UgoTrade

Cyrus Huffhines of blueair.tv interviewed Long Now Executive Director Alexander Rose,Wednesday, bringing yet another dimension to the global creative context of Second Life. Alexander Rose, is deep into the production of the new Eno piece, 77 Million Paintings, in San Francisco. Also, he is known for pioneering Rosetta and Long Server, the Long Now 10,000 Year Clock and prototypes. (See blog.longnow.org for more!) Cyrus Huffines of blueair.tv, a member of Long Now for ten years, is instrumental in bringing The Long Now Foundation to Second Life.

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Today, I had what felt to me like a ground breaking meeting with Alanagh Recreant on Second Life (a.k.a. Dorette Steenkamp in Real Life). Dorette Steenkamp is Executive Director of Uthango Social Investments, Cape Town, South Africa. Uthango is the first African-based NGO with a presence in Second Life.

You can visit Uthango’s newly established offices on Second Life here! SLurl: Uthango in Second Life.

Ginsu Linden, Linden Lab, told me earlier this month there was interest from Africa in the Linden Lab Global Provider Program. So, I was very excited to meet Alanagh in person, or rather in the pixels, and hear that an initiative to create an access portal and community for Africans on Second Life was actually underway.

“Not exclusively [for Africans] but with the exclusive aim to promote access to virtual reality.”

Uthango have just begun establishing their presence in Second Life. Their current offices are a first base from which to address the digital divide. But, please watch for more news about Uthango projects on Second Life to be announced shortly!

Uthango is an investment company specializing in finding and creating sustainable programs - connecting corporate/government with communities through collecting local intelligence and translating it to the business sector. But, “we only work at the invitation of communities. We are a relationship broker and bridge-builder between diverse interest groups to create mutual benefit.”

Uthango is serious about access for all. They will be working in parallel at establishing internet hubs in communities. And, they are seeking partnerships with mobile telecoms on mobile applications for Virtual Africa, and to develop links between mobile space and Second Life.,

They are putting together an Uthango Global Advisory Board that will be an innovation team both socially and commercially - to put out and receive ideas concerning producing a viable Virtual Africa Platform.

It is so exciting to see the first steps towards realizing a vision for a Virtual Africa being taken by Uthango. This group is deeply experienced at working on the ground with rural communities on sustainable development and poverty relief. And, they are expert at creating commercial partnerships with social value.

Uthango won the Centennial Award from Rotary International for Sustainable Projects in Communities in 2005, for District 9350, and The National Impumelelo Innovations Awards in the same year for Innovation in Private/Public Projects for their micro-enterprise project affecting a community of 45000.

I am especially impressed with how Alanagh, while very committed to expanding the possibilities for mobile technologies in sustainable development, is equally committed to the idea that Africans should not be excluded from high quality internet connectivity, access, and the potential that Second Life, as an immersive virtual world, has for Africa.

These are exciting times for African innovation!

Tags: Second Life | Virtual Africa | Africa on Second Life | Uthango Social Investments | Web 3.D | Linden Lab | Linden Lab Global Provider Program | Sustainable Development | Digital Divides | Poverty Relief | African Innovation | Africa Sustainable Development | Ginsu Linden | Alanagh Recreant | Web 2.0 | Dorette Steenkamp | mobile phones in Africa | mobile phones and sustainable development | mobile space and Virtual Worlds | Mobile Phones and Second Life | Metaverse | Virtual Reality | Virtual Worlds | World 2.o | virtual realities |

Jonathan Fanton, President of the MacArthur Foundation, and Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Lab, appeared in Second Life to talk about the future role of philanthropy in virtual worlds (also see Jonathan Fanton’s post.) The tireless crew of USC Center On Public Diplomacy (see my previous post for more on Anna Annenberg and Sitearm Madonna) did an amazing job of hosting this event that used four sims to bring so many people together (perhaps up to 250 at peak).

A recording of the event can be found at the MacArthur site for Digital Media and Learning here , a great post from Rik Riel here, and a call from Prokofky Neva for a new philanthropy here. But, the high point for me was the emphasis Jonathan Fanton put on Africa - developing access, connectivity, and bringing Second Life there.

In response to a question about using the combined energies of Linden Lab and The MacArthur Foundation to help Second Life to bring opportunities and training to communities in isolation - cutting out the middle man so to speak, Philip Linden said:

while they had nothing planned yet, this question was a fabulous example of the kind of barrier reduction that Second Life enables………cutting the costs of collaborating with people to close to zero sometimes.

And, Philip added:

I would love to work on ways, with the MacArthur foundation, to enable that.

Jonathan Fanton responded:

That question is a great example of what I hoped would come out of this conversation which is a series of concrete ideas that we could look at and develop into a program or two.

