It’s 1994 all over again, but this time the stakes are much higher. A new battle for the development, acceptance and control of information delivery is underway in Silicon Valley and around the world. Numerous companies, most of which you have never heard of before, are racing to develop and implement the next generation user interface. Which company will win? What business models are they using? How will the future be? The change in technology will be so great that it will affect the way you use the Internet, how you communicate, and even the equipment you use to access the Internet will change.

It’s not Netscape and Microsoft this time. Facebook and MySpace have already lost. The new guard is Second Life, Active Worlds, World of Warcaft, IMVU, Shanda, Red 5 Studios, and others. Your new landscape isn’t the picturesque two-dimensional renderings we’ve grown accustomed to in Explorer, FireFox, and Safari. It is a rich and robust three-dimensional world that can convey information and culture in an effective and engaging way. Within these robust virtual worlds, the only limitation is our own imagination. Virtual technologies are in their early stages of development, but they are growing faster than anyone anticipated. A confluence of infrastructure, information technology, and social behavior theory is generating powerful new ways to interact and socialize over the Internet. The idea of ​​”gazing wide-eyed into the Metaverse with your personalized Avatar for meet and greet” as predicted in the futuristic vision of Neal Stephenson’s novel “Snow Crash” really isn’t far from today’s reality.

Second Life, World of Warcraft (WoW), and IMVU offer a fabulous glimpse into the future of immersive communications and next-generation browser development. Seeing how people come together to overcome the challenges of the game in WoW has generated interest from social interaction to leadership development academics, as well as in the Military. The application of immersive environments in learning and education are limitless. In the future, teamwork and leadership may cease to be a pedagogical exercise contained in sterile classrooms; it will be a fully immersive hands-on learning experience where students will learn skills in various virtual settings and settings. The US Army believes so strongly in this vision that it spent six million dollars on research and development and sponsored the video game “America’s Army” to train our youth before they enter basic training. Ubisoft, the game’s developer, wrote that “America’s Army” was the “deepest and most realistic military game to ever come to consoles.” A small audience by WoW and Shanda standards, the game has over 30,000 players every day and is available on Xbox, PlayStation, cell phones, and Game Boy. Another and perhaps better use of technology is education. Hiring new MBAs with little real-world experience has always been a pain point for employers, especially with today’s education and talent challenges. How much would companies pay to hire an MBA grad who had spent a couple hundred real hours in Jack Welsh’s simulated shoes? And we thought EA’s Madden Football was great. In the near future, we will be able to teach, test, and hone key skills to produce better knowledge workers and leaders with advances in new immersive navigation technologies.

Nowadays, the business models of the virtual world are in development. WoW has a subscription service where it charges about twenty dollars a month to log into the virtual fantasy world. China’s Shanda with her Legend of Mir and other virtual properties has pay-as-you-go and subscription models. IMVU has a novel model. Its chat environment is so rich and realistic that users pay for virtual clothes for their avatar and virtual gifts for others. Active Worlds has taken a more platform-focused approach by charging for the base app for others to build on. Second Life has virtual money called Linden dollars that is used to pay for goods and services within the virtual world. Linden dollars can be purchased with real currency. Walking through Second Life and seeing all the billboard-type ads makes me think of the early days of the internet, where ads appeared out of nowhere and there were no usability guidelines or design best practices. But which model will win? There’s room for several models, but it’s too early to tell which browser will win.

I bought my last desktop computer seven years ago and I don’t plan to buy another one. Being tied down is no longer an option. Navigating while walking between rooms, booting up at the coffee shop, and logging in at the airport is normal behavior for most of us. However, with new emerging technologies, our computing habits can change even more. myvu and iTheater are creating glasses that project information right in front of your eyes. It’s mostly for game consoles and iPod movies these days, but it has potential. In the near future, you may have a pair of glasses that are higher resolution and lighter than your laptop’s LCD screen, as well as providing significantly more privacy while on the plane. Celluon has technology that laser projects a keyboard onto any flat surface, eliminating the need for a physical keyboard. With advances like these, will our computers of the future look more like a soda can attached to a pair of glasses than the rectangular paperweight of today? Hardware advancements along with interactive virtual software under development will merge to give us a fully immersive new user experience.

One downside is that most virtual worlds require a lot of downloading and installing of apps. Each virtual world requires its own application, so if you develop for Second Life, you are limited to Second Life residents and have no access to other audiences. Application diversity is a major downside to revenue scale. It goes back to the browser interoperability of the 1990s, when companies had three versions of their websites to accommodate differences in browsers. But eventually, there will be a de facto standard, and the winning app will come preloaded on your computer. I’m interested to see if this reorganization also produces antitrust litigation.

The new battle of 3-D browsers is raging today and the future of interactive communications is at stake. Will Silicon Valley produce the next 3D interactive browser standard or will China? Only time will tell. However, the impact of immersive three-dimensional virtual worlds on communications, social interaction, and education will change our lives as much as the microwave and the remote control…and perhaps TiVo.