(Originally published at SLNN.COM)

Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Corporation and Chairman of Linden Lab talks about his views of Second Life in an in world interview with Adam Reuters.

Davos – Mitch Kapor spoke today about his vision of the future of Second Life. The conversation started off with a discussion of a three dimensional camera that is being tested with Second Life. This camera, expected to be commercially available towards the end of 2008 or the beginning of 2009 provides distance information to parts of the picture, similar to much more expensive cameras used in film making. The cameras are expected to help people create more realistic looking avatars by measuring the shape and size of people’s faces and heads. Ultimately this will lead to much more realistic facial expressions.

Currently, developers are working with prototypes of the camera in an incubator. Using the open source client, they are working on ways of interfacing the camera to Second Life. Videos of this proof of concept is expected to be posted on YouTube.

These cameras, along with other developments are expected to revolutionize the user interface of Second Life. Better three dimensional editing is being worked on which will make editing similar to how pictures can be edited on iPhones. Improvements in the user interface are a high priority for Mr. Kapor.

He noted that we are still in the very early days of virtual worlds. They have complexity similar to that of the PC itself and the PC took fifteen years to mature from the simple DOS based interfaces that they initially had to the sort of usability we now expect from PCs. It is reasonable to expect a similar timeframe for virtual worlds.

Adam Reuters asked if Linden Lab can last that long and Mr. Kapor observed that that is the ‘$64 billion question’. By doing things right in the early stages, all you really get is a ticket to play in the later stages, he noted, saying that the history of disruptive technologies is full of examples of companies that did not make it to the promised land.

Longer term success is dependent on the company and the community to stay at the center of virtual world development. For Linden Lab, Mr. Kapor sees the focus as improving stability, making the customers happy and opening up the grid, a theme he often returned to.

Yet Mr. Kapor failed to make customers happy when he failed to answer questions raised by the audience. When he was asked if he thought there might be better ways to achieve the desired behaviors in Second Life than by fiat and being sad, and if so, what they might be, he responded simply that regulations are necessary. Likewise, when he was asked about the possibilities for intergenerational use of Second Life, such as Robert Scoble being able to be on Second Life with his son, or teachers being able to create environments that both students and parents could participate in, he was at best vague.

He did speak about how an open grid will allow different companies to offer different types of service and different levels of legal risk. This could include other providers making sims available that would allow better intergenerational communications.

Adam Reuters focused on economic aspects of Linden Lab. Mr. Kapor spoke about the investments in Linden Lab as being ‘patient capital’; investments that were waiting patiently and seeking to do something important with capitalism instead of focusing on flipping the company for a profit. As such, he noted that while people contact Linden Lab about investing, they typically reply that they aren’t looking for new investors right now. At some point, a liquidity event, such as a buyout or an IPO might be in the cards, but right now, they spend almost no time talking about such possibilities. Linden Lab is currently profitable so there isn’t any rush to change their capital structure.

The discussion ended with a question about sustainability. The claim that an avatar has a larger carbon footprint than a resident of Brazil was brought up. Mr. Kapor believes that as servers continue to become more energy efficient, the carbon footprint of avatars would decrease. However, the use of Second Life to help people reduce their carbon footprint, by means such as replacing some travel to conferences with connecting in Second Life, could be much more significant.

Mr. Kapor spoke about continuing this as a ‘virtual Davos’ and expects the in world discussions about how virtual worlds move from infancy to maturity in Second Life will be ongoing.