One of the challenges we face is being sure that places in the world that are remote, where people are desperately poor, that some of those people have access to the technology that enables them to come in and be part of Second Life. The MacArthur Foundation along with other foundations has a partnership for higher education in Africa working now in a dozen countries. One of the principle pieces of that initiative is to expand bandwidth at a lower cost and to get high quality internet connectivity through the continent of Africa.

Also, Jonathan Fanton described “being in the Google office and looking at the map of the world,” and :

how he remembered where inquiries were coming in ….and it is shocking to see that Africa was totally dark, just one or two places where Europe and the United States and places in Asia were bursting with activity. So, we have a real challenge in this world to get to the places where people most need us.

This project of developing high quality internet access and the opportunity to access virtual worlds like Second Life for all, especially people from remote and isolated communities, has been a prime motivation for much of my writing on Ugotrade.

The Magic of Second Life - talking one on one with Jonathan Fanton and Philip Linden

Both Philip Linden (above) and Jonathan Fanton stayed after the event to chat one on one with people (although Philip L. had to leave for the office fairly quickly).

I sent an IM to Jonathan Fanton about an African initiated Virtual Africa portal to Second Life (see next post!). And, I got an instant response. Not only did Jonathan Fanton himself want to stay in touch with project. He immediately sent contact information for the person most involved with Africa at The MacArthur Foundation.

“Africa Open For and In Business:” TED Global 2007

Soyapi Mumba writes about the mood at TED Global 2007 that convened in Arusha, Tanzania in early June:

everyone I met was determined to solve Africa’s problems without waiting for governments or donors. So I’ve come back energized and connected to the right community that will hopefully keep me motivated.

The picture above shows William Kamkwamba. His presentation was a highlight of TED Global 2007. Ethan Zuckerman who blogged every session of TED Global, and summarized in his post, “A New Wind Blowing In Africa.” Also, he noted the debut of William Kamkwamba’s Malawi’s Windmill Blog. William has begun blogging with the help of someone he met at TED.

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Second Life is the global creative context for key debates about the future of virtual worlds. Chris Renaud, notes the China and Entropia deal could be a game-changer. But, this evolving role of Second Life as a global virtual institute of the future may be a game-changer too.

Second Life is creating the kind of linking back from virtual to real worlds that will drive virtual worlds to be even more highly valued, and “people to find and create more value because of this linking” (see the manifesto for Flickr).

There has been a lot of excellent high powered commentary on the future of Second Life and Virtual Worlds in general recently, see Chris Renaud’s Weblog, Mark Wallace on 3pointD, and IBM vice president of standards and open source Bob Sutor who has done a series of posts. So, it takes a little audacity to pipe up with some more commentary!

But, Second Life seems to have become the de facto Virtual Institute For The Future regardless of the scaling challenges supernova growth has caused in recent months. And, I think this has a lot of significance. A dizzying array of world class conferences, meetups, and opportunities to interact with metathinkers, futurists, leaders in art, architecture, technology, law, education, politics, and culture are scheduled on a daily basis, often concurrently.

Gwyneth Llewelyn has just written a post that looks at the history of governance on Second Life and Linden Lab’s changing role re Second Life. But, what I am noting, and this is not just Linden Lab but organizations, corps and individuals in Second Life as well, is a growing movement to transform Second Life into a “global creative context” of the future.

Friday, I found myself in the hallowed halls of Columbia University, New York City in Real Life, attending, “The Economics and Business of Second Life and Virtual Worlds.” And, while I listened to John Lester of Linden Lab giving his presentation, “Virtual World, Real People,” I participated in the Second Life component of the iCommons Summit 2007, Dubrovnik, Croatia, which was being streamed into Second Life, on my laptop. Cory Ondrejka (also of Linden Labs) was speaking at the time.

To interact with all four levels of these two conferences being held continents apart - the two real life conferences and their virtual components - was an extremely valuable experience.

These conferences looked at two of the major forces shaping virtual worlds at the moment. Columbia focused on business and economics (law/governance, marketing, applications and national interests). And the iCommons Summit, 2007, in Dubrovnik, Croatia, is the forum developing new contexts for creativity (a global ecology of free culture). Recordings and presentations for the Columbia can be found here, and from iCommons Summit here.

“Creative Commons and Peer Production” - Second Life and Dubrovnik, Croatia

Below is the “Creative Commons and Peer Production in Second Life,” panel with Anna Berthold - USC Center on Public Diplomacy (Anna Annenberg), and Jean Miller (Jean Linden in Second Life where she and Anna have been available for interviews and questions for much of the conference), Cory Ondrejka (Linden Labs), and Chinese artist, Cao Fei (China Tracy in Second Life) is in frame in the picture at the beginning of this post. Cao Fei talked about how Second Life was a place for artistic expression that gave Chinese artists unrestricted access to an international audience. See more about China Tracy in New World Notes. NWN reviewed and posted all three parts of China Tracy’s awesome machinima art project i.Mirror here. Also see China Tracy’s blog.

