Virtual and Real World Mashups

Interesting article in this month's Technology Review positing the pending collision/intersection between information and virtual worlds.

The World Wide Web will soon be absorbed into the World Wide Sim: an immersive, 3-D visual environment that combines elements of social virtual worlds such as Second Life and mapping applications such as Google Earth. What happens when the virtual and real worlds collide?

I think they're on to something—The ability that technology provides to combine the virtual/created with information from the "real world". The bit about mobile technology windows into such worlds really rings true.
Give it a read (registration required)