UgoTrade

There were many demonstrations across Second Life today in support of peace and justice in Myanmar (Burma) where hundreds of Buddhist monks are being arrested in government raids on monasteries after leading large protests against the military regime.

I joined one of the avatar chains organized by Second Life avatar Vivienne Casavettes. It stretched across multiple sims. Many of the participants wore robes or like me “went bald for Burma.” It was a powerful experience to meet so many people in Second Life finding ways to show there support for the monks and people of Burma.

There were T-shirts, placards and note cards giving updates on events in Burma handed out. I chose this T-shirt asking for the freedom of dissident Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Suu Kyi is a pro-democracy activist and leader of the National League for Democracy in Myanmar, and a noted prisoner of conscience, advocate of nonviolent resistance. “A Buddhist, Suu Kyi won the Rafto Prize and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1990 and in 1991 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her peaceful and non-violent struggle under a military dictatorship. She is currently under detention, with the Myanmar government repeatedly extending her detention.”

Rik Riel on his excellent blog has posted some of the Other steps you can take, suggested by the Peacemaker Institute:

1. Protest - Look below for details of worldwide protests. Contact US Campaign for Burma to sign up to hold a march, vigil or any sort of event in your area- thelma@uscampaignforburma.org .
2. Spread the word - Invite your friends to this group, email all your family and friends, write to local newspapers
3. Write to your elected official - they will respond if enough people contact them.
4. Wear red clothes on Friday.
5. Email the companies that still operate in Burma, their email addresses are listed here
6. Sign up for the petition! US campaign for Burma, Petition Online, AVAAZ

I am a second generation Western Buddhist. Today (Sunday) I will also observe 5 minutes of silent aspiration with members of the sangha of Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, in NYC, in support of the protest of the Buddhist monastics and lay sangha in Myanmar, and against the violations of human rights and suppression of religious freedom now being enacted by the government.

Second Life avatars Vivienne Casavettes, Sugar Seville, and Dizzy Banjo are just some of the Second Life Residents who are organizing support efforts in Second Life. Also see Cryogenix’s, Dizzy Banjo’s, blogs and here for more. Dizzy has a video of a vigil organized by Sugar Seville

Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma, cyber activism, Myanmar, national league for democracy, peace and justice in Burma, Peacemaker Institute, Second Life US Campaign for Burma

Virtual worlds are the golden path to achieving Artificial General Intelligence and positive Singularity, Dr Ben Goertzel’s, CEO of Novamente LLC and author of “The Hidden Pattern: A Patternist Philosophy of Mind” explained in his presentation “Artificial General Intelligence in Virtual Worlds” given at the Singularity Summit 2007 earlier this month. According to Goertzel, Singularity is no longer a far future idea. About a year ago Goertzel gave a talk “Ten Years to a Positive Singularity — If We Really, Really Try.”

The slide that opens this post was in Goerzel’s presentation. It depicts an Archailect, Archai from the Orion’s Arm science-fiction world — a mega scale brain, “sophont or sophont cluster that has grown so vast as to become a god-like entity.”

What is singularity?

Singularity is the creation of the kind of “massively intelligent machines” Hugo de Garis discusses in his book “The Artilect War.” — “machine mega brains that may end up being smarter than human brains by not just a factor of two or even ten times but by a factor of trillions of trillions of time i.e. truly godlike.” De Garis presents these technologies in a clear and simple way. And he discusses the ethical, philosophical and political questions of Singularity.

Harnessing the wisdom of crowds in the quintessential rapid prototyping environment for embodied virtual agents — Second Life - may well turn Artificial General Intelligence into an idea with traction. And the introduction of AGI into virtual worlds certainly gives a new context within which to suggest that Singularity is a mere decade away. With millions or soon perhaps billions of networked human minds working on it, Singularity may indeed happen sooner than we think.

