In which I attempt to keep track of the future

According to what I could gather from the iffy audio of John Naughton's talk at ALT-C (better version here), it's impossible to predict the future. The best we can do is recognise:

• The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed (obligatory Gibson quote; I suspect the timescale here is about 20 years)
  
• What's "here" gets mashed together in ineffable ways to generate stuff that gets adoipted or not
  

Not that this stops people guessing (or my blogging it interminably so I don't forget).

As far as the Gartner Hype Cycle is concerned, virtual worlds, for example, are still in the Trough of Disillusionment, at least five years from mainstream adoption. However, the criteria for emergence from the Trough include evolution of second generation products and this is happening at Linden Lab and more generally.

One approach to second-guessing the future is to get some wise people together and get them to prognosticate. The JISC has done this recently in a joint project with the New Media Consortium. Their "ones to watch" in the near term:

Time to adoption: One year or less
Cloud computing, mobiles, open content, tablets

Two to Three Years
Game-Based Learning, Learning Analytics, Semantic Applications, New Scholarship

Four to Five Years
Augmented Reality, Collective Intelligence, Smart Objects, Telepresence

Many of these have some overlap with virtual worlds. We are seeing more open content, we want to be able to use virtual worlds on tablets and mobiles, they have potential for game-based learning and AR was one of the components of the original Metaverse Roadmap. Telepresence is interesting as it seeks to provide a more authentic shared presence, albeit at significantly greater cost, than virtual worlds.

JISC CETIS also does an informal horizon scan.

Some times it helps to see where we've been. There's a great presentation on the history and future of learning technology by Nick Shackleton-Jones from BP (via Seb Schmoller). While virtual worlds get short shrift around 2003, Nick can't quite kick the futuristic habit as (spoiler alert) we come back to the post-tablet sci-fi glasses in 2020 (or virtual retina devices if you prefer the Rainbows End version).

In terms of what is accessible now, Keele is doing interesting work with CAVE approaches at the molecular, anatomical and simulated ward levels (via Kali Pizzaro). A combination of the virtual and face-to-face has much to offer as Rich White has demonstrated with OpenSim.

Finally, if you want to see a Second Life-oriented perspective on the future, Patty Rangel's SLCC talk based on her graduate studies at Singularity U is interesting. While she talks about VR contact lenses, not to mention mind-control, she also references the heliodisplay technology which does away with the glasses/CAVE altogether (though I guess they could be used to overlay the real-world overlay). Patty's vision is a billion users in 10 years so some way to go yet.

So nothing new really but that's what we expected. Right?