All posts by Paul Raven

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Mixed-reality Manchester – Second Life meets real life

This should give your head a pretty good twisting for a Monday morning.

Mixed reality Manchester

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).

[tags]metaverse, augmented reality, Second Life, identity[/tags]
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Friday Free Fiction for 11 January

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A comparatively slow week for free fiction, but there’s still plenty enough if you need it …

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Free fiction at ManyBooks.net:

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At Fantasy Magazine: “Zombie Lenin” by Ekaterina Sedia

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A kind-of sneak-peek from Jay Lake:

“[This is] the original short story “Green”, basis of the novel I am currently writing. At 6,700 words, this originally appeared at Aeon 5 back in 2005 …”

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Good news from Cole Kitchen: the excellent print magazine Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest is getting into the free content game – take a look at Apex Online, with stories from James Walton Langolf and Matt Wallace, and lots of other non-fiction too.

Cole also points us at Transmitter – an online science fiction anthology magazine, according to the strap-line. Whatever it calls itself, there’s free fiction by the likes of Jake Clyde and Jennifer Moore, so go take a look.

Cheers, Cole!

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From Futurismic’s own Edward Willett:

“The release of my new SF novel Marseguro (DAW Books) is coming up February 5, so I’m beginning to do what I can to promote it online…which includes posting the first two chapters online.”

Good luck, Ed!

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Looks like a full complement on the Friday Flash Fiction parade ground this week:

Gareth L Powell has been thinking (and writing) about “Natalie“.

Gareth D Jones is channeling Ray Bradbury with “Built By Moonlight“.

Dan Pawley‘s journey back to his native country must have unnerved him; he’s worried that “The Natives Are Restless Tonight“.

Martin McGrath returns to the fray with a lingering fear of birds: “Sixty-seven Parrots“.

Justin Pickard is equally unnerved (though for rather different reasons) by “Fatima’s Funeral“.

Neil Beynon wants you to look deep into the “Eyes“.

Shaun C Green has been watching too much TV, I think – “The Future’s Bright – The Future’s Trivial“.

And finally yours truly decided to step out of the science fiction mode for a change, and go “Down on the Upside“.

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That’s your lot, ladies and gents. Don’t forget to get in touch with any tips or suggestions – you can find my email address on the Staff page.

Have a great weekend!

[tags]free, fiction, stories, online[/tags]

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Exoskeletons for agriculture

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Japanese agriculture exoskeleton Usually, when we hear about some new technological prototype that’s seemingly stepped off of the page of a science fiction story, it’s the military that always seems to get first dibs on the new toys.

So how refreshing to read this story about the robotic exoskeleton power-suit that a team at the University Of Tokyo have developed … specifically to boost the strength of Japan’s ageing farmers. [Image borrowed from linked article]

[tags]robotics, technology, exoskeleton, agriculture[/tags]
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Neuromancer to be butchered for cinema?

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Neuromancer promo image I have a bad relationship with the movie industry – they have a terrible habit of taking books I love and murdering them on screen. I had a rant about it when I first heard someone had optioned William Gibson’s Neuromancer, but Jason Ellis has just pointed out the fact that they’re actually casting it already.

Being somewhat detached from the cinema world, I have no idea who Hayden Christensen is, or whether he’d be any good as Case (or indeed as anyone). But there’s a microcosm example of why good books die when they leap to celluloid, in the commentary at this film fan site where Ellis found the news:

“I’ll be honest and admit I’ve never read NEUROMANCER and my rudimentary attempts to try and understand the plot have only confused me. But it seems very much a precursor to the Matrix with the book even referring to “the matrix.”” [my emphasis]

Face, meet palm. I’m guessing there’ll be a lot of explosions and bullet time to keep the slow readers happy. [Image lifted from linked article at JoBlo.com]

Anyone care to suggest a book-to-film conversion that really worked, with the obvious (and in my opinion unique) exception of Blade Runner?

[tags]Neuromancer, William Gibson, movie, film[/tags]
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The banks are shutting down!

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Ginko ATM in Second Life 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]

[tags]metaverse, Second Life, banking, economics[/tags]