Tag Archives: politics

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All change in the metaverse: EVE embraces democracy as Reuters turns tail on Second Life

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EVE Online screenshotThe space opera science fiction MMO game EVE Online was recently rocked by an insider-trading scandal. Unlike World of Warcraft, the EVE universe is singular and persistent: you can’t move your character to another server, so anything that happens effects everybody. [screenshot by Pentadact]

As such, it’s imperative that EVE‘s makers CCP maintain a strong and transparent bond of trust with their paying players, the latest development of which is the Council of Stellar Management – a peer-elected group of players who act as advisers to CCP on matters regarding gameplay. [via BoingBoing] How long before this (or another similar) monitoring system becomes big enough to harbour its own layers of corruption?

Still, at least CCP are making the effort to keep their userbase on side, unlike Linden Lab. The media glow on Second Life has been spasmodic since the initial burst of enthusiasm last year, but today’s big metaverse headline is about news agency Reuters pulling out of Second Life, with former stringer Eric Krangel launching a zinger of a parting shot from his new post at Silicon Alley Insider [via The Guardian]:

Abandon the idea that Second Life is a business app. I wasn’t in Second Life to play, I was there on assignment for Reuters. The login server would crash. I’d try to reach sources, but Second Life’s IM window would hang on “waiting” all day when trying to figure out who was online. “Teleports” … would stop working and I’d get locked out of my own office. These weren’t one-offs, they were my daily, first-hand, happens-all-the-time experiences. For all its bugs, Second Life is tolerable as a playground, but enterprise users will never and should never use it for business. Re-focus on the core mission: Keeping the hobbyists happy and converting potential recruits into hardcore (read: fees-paying) users.

Unfortunately, Linden Lab can’t even seem to keep its paying customers happy, as protests over recent price hikes have demonstrated. I doubt this spells the end of the line for the metaverse – or even for Second Life itself – but the brave new world doesn’t seem quite so brave or new any more.

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Google search terms can predict flu outbreaks; what next?

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sneezeYou’d have to have been under a pretty large metaphorical internet rock to have missed all the reports about Google Flu Trends that are floating around the web today like sneezed particles of snot, but just in case:

By tracking searches for terms such as ‘cough’, ‘fever’ and ‘aches and pains’ it claims to be able to accurately estimate where flu is circulating.

Google tested the idea in nine regions of the US and found it could accurately predict flu outbreaks between seven and 14 days earlier than the federal centres for disease control and prevention.

So I was thinking, if they can predict flu outbreaks by using search terms as an indicator, what else can be predicted in a similar way? Stats geeks were rinsing comparisons of Obama and McCain as search terms in the run-up to the election, but politics is a bit more complicated than infectious diseases.

Or is it? [image by trumanlo]

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The Fourth Republic and the future of America

A fascinating article at Salon.com on whether the election of Barack Obama represents the beginning of a new segment of American history, within the context of the Three Republics model:

George W. Bush was not only the final president of the Jeffersonian backlash period of Roosevelt’s Third Republic, but the last president of the 1932-2004 Third Republic itself. The final president of a republic tends to be a failed, despised figure.

The First Republic, which began with George Washington, ended with James Buchanan, a hapless president who refused to act as the South seceded after Lincoln’s election.

The Second Republic, which began with Abraham Lincoln, ended with the well-meaning but reviled and ineffectual Herbert Hoover.

The Third Republic, founded by Franklin Roosevelt, came to a miserable end under the pathetic George W. Bush.

Unlike most of the hyperbolic editorials I’ve read on Obama’s victory this one gives a technological and economic historical context:

…what causes these cycles of reform and backlash in American politics? I believe they are linked indirectly to stages of technological and economic development.

Lincoln’s Second American Republic marked a transition from an agrarian economy to one based on the technologies of the first industrial revolution — coal-fired steam engines and railroads.

Roosevelt’s Third American Republic was built with the tools of the second industrial revolution — electricity and internal combustion engines. It remains to be seen what energy sources — nuclear? Solar? Clean coal? — and what technologies — nanotechnology? Photonics? Biotech– will be the basis of the next American economy.

This presents an interesting historical framework to the United States. As to whether it’s true, only time will tell.

[via Boing Boing][image from zaphodsotherhead on flickr]

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Socialized banking: Modest proposals for the new economy

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Each U.S. taxpayer now owns a $1,785.71 ownership share in the banks of America, calculates New York Times columnist Clyde Haberman (check his math). So would it be too much to ask for an end to ATM (automatic teller machine) fees?  How about a moratorium on executive bonuses? A-and another thing:

Why not forbid any bank receiving taxpayer money to purchase naming rights to sports stadiums and arenas? Citigroup is handing the Mets something like $20 million a year to call their new stadium Citi Field. Surely, the Mets do not need Citigroup’s money — not to mention yours — to keep failing to make the playoffs.

(Corporations bought naming rights to days, months, and years in one of David Foster Wallace’s novels, if memory of the reviews serves.)

(My favorite proposal, from I forget which obviously unhinged left-wing blogger: Treat bank executives like customers who declare bankruptcy, and make them prove they’ve taken a basic course in finance.)

[Bank recruitment folder, Finsec]

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Undecided voters: Yeah, right

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Undecided voters have probably made up their minds. They just don’t know it yet. U. Virginia psychologist Brian Nosek and colleagues got 25,000 people to take an online test (you can try it yourself). The test mixes up pictures of Obama and McCain with “good” words like “friend” and “bad” words like “enemy,” and asks you to press a key through several cycles of screens.

On average more undecided voters reported explicitly feeling slightly warmer toward Obama than McCain, but Nosek’s implicit measurements showed the undecided subjects had a slight preference for McCain over Obama.

Color me skeptical: I scored a slight preference for the candidate I already didn’t mail in my ballot for.

[Image: gapersblock]