Second Life Can Teleport Open Source to a Whole New Level
Collaborative crowd sourcing is evolving above and beyond the norm through 3D virtual worlds such as Second Life. The use of Wikitecture in Second Life is emerging as something significantly different and is proving to be a successful way that we as individuals can effectively begin to form and collectively organize to act as a human network as never before. The increased speed and quality of the visualization and consensus process for groups who collaborate globally in 3D worlds reflects just how lightning fast new open source collaborative ideas such as a Wikitecture have been embraced.
Trail blazing this area is Jon Bouchard (Keystone Bouchard in Second Life) and Ryan Schultz (Theory Shaw in Second Life). As co-founders of Studio Wikitecture, they have been using Second Life as a platform for architectural collaboration to create innovative architectural and urban design solutions. Harnessing the power of collective human intelligence and leveraging the open source paradigm applied in real life and Second Life. Their most recent project was chosen as winner of the overall ‘Founder’s Award’ out of over 500 entries worldwide in the Open Architecture Challenge. Their entry in this international architecture competition, was developed entirely in Second Life.
How Wikitecture works is simply genius.
Studio Wikitecture group developed a 3D-Wiki plug-in for Second Life known as a ‘Wiki-Tree’. It works like a conventional Wiki but instead of tracking text documents in a linear history like Wikipedia, the ‘Wiki-Tree’ tracks versions of 3D models and stores them in a stylized 3D digital tree ‘canopy’. Watch how this continually evolves as it allows a self-organized group of contributors to share ideas, edit the contributions of others, and vote on which design iterations should be chosen. The ‘Wiki-Tree’ allows feedback from the client and end-user as the design evolves. Not only that, the exploration for prediction market voting procedures are used to assure consensus or ‘Crowd Wisdom’, plus a contribution assessment model can calculate and divide ownership from contributors in the development process.
Dennis Mancini, Senior Art Director, Brand Strategy & Identity, Cisco Systems
Posted by Dennis Mancini at 12:00PM PST
James A. Jochen Apr 20, 2009
I am not a tech guy but, I agree one hundred percent. Second Life can change the way the entire world does business. I would like to share some thoughts with you on how Second Life can change companies current business models. I am a dreamer. You are the bridge between my dreams and reality or virtual reality! You are the tech guy that I have been looking for. Together, we can change how the world does business.