the metaverse

is coming. and this is a pretty amazing thing. i hate the word 'amazing', but i really mean it here. this thing is amaaayyyy-zing.

it's a new visualization technology called Photosynth: "a vastly powerful piece of software capable of taking a wide variety of images (for instance, Flickr images, taken by hundreds or thousands of different people), analyzing them for similarities, and grafting them together into an interactive three-dimensional space. This seamless patchwork of images can be viewed via multiple angles and magnifications, allowing us to look around corners or 'fly' in for a (much) closer look."

ok, ok. just take seven minutes of your life and watch the presentation, delivered by the creator of the software at TED2007.

it's the seeds of Neal Stephenson's metaverse, but, like, for real. (a) for real, and (b) imagine the implications, once video mapping becomes possible in the same way. a virtual world is only a matter time.

but how much time?

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