"At the recent Metaverse U event in Stanford University, many of the discussions could safely be seen as borderline science fiction-ish and abstract for almost everyone but the insider community that define the virtual world development these days. However, some discussions were immediately recognizable for veterans of the gaming side of virtual worlds and the online gamer community. Perhaps that potential familiarity would be owed to two game industry staples in one of the afternoon conversations on the first day of the event that many online gamers may have heard about, namely Raph Koster (formerly of Sony Online Entertainment), Cory Ondrejka (formerly of Second Life), and Howard Rheingold, a social commentator and author.
... “Email is for old people,” Ondrejka quipped, for kids before they enter the work force. Koster added that numerous studies showed that as these modern kids change as they mature, they lose awareness of what’s coming down the pipeline and stick to the technologies they know. In an admission made easier by his new distance from Linden Labs, Ondrejka conceded virtual worlds haven’t reached a mass market quite yet and has a long ways to go before it breaks into the mainstream. Of course, as terms representing new virtual worlds-related services find their way into “geek-speak”, it becomes even more difficult for the standards in the business like Second Life to find their traction, when the water is muddied with new ideas and technologies."
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