Of course, there were questions on when SL will open source server side. But Cory Ondrejka was clear that with 520 new sims per week Linden Lab needs other people to host as quickly as possible. And, he commented re questions on the transaction system of Linden Dollars that while having this transaction system has been a very important part of the growth of Second Life, Linden Lab doesn’t want to be a bank. And, they are looking to partner on this.

Cory also mentioned one of the areas I have been talking about a lot on Ugotrade: How communities who have been cut off from the global economy up to this point, with recent break-throughs in broadband access, particularly wireless, are seeing the possibility of connecting to an economy that they have never had the chance to be connected to before.

The building housing the event in Croatia was a world away from The Columbia Business School (screen grab).

I will go into how peer production, creative commons, and public diplomacy (all key areas to understanding global creative contexts) are evolving with, and integral to, Second Life later in this post.

The scene at Columbia University - photo courtesy of my digital camera.

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Metaverse Meetup at Jerry’s Loft - A Generation Y Think Tank

Jerry Paffendorf’s loft is a true Generation Y think tank, tingling with orgone energy radiating from a new cosmos of connectivity, social networking and mobility, where immersive virtual worlds are a natural habitat.

Generation Y - 20 to 35 years old [a.k.a the 3pointD generation], are living demonstrations of the potentiality of digital and electronic media in supporting/shaping our social environment (Wonderlust).

Current metazens of JLoft include Metaverse Architect Christian Westbrook a.k.a Christian Prior, rising Machinima star Pierce Portocarrero, who has recently come to town to work on his upcoming machinima sitcom for Virtual NBC, and the legendary Glitchy - a contributor to 3pointD who “stands astride a number of virtual worlds.” Mark Wallace notes, Glitchy is “a card-carrying member of the 3pointD generation.”

This was the setting for a Metaverse Meetup, last Thursday, on the topic of Global Online Cities: Trevor F. Smith and Ogoglio. The meetup was packed with metarati listening, questioning, and giving Trevor F. Smith feedback on his new metaverse technology, Ogoglio (click here to listen to the whole talk).

Ogoglio is inspired by car free city design - city planning based on human scale space. Ogoglio takes ideas of city planning online to create virtual cities by dropping 3D spaces into the web where they can connect using existing patterns of web development.

Satchmo Prototype a.k.a. Chris Carella - the Creative Director, Electric Sheep Company, and Becky Carella, Software Developer at The Electric Sheep Company, Hiro Pendragon a.k.a. Ron Blechner, CTO of Infinite Vision Media, and Murat Aktihanoglu of Holoscape, creator of Unype - the multiuser Google Earth experience, and Donald Schwartz, Image Link Productions, and many other movers and shakers of the metaverse listened and asked important questions about Ogoglio.

While this post is going to focus on this real life Metaverse Meetup in Jerry’s loft, I would like to point out that thanks to the miracle of Second Life you don’t have to live in the New York area to participate in a full on Geek Meet. Nick Wilson has organized The Metaversed Geek Meet:

a weekly networking event where we discuss the weeks business and technology news, make new friends swap blog and twitter urls and more. Join us today at 11am SLT/PST at the this landmark!

Dreaming Up A New Social/Virtual Environment - First Some Back Story to A Metaverse Meetup

The ideas of Tufte - dubbed the Leonardo Da Vinci of data - are resonating with the 3D generation. Tufte is famous for his analysis of the shortcomings of Power Point that “disrupts and trivializes,” and whose poverty of information he points out has not only turned business meetings into arenas of excruciating boredom, but contributed to calamities like the Columbia Shuttle disaster in 2003.

As new ideas of virtualizing reality are integrated into immersive worlds and reworked in 2.o thinking, mirror worlds, or whatever you want to call them, are going to become rocking places to hang out in.

To get a glimpse of some of the ways the high end technology is developing see Photosynth. Photosynth combines the Seadragon technology which obliterates limitations of screen resolution with 3D photo tourism, allowing people to create immersive 3D worlds from hundreds of thousands of different photos and form interconnected user generated environments.

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Mirror Worlds on Second Life

Epredator (a.k.a Ian Hughes) and Yossarian Seattle a.k.a Rob Smart, both of IBM and Eightbar, gave Destroy TV a guided tour of Hursley. “The Unofficial Tourists’ Guide to Second Life,” says “the IBM island Hursley, is being kept strictly under wraps.” But, thanks to Epredator, Yossarian and Destroy TV, a tour of this inner sanctum of innovation - invention and insight, IBM’s incubator for pervasive computing and the meaningful virtualization of reality and more, on Second Life, is documented and searchable online in Destroy TV’s Flickr stream. Destroy TV has created the most searchable archive of Second Life to date.

