Second Life, the largest cyberspace community, says it will begin adding voice over the next few weeks. Our doppelgangers in cyberspace, our avatars, will talk. This will be a big step; thus far inhabiting cyberspace has been a silent experience, like being underwater.
A new version of the Second Life client will begin rolling out in the next few weeks, and will enable all "residents" to speak with each other. They'll also be able to use the IM and group chat functions contained in the current Second Life client.
"Many of you know that voice has always been part of the long-term plan for the Grid, and we truly believe voice can be a transformative technology that will lend more immediacy and dynamism to the way Residents communicate" says Second Life founder Joe Linden at his blog.
The numbers show that while millions of people have signed up for residency in Second Life and other such sites, very few actually end up inhabiting them regularly. There are a few big reasons for that. Second life and sites like it exploit significant system resources and require a good graphics card. People also encounter a fairly steep learning curve when it comes to just moving around and doing things in cyberspace.
The addition of voice, however, opens up a whole new dimension in cyberspace. It's as big a move for Second Life as the move from 2D to 3D graphics. Once the bugs are worked out of the voice app and everything's working smoothly, people might be wowed into staying in cyberspace for longer periods of time, and might invest more time in learning how be there.
The addition of voice might blow the covers of the thousands of posers that surely lurk in cyberspace communities. Second Life might soon be filled with teenage girl avatars speaking with the voices of hairy middle-aged men. The market for home voice synthesizers may boom.
i hope this includes an option to use text to speech, so i can sound like stephen hawkins, or i wont enjoy all the extra noise
The way I see it is that the beauty of virtual worlds is that it helps you escape the real world. The more elements of reality that is added to SL the less it may become attractive. In the virtual world, you can be anything you want to be. Just about everything else not seen or heard can be imagined. The less we get to imagine, the lower the intrigue. The closer to reality, the further people will be. After all, to me at least, SL is a place I escape into. To me it's like a good book, a great movie, a micro mental vacation. Escaping "out of" reality is the name of the game, not escaping "into" reality.
I don't know. I have mix feelings about this. I have a lot of SL friends. I wonder which ones I'll lose and which ones I'll get even closer with. I also type more eloquently than I speak, so this might be a negative for me. Still, I am rather curious and will try it nonetheless.