Paul Raven @ 07-05-2008
You may remember us linking to an arm-waving FUD-hype article from Australia last year claiming that OMFG Secund Life iz training ground for terr’ists!!1!
Just in case you were still worried about that (and I’m sure it’s been keeping you awake at night just as much as it has me) a report from Mercyhurst College concludes we can breathe easily:
“Communication for planning a terror attack is unlikely to be a threat due to the paranoia, suspicion of monitoring, and existing channels of communication such as web forums that are more efficient. Bomb making, weapons training, and other advanced training exercises are unlikely to take place in SL due to the need for in-person, hands-on experience.”
I wonder how much that simple exercise in examining the platform and applying a little common sense cost? It would have been easier to simply round up a hundred SL users and ask them the same question … although in recent times I think you’d be hard pressed to find a hundred SL users who’d been able to log in with any degree of regularity, but that’s an answer in and of itself. [image by believekevin]
And seriously, come on - Islamic jihadists in the metaverse? What were they supposed to be training themselves to do, bombard decadent capitalists with swarms of animated penises? That’s about as plausible as, oh, I dunno, Nazis on the frickin’ moon.
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Paul Raven @ 12-02-2008
While frequently dismissed as a frivolous diversion (which, to be fair, it is to some), Second Life has the potential to be much more than just “IRC with graphics”.
The technological uses are the most obvious, and already being investigated by companies like IBM; Second Life is an ideal environment for large-scale data visualisation, for example.
Recent mainstream media stories have suggested that Second Life is a haven for terrorist recruitment and money laundering. While the potential is arguably present (and the actuality overstated), the flip-side is that virtual worlds provide a space where more positive forms of cultural exchange can occur - like a Muslim investigative journalist being able to experience a service in a virtual synagogue. [Image by RykerBeck]
The cynic in me suggests that we will export our human propensity for divisiveness wherever we go, be it into outer space or the inner space of the metaverse. But perhaps the lower barriers in virtual worlds will make it easier to overcome the old hatreds … by allowing us to see “behind the veil”, to coin a phrase.
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Paul Raven @ 14-01-2008
This should give your head a pretty good twisting for a Monday morning.
I’ll let Wagner James Au explain it, because I can’t condense it any further and still get the story across:
“… last October in Manchester, a big screen display was set up in All Saints Gardens; the park was also recreated in Second Life. Meanwhile, video cameras in the real park record people who are there, and that live footage is merged in a chroma mixer to video captured in the SL version of All Saints.
The result is broadcast on the Manchester screen, so people there can watch themselves interact with avatars. But that’s just the beginning: the mixed reality video is also broadcast into the virtual version of All Saints Gardens in Second Life, so avatars can watch themselves interact with people in the real park, too.”
As Au points out, there’s a whole lot of reality layering going on right there.
“Liberate Your Avatar” was a public art installation by Paul Sermon designed to “expose the identity paradox in Second Life” - you can read more about it at the project’s website (which is where the image above has been borrowed from).
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Paul Raven @ 09-01-2008
Well, they are in Second Life, at least; Linden Lab, creators of the anarchic virtual world, have stepped in with a major change to the terms of service that bans individuals and organisations from running finance operations that offer “unsustainable interest”:
“Usually, we don’t step in the middle of Resident-to-Resident conduct – letting Residents decide how to act, live, or play in Second Life.
But these “banks” have brought unique and substantial risks to Second Life, and we feel it’s our duty to step in. Offering unsustainably high interest rates, they are in most cases doomed to collapse – leaving upset “depositors” with nothing to show for their investments. As these activities grow, they become more likely to lead to destabilization of the virtual economy.”
This move is doubtless triggered by the final collapse of SL Ponzi scheme bank Ginko Financial - though the threat of lawsuits from people who lose significant amounts of real-world money probably has a part to play as well.
Economist Robert Bloomfield is a little disappointed, as he saw the SL economy as an experimental control group for learning how real-world markets operate, and he wonders whether some of the stock exchanges will continue to operate - if the Linden Lab rules provide sufficient loopholes for them to do so.
Meanwhile, Ian Betteridge wonders if we’ll see real banks stepping into the breach. [Image by ChikaWatanabe]
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Paul Raven @ 06-11-2007
A group of UK based psychology researchers were interested in seeing how Second Life users reacted to invasions of personal space within the virtual world. So, they developed a way around the built-in limitations that Linden Lab put in place to prevent software-controlled avatars being deployed, enabling them to send an avatar on autopilot to interact with other residents and record their reactions.