“Innovation has to be part of your life.” (Andy Stanford-Clark)

The Real Life house pictured above is IBM Master Inventor Andy Stanford-Clark’s Real Life farm, and Llama trekking business on the Isle of Wight, UK. On the right is the virtualization this house which is part of a Second Life Real Life Home Automation project. The pictures in the bottom row shows Stanford-Clark’s Real Life Llamas on the left and their virtual counterparts on Second Life on the right. Real and Virtual Llamas are linked through GPS and MQ telemetry so that Andy S-C can be a good shepherd when away from his farm (see this IBM podcast).

Pervasive and Mobile Computing and Virtualizing Reality: Why High End Business Executives Care

“because it’s what enables an event-driven, on-demand business.”

While his Llama mapping project began because Andy S-C needed to protect his trekking lamas from theft and misadventure, it evolved into a solution to a customer demand for “Pay As You Drive” insurance for Norwich Union.

If you want a detailed explanation of how IBM inventors are using Second Life and IBM’s MQtt messaging to virtualize and make meaningful data from Real Life on Second Life there are many relevant posts on Eightbar. Also see my earlier post on C.J. Chowderhead’s virtual lab.

Virtualized Worlds Are Key To Sustainable Development

Also, described in the IBM podcast and virtualized in Second Life (and visited by Destroy) is the bridge below where in Real Life Andy Stanford-Clark invented a flood monitoring system that has wide applications not only to the insurance industry for better flood prediction, but for monitoring the effects of global warming.

If you have read Ugotrade before you will know that I try to explore the possibilities of virtual realities and 2.0 thinking, pervasive and mobile computing in positive global development. The work of virtualizing reality has incredible significance for a sustainable future.

From an uber visionary perspective, this is a future where “green” means, perhaps, eliminating the need to build anything at all. This remark comes from Keystone Bouchard, Virtual Architect for Clear Ink, who was also visited by Destroy TV - more later this post about Keystone, and 3D Experience Architecture.

On Ugotrade I try integrate an expansive view that imagines an end to this era of industrial production, all it’s horrors of inequality, waste, pollution and scarcity, with an on the ground perspective that not only tracks corporate innovation, but looks at how people in developing economies (including Second Life) are using virtual realities in innovative ways, for example:

Mobile phones have enabled Africans to leapfrog lack of banking infrastructure and invent virtual banking. And, how ordinary people all over the world are reinventing their lives and careers in Second Life.

Virtualized Business on Second Life

Destroy’s visit to the IBM Business Center is also worth a mention. So much of business reporting on Second Life has focused on whether Second Life is “working” from a very narrow and often poorly conceptualized marketing/sales perspective. This kind of reporting on Second Life has been all too common lately, even by reputable business writers. But, it has been rife with inaccuracies and is based on many misconceptions - see here for a thorough analysis.

I found out, on the ground, some of the innovative ways IBM is developing their Second Life Business Center as a place to relate with their customers, on what is approaching a 24/7 basis, on Destroy’s Flickr stream!

A Searcheable Guide To Second Life

Destroy TV has, in the last ten days, created, an extraordinary guide to Second Life (which will be released as a DVD later). But this guide is available now as a searchable Flickr stream of more than 99,000 photos and the accompanying chat. You can check out Destroy’s flickr tags that logged every place she has been and every avatar she encountered here. Flickr tags were created from the Second Life chat lines and are correlated with a SLurl.

This is the first time that such a vast searcheable document of Second Life has been created. Perhaps, you can, tell how powerful it is by the way I was able to match up Second Life photos from Destroy’s record with Real Life photos I found through Googling Hursley Park on the web.

A toast to Destroy’s accomplishment!

The cover of “The Unofficial Tourists’ Guide to Second Life” is held in front of the camera streaming the Fuse Gallery event into Second Life.

Sharing The Experience Of Second Life

Steve Nelson from Clear Ink notes:

I think both machinima and exported live feeds will be an important part of one of the hurdles of SL, namely the learning curve. The more people are acclimated to the environment before they enter for the first time, the more accelerated I think their introduction to SL will be. It’s like visiting a new country after having seen videos - it isn’t as much of a shock when you actually get there.

As Destroy toured Second Life her adventures and chat were not only streamed live to the web at Destroy TV, they were also projected on a wall in Fuse Gallery, New York City, where people could watch and interact with the avatars. Also what was happening in the Real Life Gallery in New York City was streamed back into Second Life to the GHava{SL} Center for the Arts. This was quite a conceptual and technical achievement.

