[Edu-sig] History of Croquet?

[kirby urner]

So I've only recently been exposed to screen shots of Croquet,
including animated on Google video, but the whole experience is
reminiscent of ActiveWorlds, which my friends and I have been
exploring for years.  Bonnie DeVarco (exBFI archivist) was a chief
avatar for this technology, developing Virtual High School, or, as our
oncologist would prefer, Virtual Cancer Conference (why fly to San
Antonio to an overbooked venue, to watch PowerPoints from the
cafeteria on a flat screen?).  You can network virtually too, given
sufficient bandwidth (which busy doctors should have).

In other words, I'm seeing a lot of precedent for Croquet in the
culture already, which means it likely does have a bright future.  But
I'm not sure everyone will syndicate under the one brand name.  If
t-Time is as good as people say, it oughta go the route of HTTP and
promote interoperability between several alternatives in the same
"virtual worlds" genre.  We're not all about to jump ship, having
collectively spent hundreds of man years builting nifty little cities
in EduVerse or wherever (friends and I built an entire university
based on Fuller's 60 degree coordination, versus the mainstream's 90
degree idea of "normal").

So let's assume peer-to-peer updating and synching becomes another
basic protocol over TCP/IP, and various OSs rise to the occassion and
develop a "shared world" mentality (suitable for doctor conferencing,
other communications).  The "NetMeeting" idea evolves to a more OpenGL
style board room, complete with water pitcher and fluttering staff. 
The shared white board, although virtual, is persistent, and the
company's legal department is actually authorized to take these
peer-to-peer meetings as the real deal.  That'd be a fulfillment of
the Croquet prophecy I think, but we wouldn't necessarily have its
characteristic branding going (e.g. that whole Alice in Wonderland
theme).  There's ample precedent to keep the "worlds" genre
heterogenous.  I personally might prefer a product from Cyan out of
Spokane, just as t-Time compatible.  When Alan Kay and I communicate
virtually, we'd each have a selection of clients.

Kirby