Second Life does weather - is it an operating system?

[Image: second life weather]According to Second Life Insider:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) with Aimee Weber Studio just unrolled a sneak preview of their educational project in Second Life (due to open in mid November). This appetizer of things to come features the three dimensional visualization of live national weather (now on display at the Science Center).

This is way cool, because it’s a weather service I’m not sure you can get anywhere else. How great would it be if you could sit down on your computer and direct your avatar into a little weather building where they had a 3D map of US weather? Pretty cool.

This is why I wonder if SecondLife is becoming an operating system or not. Everyone’s seen or thought about that mystical “VR Cyberspace” where people walk around as little avatars and simulate real live but in a digital way. Second Life is the first step towards that world, and the more and more companies, bands, and people start to use Second Life for real events and make it a platform for standard interactions, the more it becomes unnecessary to have the old “Windows” model of navigating your computer.

Think about it - walk into the arcade to play your games. Walk outside to hang out with people on your computer. With constantly connected broadband internet, this isn’t so far-fetched. You can build calculators or launch a word-processor from in the program.

If I were a company, I wouldn’t want to get caught without a presence in SL. Think about it: if I’m looking to go shopping and my desktop interface is SL (or I have the “game”), wouldn’t I rather go meandering through a SL store than try to navigate some byzantine web site? Of course.