The future of Second Life in 2012

Team Composition

• René Noorduin Grecco
  
• Erwin Gies
  
• Jorge Osorio Socha
  
• Di Yu
  
• Bogumila Sobolewska
  

Introduction

Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by a total of 4,335,473 people from around the globe.

The Driving Forces

• Economical Forces: (Di)
Increasing effect of the development of information technology (IT) on global economy E-commerce Game Industry Purchasing Power
• Political Forces: (René)
Electronic Government Crime Punishment Intellectual rights on the Internet Illegal activities on the Internet
• Social Forces: (Jorge)
Increasing social isolation Increasing use of computer-mediated communication
• Technological Forces: (Erwin)
Online video games Virtual reality Technical innovation Net neutrality Increasing use of digital media on internet(Jorge) Increasing user-generated content(Jorge)

Scenarios

Second Life becomes First Life

Second Life Remains Second Life

Second Life Crime Scene

Economic Trouble in First Life

Research

General:

What is Second Life?

Short history of Second Life?

Who owns the Second Life?

What are the future plans for Second Life from the owners perspective?

What are the rules of the game?

Users:

How big is the SL population? What is the percentage of active users?

Who is using Second Life?

Which companies are using Second Life and for what purposes?

Who might be interested to use SL in the future?

What are the main activities of the users?

What are the expectations of users?

Economy:

Who are the stakeholders?

What is the economic value of Second Life?

Money flow, who gets the money and for what?

Which companies could be interested in investing into growth of Second Life?

Why would the companies be interested in using Second Life?

What could be a possible use of Second Life in the workplace?

What is the correlation between real and virtual money?

Is there any concurrent company on the market?

What are the similarities and differences between Second Life and “The World of Warcraft”?

Social:

Social opinion on the Second Life?

IT experts opinion on Second Life?

What is the possible contribution of SL to the community?

What is the influence of Second Life on the real life of the users?

To what extend can the real life be present in the Second Life?

Can use of Second Life be harmful for the users?

Are they already any known cases of health problems caused because of Second Life?

Can it be helpful?

How Second Life can be affected by globalization?

How globalization can be affected by Second Life?

Technical:

What is the technology behind Second Life?

Current situation, what is possible in SL till now?

What are the development possibilities in the future?

Which IT products are already used in Second Life?

Which IT products could be used in the future?

Legal:

Copy rights issues?

Who is watching the legality of the actions performed in Second Life?

How the personal data is protected?

Hidden personality; what are the advantages, what are the risks?

Related Articles

The Dark Side of Second Life (Business Week 21.11.2006)
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2006/tc20061121_727243.htm

An interview with Joe Miller (vice president od Linden Lab) who tellls about the new developments on SL
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=684&blogid=4

Future of Second Life (05.01.2007)
http://mikeschaffner.typepad.com/michael_schaffner/2007/01/the_future_of_s.html

Videos

http://cgi.omroep.nl/cgi-bin/streams?/tv/vpro/detoekomst/bb.20060227.asf (Dutch)

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