To which your response might be "so what?" - especially if you’re skeptical about Second Life to start with, which is not an uncommon stance. But as the heads-up on SlashDot points out, what can be done by psychology researchers in the name of science could just as easily be done by spammers seeking a automated method of advertising in the metaverse … which would seem to reinforce the adage that no platform will ever remain completely immune to spam techniques. Still, at least in SL you can always teleport away from an annoying avatar, which is more than you can do when confronted by a Scientologist or insurance hawker in the high street … [Image by PsychoAl]
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Paul Raven @ 12-10-2007
While it may obviously be some time before this technology becomes widely available to the average consumer, I’m fascinated to see a Japanese team of scientists developing a thought-control interface device that can direct the movement of a Second Life avatar. Something like that could really revolutionize the platform … although given the slightly hysterical media reports of, er, dubious pastimes in the virtual world, I’m sure people will leap to conclusions about why users would want their hands free … [Image by Pathfinder Linden]
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Paul Raven @ 21-08-2007
We’ve heard about the street finding its own use for things, but here’s an example of the opposite occurring: epidemiological researchers are in discussion with the makers of World of Warcraft to arrange a for a contagious virtual disease to sweep the multiplayer world, so that they can observe how people react to various social countermeasures like quarantining. Brings a whole new meaning to bugs in the code. [Image by Rance Costa]
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Paul Raven @ 20-08-2007
Much as I love Second Life, I’m not so infatuated that I can’t see that Linden Lab are wide open to someone overtaking them with a smaller, lower-spec application with a similar feature set. And while it’s still in Beta (isn’t everything these days?), Unype’s ability to use your Skype account and Google Earth to create a multi-user avatar populated virtual world looks like it has the potential to become a serious contender. Granted, it doesn’t have SL’s content creation features or the bells and whistles … but the lower barriers for entry may render that irrelevant. [Clickable Culture]
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Paul Raven @ 16-08-2007
Via reBang, here’s an article on the ironically named Zen Technologies, an Indian company that specialises in training simulators that can teach everything from driving a truck to crack-shot sniping with an AK47. When you add this selection to other training devices like the virtual chainsaw, you realise we’re rapidly reaching a point where almost any high-risk activity can be experienced virtually.
But low-risk activities are catching up fast now the technology is more accessible; as soon as people get access to virtual worlds, they start recreating objects and events from the real world (even major festivals, like Burning Man’s SL incarnation), and fabbing technology means that objects that start their life as virtual can be made real and solid in meatspace … so how long before we need the equivalent of Customs and border controls between reality and everywhere else?
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Paul Raven @ 06-08-2007
Much like the early incarnations of the web itself, there are a few tried and tested ways of making money in Second Life: porn is one, of course, and another is financial confidence trickery. The jury is still out over whether Ginko Financial - a Second Life banking scheme that offered 60% (yes, sixty) interest on deposits - fits the latter category; what is certain is that, after a sudden rush of withdrawal requests, Ginko don’t have the liquid assets to give the money back … and they’re none too forthcoming about what exactly they’ve done with it all, either. Common consensus seems to label the whole thing as one huge ponzi scheme, but only time will tell … probably very little time, in fact.
There are other ways of making money in the metaverse, though, with new ones appearing or rising to prominence all the time. Maybe virtual property is a smart business investment for the near future. [Image by Tanya Ryno]
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Paul Raven @ 01-08-2007
The corporate love affair with Second Life seems to be fading, at least in some camps, as businesses realise that having a sim isn’t going to instantly develop them a massive revenue stream. Chris Anderson, editor of Wired and the guy behind the Long Tail hypothesis, wrote a short piece explaining why he thinks metaverse marketing is a pointless proposition, which developed into an interesting conversation with SL uber-pundit Wagner James Au. The jury is still out, I guess … but as Jason Stoddard says, it’s early days yet, and it’s a wise move to get on the train while there are still plenty of seats.
However, according to a report in The Australian [via], terrorist organisations are taking to the metaverse like ducks to water, and allegedly using virtual worlds as training platforms to dry-run attack plans. There may well be a grain of truth in there, but the story reeks of sensationalist over-hype to me … however, it’s given Charlie Stross the opportunity to pat himself on the back for predicting that we’d see just such a story. To be entirely fair, though, Edward Castronova discussed the same ideas in his excellent book Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games back in 2005 - which is well worth a read for anyone interested in the metaverse, whether as user or observer.
And your supplementary bonus link: Ian Hughes is one of the folk behind IBM’s big push into the metaverse, and he and a colleague are guestblogging over at TerraNova; his inaugural post examines the possibility of business becoming more like a form of emergent gameplay as interactions increasingly migrate into virtual spaces. Fascinating stuff. [Image by D'Arcy Norman]
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Paul Raven @ 10-07-2007
If there’s one thing that everyone (even the most enthusiastic) has to say about Second Life, it’s that the software is ferociously resource-hungry and more bug-ridden than a hobo’s sleeping bag. Numerous projects are running toward the goal of a more user-friendly interface based on open source code, and one of them has just become the darling of the SL blogosphere by creating an AJAX-based text-only version of the client software - in non-geek language, that means it can run in your web browser. Which is pretty good going for a fifteen year old.
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Paul Raven @ 09-07-2007
Following on from the interview I linked to yesterday, it looks like the Gibsonian publicity engine is moving into high gear ahead of the release of his forthcoming novel, Spook Country - which esteemed genre critic John Clute has reviewed for SciFi.com. In a move that makes perfect sense for the man whose name will forever be associated with cyberpunk (whether he wants it that way or not), his publishers are using the metaverse as a promotional tool; as reported by UKSF Book News and Forbidden Planet, Second Life is going to be full of promotional events connected to the release of Spook Country. Just what I need - more reasons to hang about in SL instead of getting any real work done. If I were a published author, though, I could probably justify it as self-promotion - maybe Walter John Williams should add it to his list of ways to grow a Long Tail?
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