Almost no industry will be offline since most will rely on the Internet for customer interaction, customer discovery, sales, service, advertising, and similar activities.
• Group interaction and collaborative support tools — including distributed games — will be very common.
• And last but certainly not least, internationalized domain names and new gTLDs will open up the Internet to much more multilingual content.
What will you be able to do in the future that you can’t do now? Here are a few examples:
• Manage your appliances and home security systems through online systems.
• Use your mobile phones as remote controllers.
• Download videos, music, and books as an everyday practice. Video on demand will focus on watching previously downloaded video rather than watching streaming, real-time video. This is really just an obvious extrapolation of the iPod/TiVo paradigm.
• You will be able to talk to the Internet itself to search for information and interact with various devices — and it will respond.
• Search systems will be more precise because meta-tagging of information will have become more common. This is part of the semantic web movement.
• Maintenance histories of products that can be serviced will be keyed to radio frequency IDs or bar codes associated with the devices. This is one potential use of Internet Protocol version 6, or IPv6, which is the natural extension of the original IPv4.
What will the technical underpinnings of the Internet look like by then?
• Terabit per second local networking will be available as backbones for local networks.
• The domain name system will operate in multiple language scripts. Again, a result of deploying IDNs and new gTLDs.
• IPv6 will be widely deployed, once the technical and financial issues have been worked out.
• Better confidentiality and authenticity will be provided through the use of a public key crypto. This will provide more authentication all along the network.
• Much more inter-device interaction will be common, incorporating position location, sensor networks, and local radio communications.
• Spam, phishing, and various forms of denial of service attacks will continue a cold war-style arms race with defenses and better authentication techniques.
• Operating systems will continue to be troublesome sources of vulnerability.
What will everyone — businesses, other organizations, and individual users alike — still need to worry about?
• Spam and phishing
• Attacks on the domain name system
• Attacks at routing
• Fraud/IP spoofing
• Cyber protests …..
There should be no confusion: broadband speeds required to participate in the internet in 10 years time will be measured in the 100s of megabits per second. Indeed network planners in South Korea are now moving households to 1 gigabit connections today.
Why is the appropriate approach to broadband so important? It is because the Internet will continue to represent a massive and accelerating force for the reduction of transaction costs across the global economy, and a force for unprecedented innovation in the delivery of private and public services. “
The water is not clear yet and we are better off to consider going ahead in this troubbled environment i.e. find a new balance in a fast moving track...
Gil