In a recent interview with ZDnet, Linden Lab’s VP, platforms & technology Joe Miller get to show the corporate face of Second Life. A platform for collaboration for companies such as IBM and… well… IBM. Though the interview itself is not all that remarkable, I did get excited when Dan Farber asked the tough question:
Dan Farber: “Where do you see Second Life going in terms of, we talked a little bit about the fact that this is kind of the beginning of the 3-D world. How to you see it going forward?…”
In my imagination Miller must have felt uncomfortable for a moment. “Did he really just ask that?” However Dan made the error of throwing in one of Linden Labs often used red herrings: “Miles of simulated land” which gave Miller a nice opportunity to rehearse the numbers we keep hearing in most interviews, without actually have to disclose anything of a roadmap:
Dan Farber (continued question): “…Do you see Second Life going to 100 million users and I don’t know how many acres you have today, virtual acres“
Joe Miller: We actually have about 700, the equivalent of 700 miles, square miles of land represented by the grid today. It’s about 28,000, going on 29,000, individual CPUs that simulate a region of land that is 16 meters square. So again the technical architecture for the entire grid is inherently unbounded. We can continue to add land without bounds. We are not bounded by a sphere, the world can grow geometrically, and we can add many more elements of land over time and indeed that’s how we’re growing.”
So the though question is asked, but not answered. Better luck next time. Click here for the entire interview over on ZDnet.
Posted on: September 4, 2008 | Share on:
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nelly on 
ciera on
Ulrika Naastra
said on November 15th
With their new tier fees they will be concentration how to take so much land of their network instead of adding more sims to it.