I am quoted today in Le Temps:

Est-ce à dire que la totalité d’Internet basculera un jour ou l’autre de la 2D à la 3D? «Je ne le crois pas, en tout cas pas dans un futur proche, car il y a encore trop de limitations techniques, estime Laurent Haug, fondateur du Lift Lab à Genève. L’avenir immédiat de la 3D se situe plutôt dans le créneau du shopping, des marques, des magasins en ligne, où la troisième dimension est porteuse de sens. Mais il y a quantité d’autres domaines du Web où la 3D n’amènera rien. Qui a besoin d’un Amazon en 3D?»

Link

The quote says something like “the immediate future of 3D is in shopping, where it makes a lot of sense. But there are other domains where 3D brings nothing. For example, who needs Amazon in 3D?”. Of course as Amazon = shopping you wonder why am I saying something and it’s contrary.

In fact I didn’t really say that. The point I was trying to make is:

- shopping is something where some 3D makes sense (peviously published articles are here and here)
- some retailers are already rolling out 3d stores
- 3D isn’t for everything
- typically, browsing the million of products of an Amazon is less efficient in 3D than in 2D

That is the question I faced this morning during an interview (audio archive here) at the Swiss national radio (RSR) after Microsoft announced is was giving away free software to the students of Lausanne’s engineering school. My answer: Yes and No, and it’s getting better.

YES we are slaves, because inside many organizations you get a PC with windows installed whether you like it or not.

NO we are not slaves, because nobody forbids you to buy a mac or get a Dell with Ubuntu, you can use Open Office instead of Word and Excel, and please get Firefox.

II’S GETTING BETTER because we now have more credible options than ever (thanks in part to Mark Shuttleworth’s work on Ubuntu - a linux version that your grandmother can use, and to mac OSX), and because we are spending the majority of our time inside a browser, i.e. an operating system independent environment.

This debate - who a few years back used to make people prone to irrationality ^ - seems to be less important now. What are your thoughts?