Pictured above is Clear Ink’s 3D Experience Architect, Keystone Bouchard. When Destroy accompanied by Jerry Paffendorf encountered the team from Clear Ink (one the most visionary agencies working on Second Life), they found people who really got the significance of the multiple levels of reaction this project created (photo from Destroy’s Flickr stream).

A good opportunity to check out Clear Ink and their work on SL will be this event on Autodesk Island HERE (SLurl), June 14, 10AM PST Chris Luebkeman : Future Challenges: Global Creative Contexts.

Annie Ok writes of this extraordinary meeting of minds in a long comment on this post on 3pointD. Here is an excerpt:

the exemplary moment of Destroy’s potential educational/informative application has been the happy accident of running into Keystone Bouchard and him immediately TP-ing in Theory Shaw and the ensuing tour they gave to destroy of architecture island and the Wikitecture project.

Keystone talked to me later about the Clear Ink encounter with Destroy. There are several key-points Keystone touched on:

Sharing The Experience of Second Life with People In Real Life

At Clear Ink, we had several people watching on my screen, who could see both my avatar’s movements and Destroy’s view through my browser. So, on my end, there were several people viewing both portals simultaneously. But, what makes it really interesting is that through this virtual medium, it ended up being both absorbed and transmitted through a multitude of experiences. Because, on their end, they had the virtual scene being projected onto the wall of a real life gallery with several people in real life witnessing the phenomenon - even taking pictures of themselves standing next to avatars - as you would in a real life gathering. It blurred so many lines - it was quite extraordinary.

Interacting With An Avatar On Second Life To produce A Shared Narrative

We could see what Destroy was looking at through the browser. I could see her camera so, when she would move her camera over to a certain build, I could describe what she was looking at, so the people in the gallery could read what i was describing. In a sense, we even transcended our avatars - and became invisible cameras - flying around the island looking at, touring and describing the entire island - while our avatars stood still. Plus, at Clear Ink, it was a great way to engage my co-workers, and show them a really unique experience - using SL in a way it hadn’t ever been used before.

Sharing Avatar Viewpoint To Enhance Collaboration On Second Life

Architecturally - in a virtual environment - understanding the avatar’s gaze is absolutely critical - and one of the biggest challenges in a virtual environment. Because, I can design something using Mouselook - and it could be visually compelling based on the way I use my camera - but another user would have an entirely different experience based on the way they use their camera. So, you have to design a building to accommodate many levels of approach and viewpoint.

Being able to see what Destroy was looking at did truly provide a missing link. I was able to give her a more thorough description of the island. At one point, I was describing the Wikitecture experiment. But I could see that Destroy was looking at the Architecture 101 build - so I shifted the conversation to describe that. At which point, Destroy started going from project to project, knowing that I could continue the narrative. The collaborative potential is something we’re very interested in and actively building experiments around on Architecture Island.

The Metarati In Action

Jerry Paffendorf at Destroy’s wrap party last Saturday at Fuse NYC watches Destroy’s visit to Relay For Life - the American Cancer Society’s SL adventure that has sparked enthusiasm and creativity from Second Lifers (three years on SL now!) Destroy was welcomed by a large crowd of avatars.

Jerry Paffendorf, Metarati and Futurist in Residence for the Electric Sheep Company (this is an independent project) teamed with artist Annie Ok, curator and collaborator, and Christian Westbrook (Metaverse Architect ESC) to create Destroy TV. Ben Byer, who is from Apple BSD technology group, was visiting from California, (on right). He came up with the name for Destroy TV.

It is an extraordinary feat of vision combined with some coding genius. They pulled off the extended two way streaming, projection and logging to Flickr with only a few minor burps. This is no minor feat. See Christian’s blog for a post on what happened when their Flickr stream topped 99,000.

Turning Extreme Lifelogging Into Meaningful Virtual Experience

I talked at length with Jerry Paffendorf at the closing party at Fuse Gallery about the challenge of extreme life logging in virtual worlds both from a technical and expressive point of view. Just like there is a need for a new language of virtual architecture as Keystone points out - “a more interactive, reflexive architecture” - there is a need to find an expressive language for life logging. Jerry Paffendorf has been pushing the envelope on this and has some very interesting projects in the pipeline (which I will let him reveal).

Flickr, the poster child of Web 2.0, began as a user generated virtual world.

Jerry talked about how Flickr is a big influence on his thinking right now. Flickr as he notes is the poster child of Web 2.0 - it gets better the more people that use it and interact with each other inside it. But, Jerry also pointed out something about Flickr that may not be so well known, i.e., it started out as user generated virtual world called Game Never Ending.

It is fascinating how Destroy TV by using Flickr to document Second Life begins to reconnect with this initial conception. Jerry noted that it is possible Destroy TV was the most prolific poster to Flckr in the world, during Destroy’s ten day adventure.

