Visioning 2026 Blog
Area Resident Presents At World Futures Society in Washington DC
News Release, Norfolk, NE, 08/08/08
Area Resident Presents At World Futures Society
How will this 3D virtual reality environment such as Second Life affect our business and personal lives in the future? That is what Norfolk resident, Larry Wenzl, Nucor Steel Engineer, Leadership Norfolk graduate, Visioning 2026 team leader, and Master Capacity Builder is trying to help many to understand.
Larry's 30 minute presentation (2.8 MB PDF) to the World Futures Society held in Washington DC, July 27, 2008 was part of a session chaired by Rick Smyre and David Baldwin, titled, Growing Your Community for Constant Change. Larry's presentation is titled, "Interlocking Networks in Second Life."
Read more about the agenda from the final program, Washington DC, July 2008, page 26-27, Growing Your Community for Constant Change, Sunday July 27th, 2-3:30 pm.
The presentation material included:
(1) Emerging tools of virtual reality, virtual reality is an "Immersive" technology where you create connections with others and why this technology will be so prevalent, e.g., remote collaboration, enhanced communications, team productivity, reduced costs.
(2) Collaborative creation is fun, involving virtual meetup of diverse group, futures generative dialogue, construct
(3) Virtual networking to include the benefits, no geographic boundaries, merging of different networks of people
Larry shared with the audience that there are weak signals inside an emerging trend which includes:
- In the UK, Second Life use is increasing faster than other online services (except for Facebook and YouTube)
- Emergence of organizations existing only in the virtual world
- In-world partnering
- New technology will allow avatars to teleport between worlds
Larry concluded his presentation with the following statement on the value of establishing virtual interconnected networks that include:
- Diverse Individuals more efficiently interact to create lifelike immersive solutions that can be tested and utilized for real world applications.
- Immersive Technology creates a connection with others that perpetuates involvement.
- Innovation and success depend on our ability to remain open to creative experiences that bring us into meaningful contact with transformative solutions.
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So how as a community can we take advantage of this trend to prepare for the future? Should we consider a 2nd Enlightenment Club in the Norfolk area that will use 3D virtual reality as a stepping stone for endorsing future changes? What about on-line social network such as LinkedIn and Creative Molecular Economy group and the Community Transformer Network.
Related material was also highlighted in a Wallstreet Journal article. The financial marketplace, bandwidth, hardware, networked community are leading indicators for statements such as this, "Last year, Gartner Research predicted that 80% of all active Internet users will have a virtual-world presence by 2011."
A number of industry groups are working on open 3D standards. As soon as one of these gains widespread acceptance, anyone will be able to build a virtual world that is connected to any other similarly coded virtual world – just like HTML now allows anyone to create a 2D Web page that is connected to any other 2D Web page.
Stay tuned for more 3D virtual reality Second Life stories and their impact on communities and regional areas like Norfolk and Northeast Nebraska.
Add www.Visioning2026.com to your bookmarks and your RSS reader. Contact Larry Wenzl through email at wenzll@asme.org.
Join the Community Transformer Network
Interested in joining a national and soon to be world-wide network of people helping to transform their communities for the future. Please register at the following web to get connected with other like minded individuals and learn together.
http://www.communitytransformer.com/
Third Millennial Center and Second Life Application
How can you use and establish a real-world community infrastructure facility, incorporate the concept of transformational thinking, and model it in a 3D virtual environment?
Several local Master Capacity Builders in concert with individuals involved with developing Second Life collaboration opportunities have offered a concept paper The Third Millennial Center as a vehicle to develop a new community learning platform.
The Third Millennial Center concept paper integrates multi-generational living facilities, high bandwidth communications architecture, technology laboratory, demonstration, and education center, entertainment and recreation activities, food and eating operations, along with information and knowledge kiosk center(s), and an eco-friendly natural landscape environment with renewable energy resources.