DISQUS

Dale Innis · 12 months ago

It is interesting, but I think the meaningfulness (and the interoperability) is pretty limited. Basically it's just a one-way copying of the look of your SL AV onto your Weblin AV. It's not teleportation: your SL AV doesn't leave SL, and there's no sense in which your Weblin AV can "go back to" SL with any changed state. And none of the state of your SL AV except the visual appearance (at that particular moment) is copied to Weblins (Weblinz?). It's a step, but a small one. (Of course, I may be somewhat biased against thinking that Weblins are significant by the fact that the idea of little people crawling around on top of the web pages I'm looking at still seems like something out of a horrible nightmare to me...)

gracemcdunnough · 12 months ago

Great comment, Dale.

And I agree, it's a tiny step, but it highlights a point I've tried to make in the past, which is "interoperability" and "teleportation" (as Venture Beat called it) have context. There is no absolute right or wrong answer, just delightful shades of gray, however, it's only meaningful from a frame of reference.

The interoperability from SL to weblins is meaningful to me because it provides a context for interaction - namely Grace's identity and likeness - across worlds. When people see Grace as a weblin and know Grace in SL, they can make a connection that has a suitable context, or frame of reference.

So, toward that end, the significance of weblins is the transversal of those things from one "place" to "another"; some might call that teleportation.

I was hoping you could comment further on your "change of state" comments toward significance. What makes this the key to significant? What are the drivers or motivations for maintaining a contiguous "presence" across worlds? What factors are important, etc?

[Oh, and btw, weblins move around on the bottom of the page, not the top]

Dale Innis · 12 months ago

:) I meant "on top" in the "closer to me than the surface of the web page is" sense.

On state: well, for instance, if you meet someone while Weblinning about on the Amazon page about some novel and it turns out you both love it and you have alot in common, and they're also in Weblin-space "from" SL, can you friend them there on the page, and have them then appear on your friends list in SL? That would be an interesting part of state to be able to "bring back" from Weblinland to SL. That's the sort of thing I was thinking of. The more things like that that happen, the more it will feel like real interop, rather than just a one-time face-copy.

True interop would let you IM someone in SL, and if they're off Weblinning they'd get the message. It would let you say to that person on the Amazon page, "hey, there's a great build based on this book in SL; here's the SLURL, I'll meet you there in ten seconds."

I agree on the shades of gray. I don't think the current state of this particular Weblin-SL interaction is very shaded at all, but then I'm a curmudgeon (not to mention a weblinophone: aaahh, get them off me!!).