Also, Jerry sees the Destroy Project as a sketch for how we are our going to record and organize our own Real Lives - remembering the places that we have been and the people we have been around. This is what Destroy TV does, and documents. Like Game never Ending turned out not simply to apply to organizing a virtual world, Destroy TV is also about inventing ways to organize our experience of the real world, and bridge the imagination gap needed to do this (also see 3pointD on Ambient Gaming: Life Logging in Disguise). Talking about the future of Destroy TV, Jerry said:

What I want to see happen is that anybody who logs into Second Life, or any virtual world, can record absolutely everything that they see and create a lifelog of their Second Life experience.

Virtual Worlds have a big advantage over the real world re life logging because they have built in wireless, RFID, meta data and geolocation, so it makes sense for this to be a place we will proto-type life logging.

The search for a an expressive language for extreme lifelogging -where the traces and tracks of real life can be expressed in virtual space in meaningful ways - is where 3D experience design and the virtualization of real life merge to create innovative hybrid realities.

A 3D Experience Architect- building a new language for virtual design.

I have been meaning to visit Architecture Island for a while now, and seeing Destroy’s Flickr stream inspired me to go yesterday. First, I talked to Keystone Bouchard.

Keystone Bouchard is a Real Life architect who has recently transitioned exclusively to a virtual mode as a “3D Experience Architect” with Clear Ink. He is standing here in an experiment he is working on. You can click on the video grab below to see a short machinima.

The blurring of lines between familiar and unfamiliar experiences of music and space create an other-worldly environment that is cinematic yet still an invitation to interaction.

Keystone observed avatar movement and behavior on a Architecture Island, then wrote a piano score that approximated that movement. Then he transposed a video of him playing that score and imported the video. His goal is to make the architecture interactive so that it understands where you are and what you’re doing - and provides an audible reaction to it.

Wikitecture On Second Life

Keystone is also interested in the crossroad between the professional practice of architecture and virtual environments, as well as the development of a new language of virtual architecture. Keystone and Theory Shaw, pictured below, have teamed up to use virtual worlds as a tool for a collaborative approach to architecture in the Real World. Theory Shaw has outlined how virtual world can be used in the the planning of future cities.

The central build on Architecture Island is the Studio Wikitecture experiment - an open source approach to architecture that everyone is free to join - co-creating projects and participating in collaborative design.

Theory is an architect living in Chicago. He is currently researching the prospect of using an open source (or wiki) type paradigm toward the improvement of architecture and city planning.

I feel our cities are so complicated that no small group of people can possibly design them from the top down….it’s a such a grand problem, that we need to set up a framework (or platform) where people can come together and tackle the problem from a local perspective.

My ultimate goal is to use Second Life, or what will be ultimately the next metaverse, (and the tool you utilize for open source architecture should be just as open), as a tool for the world’s population to come together, and solve collectively, how architecture should be defined.

The Studio Wikitecture experiment needs a complete post, so I will not go into all of the interesting aspects of this project Theory mentioned in our chat right now. But, Theory has written a program and protocol for the experiment - available here.

Tags: Extreme Life logging | life logging | 3D experience architecture | Second Life Builders | Second Life | Web 2.0 | Web 3.D | Web 3D | mirror worlds | virtualizing reality | wikitecture | open source architecture | architecture island | vitual architecture | Destroy TV | virtual experience | IBM Virtual Business Center | virtual business | machinima | virtual worlds | metaverse | sustainable development | virtual banking | pervasive and mobile computing | virtualized worlds |

On Wednesday, I met with Ginsu Linden (a.k.a. Ginsu Yoon - photo on the the left from Joi’s Flickr stream) to talk about Second Life’s global role.

Ginsu Linden is Linden Lab’s vice president, business affairs - generally overseeing international market development, business and corporate development, and developer programs.

Ginsu was in Asia when we met on the pontoon at Aleister Kronos’s quiet seaside retreat on Second Life, where sculpted prim icebergs sparkle among the palms. Aleister is a well known Second Life blogger and Senior Enterprise Architect in Real Life. He is also a Second Life artist. He spends some of his time quietly pottering around in his lovely sculpture garden, fine tuning his creations.

Once seated opposite Ginsu in this quiet corner of the metaverse, the sound of the waves lapping in the background, the continents between us seemed to vanish.

I know that those of you already familiar with immersive worlds already understand how compelling they are in ways that are very personal and hard to quantify. But, it is a very difficult to transmit this to people who haven’t experienced it.

The social/immersive qualities of virtual worlds tap into ranges of human experience and modes of expression beyond text and speech. This is one of the key contributions virtual realities make to new forms of global communication.

The only immersive virtual space (for the moment at least) that allows for the full user created expression of entire cultures or personal identities is Second Life.

