Susan Wu has a nice post up on a panel she participated in at the SXSW conference recently called “Web 2.0 to Web 3D.”

In it, she writes, “The question I was trying to answer was, “Is the next generation of the consumer web 3D?” I think the answer is not necessarily.”

Right on. I do not understand the insistence some people have on 3D as a feature of the evolution of the web. It’s a tool, not a requirement. As she explains, it’s unfortunate that so many large companies/advertisers have grown to associate the empty, pointless showrooms in Second Life with “the future.”

Susan goes on to present a sort of history of how users have presented themselves online, but curiously, leaves out both Usenet and forums in general. Probably just an oversight. I don’t see much of a difference in terms of an online identity. Whether it’s represented as a 3d or text-based avatar or as a forum account, you’re assocating your online experience with an identity that is quasi-distinct from you.

Finally, she goes on to speculate about the implications of her conclusions. She writes that, “More and more game-like features will find their way into everyday web design - you see this already being implemented successfully on sites like Yelp and Flixster. People will seek out experiences, rather than just content.“I could not agree more with that. I think that anyone who logged into a MUD in the pre-web days probably quickly became aware of how powerful the sheer experience of being in an environment with a strong context was.

Here’s one problem with experiences vs. content though: They demand a lot more of the user/player/person/whatever. Content can be relatively passively consumed. Experience asks for engagement and (unfortunately) much of humankind seems to be a lot more interested in being fed than engaging. Sites like Yelp and Flixster may (we’ll see, of course) be nothing more than the tools that the (relatively-speaking) early adopters use. Games tend to require some engagement but most people have notably short attention spans as regards engaging a specific game. A very big exception are hardcore MUD/MMO players, who will engage for thousands of hours, cumulatively.

So, is the future of the web far greater engagement with the context than we tend to see now? There’s a lot of talk about Web meets 3d (with the implication that this means virtual world), but I mean, there is a huge “uncanny valley” somewhere in the future that resides between something like the faux-3d worlds (in the sense flat-screen 3d technology is just faking 3d) or web elements of today and an experience so immersive and so vital (like the “Metaverse”) that the online worlds/experiences are as essentially intuitive as the physical world.

If I had to make a prediction, I suppose I’d predict that Susan is right….but only to the lip of the valley.