[Time Magazine->http://www.time.com/time/] will hit the newsstands Monday with the [Person of the Year issue->http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html]. And the Person of the Year is….YOU! Congratulations!!

Now before you get a swelled head, Time has also decided that I’m the Person of the year as well. In fact, Time’s Person of the Year 2006 is anyone using or creating content on the World Wide Web. Time salutes each of us “…for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy…,” and for basically pointing out new ways in which we all can benefit from the Web.

Time also makes certain to point out that “…Web 2.0 harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom. Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone…But that’s what makes all this interesting. Web 2.0 is a massive social experiment, and like any experiment worth trying, it could fail.”

You are Time’s Person of the Year because You are using or creating content for Web2.0.

Web2.0 + You = [Web2.U->http://www.plexav.com/archives/2006/web20-web2u/]!

By naming You Person of the Year, Time Magazine is attempting to point You towards the ideal that is Web2.U. I’ve been writing about [Web2.U->http://www.plexav.com/archives/2006/web20-web2u/] for about a year now and invite you to read and comment.

If you want to see what Web2.U is all about, then Digg or Reddit this post. You’ll not only be indicating an interest in Web2.U, you’ll be demonstrating that Web2.U is all about You! Congratulations on being named Person of the Year!

Summum Bonum

Playsh is a text environment that sits on your local computer and affords you a way to interact with objects in the text-based environment. What’s different about Playsh is that you can create the environment along with other people!

The Python interactive interpreter serves as the interface to playsh and two players can live in the same interpreter: One player can write a function, and the second player can both see the first player typing, and make use of that function. This means playsh can be a good teaching and learning environment and the Playsh can interact with desktop applications or work with serial interfaces. Objects can be loaded from other Playshs, and can make use of HTML, XML….consider how one might associate various types of information with objects in a text environment and how it might be useful.

Jesse James Garrett, author of The Elements of User Experience, has been touting a Microsoft developed technology as the next big thing. Garrett says, “The gap between the experiences we can provide on the desktop and the experiences users can get online is closing, thanks to a new Web application framework we call Ajax.” For those interested, you can find the quote in this article. Ajax, which stands for ‘asynchronous Java and XML’, enables the development of better web applications. Using Ajax, communication between the server & client is no longer dependant upon the User. Information is updated without the generally required User mouse-click. The cost associated with implementing AJAX is relatively small when there is relatively little data-flow between client and server. As the amount of data-flow increases, the complexity increases disproportionately.

While the word ‘Ajax’ might carry with it a sense of shiny sparkly cleanliness, one finds that it’s been around for a while. Ajax will not result in vastly improved web applications. When compared with HTML, Ajax’s advantage can be distilled to a single trait, resolution. Because information can be transmitted asynchronously, software designers may develop and implement more complex models of various processes and objects. In essence however, such an approach saddles designers and coders with complexity that quickly demonstrates the law of diminishing returns. One will find that developers use Ajax to improve data transfer or aggregation and to provide flourishes to websites.

The last ‘techno-conceptual’ achievement in videogames was the leap from 2D to 3D graphical environments. Mario64 was the first 3D game on a console and to this day it is still the biggest selling console game in history. Why?? It presented a technical advancement that opened up whole new “worlds” of game design and development.

People can sense the palpable nature of such a breakthrough.

We are now approacing a new era in game design and development. The primary emphasis won’t be on graphics, as many in the game industry would envision; nor will it be on image recognition, longer gaming experiences, or on-line tournaments where one can both gamble AND play a first-person-shooter at the same time.

The next techno-conceptual innovation is “Authenticity.” Games will include authentic characters in authentic settings playing out authentic stories where the Player is an integral and authentic contributor to the unfolding plot. In essence, the leap from 2D characters and stories to 3D characters and stories will provide the foundation for the Next-Generation Games.

Creative teams will be smaller and more evenly distributed across technology, audio & visual artistry and narrative. Writers, artists and programmers will leverage new technology and production processes to create gaming experiences the likes of which have barely been hinted at in the best games developed thus far.

Games populated with authentic characters and storylines will merge into an art form that will become the movies of this century. Already we see children opting to play games rather than go see many movies.

Where are video games headed?

The answer lies somewhere games have never been. A place where the Player and the computer participate in an authentic interactive experience, a PlaySpace.

© 2005 Kenneth Stein One may reproduce this work, in whole or in part, if one includes this notice of copyright, and a trackback to the original post at www.Playspace.com.