“Second Life is so immersive that it can transmit more than just text. It can transmit entire cultures” (Ginsu Linden)

I asked Ginsu a number of questions on several topics including: When are Linden Lab’s open sourcing the servers and/or setting up server farms outside the US? What were his thoughts about the intersection of virtual worlds and mobile space? How would virtual worlds create new channels of global commerce? But, it was the clear to me, the most important understanding I took from the interview was not just answers to questions on issues of scaling, open sourcing, virtual commerce and the guiding principles behind Linden Lab’s global provider program. Rather, I gained a better overall sense of how virtual worlds could come of age as a truly positive global phenomena. While commerce may well be the driving force in the development of virtual worlds and Second Life, it is the non-commerce related experience of virtual worlds that is really something to write home about. Ginsu made the point clearly:

I think that there’s a good argument to be made for the value of non-commerce related experience in SL.

It’s really interesting to watch digital cultures spread in SL, and this is not something that is closely tied to a virtual economy…. it’s great to watch people in different countries interact in SL.

People always make the comparison of SL to a 3D web, but one of the things that is quite different is that on websites today, you do not see people from different countries interacting much.

People on the Internet tend to stay within their own cultures, because websites are still primarily a text-based medium.

But SL is so immersive that it can transmit more than just text, it can transmit entire cultures. So you see this very interesting effect where people from other countries are quite eager to interact with each other, similar to the way people are quite keen to travel if they have the opportunity.

Argentonia

Ginsu’s remarks resonated strongly with an experience I had doing a little tourism on Second Life just recently. I met, and spent some time with Dmian (pictured above), who showed me around the new Argentonia sim. I had come to find out about the virtual elections to be held there. They were blogged by Pablo Mancini. But, after meeting Dmian, not only did I get an insider view on the elections both in Real Life and Second Life, but I experienced a taste of the Buenos Aires music scene. Dmian Munro has started a virtual band in Second Life. Please check out his video blog and myspace.

There is much more to say about this experience and Argentonia, so I will return soon. But, please see the Argentonia blog and this video to get the flavor of a mixed reality event Argentonia style. I mentioned Argentonia to Ginsu. And, he said he had not heard about this sim yet. Second Life is expanding so fast no-one, not even a God can keep up!

Linden Lab’s Global Provider Program

I asked Ginsu what he thought it was about Second Life that makes SL more pervasive, or even Web 3D.

Ginsu replied:

This is just my opinion - in each country, the best efforts will really be made by local providers who will build locale-appropriate content on the Second Life grid. I would not say that SL has to be “more” or a “replacement” for anything. People are always obsessed with declaring something else dead. But look at the media landscape today - oral tradition, books, plays, radio, TV, movies, Internet - each of these things was supposed to be the “death” of something else - and yet we still enjoy all of them.

I asked Ginsu whether when he said local provider he meant the Kaizen model. Kaizen has recently launched Second Life Brasil:

Yes, Kaizen is the first to launch in the global provider program.

I continued: “And, what has made them successful?”

First of all, they are very committed to the effort and willing to move quickly and flexibly. They have spent a lot of time understanding their goals in SL, and have built their own tools to manage their efforts.

I have always believed that it is folly for anyone to believe that a company in SF is going to know what everyone around the world wants. The likeliest source for local product is local providers.

“How do you feel Linden Labs are giving Global Providers maximum autonomy and the benefits of being on the Second Life grid? Are there lag problems from the server farms being so far away?”

I think the point of SL as a service platform is that it should be maximally configurable to the needs of the local provider. There can be several local providers in a single market, they can compete on their services and configurations, let the market decide what works. Yes, local servers would improve some aspects of performance. That’s a frequent request and one which we’d like to satisfy. Like anything, it takes some work to accomplish.

“And you can satisfy that before LL goes open source right? The two are not mutually dependent?” I asked.

I don’t think the two are mutually dependent.

Right at the beginning of our conversation, I asked Ginsu when Second Life would go open source server side. I sort of blurted the question out the minute I saw him hoping, of course, for a major Ugotrade scoop! And, he said:

We have generally announced our ambition to open source server code. However, this is in the speculative stages and I can’t commit to any time-line yet.

Certainly we think open sourcing server code would be a very compelling way to spread SL.

There are many people who said we would never open source the client. I suppose if you look at our track record, it sometimes takes us quite a while to deliver on our ambitions. However, I think it would be unfair to say that we don’t try to achieve what we’ve promised.

Oh well, I was a little disappointed not to rock the blogosphere with some big news. But, maybe next time!

Since the interview I have spent some time thinking about the global provider program and trying to understand more about it. It is clear that even key Second Life movers and shakers find it less than self evident.

Second Life Portugal?

