In the last week we've come across two cracking essays/articles about where virtual worlds are heading. Both take a different tack, but they aren't mutually exclusive in any way.
Extropia DaSilva writes about the Kapor/Kurzweil bet on the Turing Test, and how virtual worlds like Second Life might give prototype AIs the environment they need in order to develop more human characteristics. As Philip Linden has said (if only I can dig out the quote), will Second Life give birth to the first true AI? And our money is on Kurzweil.
The second is an article in MIT's Technology Review on how "neogeography" (surely Goegraphy 2.0?) sites like Google Earth and Virtual Worlds such as Second Life are likely to merge in the future. A great article covering a lot of ground and really showing where all this stuff might be going in the medium term.
Read them now if you want to know where all this is going once the media and marketing hype has died down.