Gwyneth Llewelyn, important metathinker on Second Life, and Business Manager of Beta Technologies had a number of comments when I asked her about the global provider program:

Well… the issue that we ask is: why a “global provider program” at all? The client can be tweaked easily (it already supports Portuguese by default) The registration API already allows you to create whatever accounts you wish, from your own website, and you can have avatars dropping on “your” island. So… what this program gives you, is mostly a discount on islands (negligible — people like Anshe Chung get better) and being allowed to use LL’s “Second Life” logo, with some restrictions, on the site. As for how successful Kaizen is, I have no idea, but they surely have a HUGE continent!! …… That’s why we’re being careful ourselves… we don’t want to be “SL Portugal” unless we understand what that means (it’s not our core business, although we have the means to do that if we think it’s worth it )

What this will allow is providing added value ie. customer support and targeted content towards specific communities. In essence, what Anshe (and so many others) have been doing for years now.

This is only a tiny snippet of what Gwyn had to say on this issue. She made many astute observations on this and other key debates re the growth of Second Life, including the hot issue of the interpretation statistics. If Gwyn doesn’t write up the rest of these observations herself, I will in a later post! Gwyn has a fascinating post up at the moment on the growth of Second Life in Portugal and the recent conference on Second Life held locally, at the University of Aveiro, 1º Workshop on Communication, Education and Teaching. This is a must read for all interested in education, culture, and commerce on Second Life. Gwyn notes:

people [in Portugal] are getting their master’s thesis and doctorates in Second Life. Very surprising for a country which practically just had one representative (Eggy Lippmann) for a couple of years and still has only 50.000 users on SL today — many of which quite recent, as the Portuguese media just “woke up” to Second Life less than half a year ago.

Here’s Jorge Lima a.k.a. Eggy Lippmann.

I also chatted with Aleister Kronos and Veejay Burns about the Global Provider program. And, Aleister did have some thoughts. Veejay was exhausted after a long day in Real Life and retired early. I will let him break the interesting news about what he accomplished in RL! Aleister blogged Kaizen for 3pointD.

The three of us could see some special features that Kaizen offered Brasilian Second Lifers. For starters, you can’t buy L$ thru Linden Lab using Brazillian Reals, but you can through Kaizen. Although there has been some concern in the blogosphere about this. Meta Bronca wrote: “Many users felt wronged by the potential currency exchange monopoly established by the partnership IG-Kaizen.”

The blogosphere seems well overdue for a post (is there already one I don’t know about?) on the state of virtual currencies, and the global implications of their development.

Al pointed out that Kaizen actually gives IT support to a Second Life viewer also. Anshe Chung, The Electric Sheep Company and others have created portals, but do not supply a modified viewer. If there is a bug in the viewer a Brasilian reports it to Kaizen. So Kaizen is an IT service too.

The Linden Lab Global Provider program is just starting out, so I am sure we will be hearing more about it in the future.

Second Life Africa?

Ginsu Linden mentioned that Linden Lab has interest from several countries in Europe and Asia. I was disappointed not to hear Africa on the list yet. But, after reading this post Ginsu sent this encouraging message:

We actually have gotten inquiries from Africa as well. It’s been busy here.

I picked up a story on Ugotrade from Mutumwa Mawere in a previous post. Mawere writes in his column in Zim Daily about the benefits virtual worlds in general, and Second Life in particular, might bring to Africa. And, I recently read an interesting post on African Computer Game Development. In particular, Africa the MMORPG a project reportedly in limbo seems very interesting.

Some Cool Upcoming Second Life and Mixed Reality Events.

From Keystone Bouchard:

June 14, 10AM PST Chris Luebkeman : Future Challenges: Global Creative Contexts

Population shifts, increasing scarcity, and the wanton consumption of arable land and natural (renewable and nonrenewable) resources amount to what could prove to be a significant global dilemma - a dilemma of disastrous proportion. Yet trends in design and an ever-increasing focus on conservation and environmental issues suggest that we are headed for a collective change. This program considers the impact of global drivers of change on sustainable creative contexts, explores potential implications, and provides attendees with examples of design work that is already responding to the challenges.

Attend this event on Autodesk Island HERE (SLurl).

Also see the Autodesk press release.

Sergio Palleroni and Phil Bernstein on Architectural Sustainability last Thursday on Autodesk Island.

Check out Clear Night Sky for the discussion Sergio Palleroni and Phil Bernstein gave on Autodesk Island.

And in New York City!

For more see The Cruxy Blog.

I spent some time hanging out in the Cruxy Sky Box on Second Life yesterday. It was a lot of fun. And, I saw how Second Life may well be becoming THE happening place for hip bands to express themselves. I have to admit I haven’t been paying enough attention on this front. And, just a few of the things that Nat Mandelbrot mentioned in my short visit re creating experiences around the music in Second Life, e.g., fan made music video and reinventing “album art,” got my imagination firing. I will post more on this.