Second Life Insider cracks “Do you want your pet whispering “Dave? Dave?” as you tear memory modules out though?” Remember Hal 9000 from 2001? But indicating also the sentiment that many Second Lifers will have when they hear of the plans Novamente and Electric Sheep Company have to collaboratively introduce AI into virtual worlds (the firms haven’t formally announced which virtual worlds, but Second Life seems an awfully likely guess to be one of them), the Second Life Insider post ends on a positive note. Eloise Pasteur writes “Seriously though, good luck to them all.”

What is Artificial General Intelligence?

Artificial General Intelligence has come to the fore in the last few years, Dr. Ben Goertzel explains. For a long time the AI field has been very task-focused and quite successful at that. Can you beat Deep Blue at chess? But as Goertzel points out Deep Blue can’t player checkers or Go. It cannot take what it has learned in chess over to other areas. Narrow AI has not proved to be a path leading to AGI. But fasten your seat belts Second Lifers! You may be the key to the emergence of AGI and the rapid prototyping of the Singularity.

An AGI is a system that can achieve a variety of complex goals in a variety of complex situations — something seems to require a system with the capability to understand what it is, what others are, and to understand what the problem is rather than just solving a problem or problems posed by programmers. In other words AGI achieves autonomy.

The First Conference on Artificial General Intelligence
FedEx Institute of Technology, University of Memphis
In cooperation with AAAI , March 1-3, 2008

Second Life as an incubator of Artificial General Intelligence

Last week, Goertzel’s startup company Novamente LLC announced their collaboration with Electric Sheep Company to bring artificial intelligence agents to online virtual worlds (see BBC News Coverage). So things are definitely beginning to ramp up. Novamente and Electric Sheep will show off their plans for AI in virtual worlds at the Virtual Worlds Fall Conference and Expo 2007, Oct 10th - 11th, San Jose, CA.

Goertzel explained to me some of the reasons virtual worlds such as Second Life have the potential to form very interesting environments for the development of AGI. Most importantly in online virtual worlds, if you roll out virtual babies or pets you also get a huge mass of people to teach them things. You get the opportunity to harness the wisdom of crowds. Many MMOG games have AI in them but games are narrow, not requiring much flexibility or adaptiveness on the part of the AI agents operating in them. The openness of virtual worlds creates many new possibilities for AGI. Also artificial intelligence can be embedded in a variety of embodied agents at a low cost. Robots, the previous alternative for embodied AGI development, have often proved very costly and time consuming to work with (there are exceptions, like Rodney Brooks’s robotic bugs, but these seem to lack the sophistication needed to support powerful AGI).

Skyping from New York City to China with Dr Ben Goertzel

Dr Ben Goertzel (SL name: Zarathustrapocalypse Zeta) was in China at the 2nd International Symposium on Intelligence Computations and Applications 2007 and visiting his friend Hugo de Garis in Wuhan when I spoke to him on Skype Saturday.

Ben very generously answered a range of questions I had about artificial general intelligence and Second Life, genetic algorithms and AGI, open source and AGI, and AGI in centralized and distributed virtual worlds, harnessing the wisdom of crowds, technological singularity, and monetizing AGI in virtual worlds.

My questions to Ben were in part influenced by some quite breathtaking virtual world events last week, including a discussion on the plans of the newly formed SL Architecture Group during Zero Linden’s office hours, see Dizzy Banjo - Soundtracking Virtual Worlds. Aleister Kronos picked out the headlines:

• Linden are not just talking about the sim limits we have now - they are talking truly epic scale: “to evolve the SL architecture into something that is internet wide.”
• Transition to “SL2.0″ (gah!) is being designed to be as seamless as possible.
• Now for the numbers: 60Million regions; 2Billion avatar accounts; maybe 50M to 100M on-line… though admittedly hypothetical
• And “on-line might mean something more lightweight in the future”

There is the first glimpse of what a Linden Lab open source grid architecture might look like on the Second Life Architecture Working Group Wiki, and more about this and how to get involved in the working group on Zero Linden’s blog.

Hey it sounds like there are going to be some big crowds around on the grid and a whole lotta wisdom around to harness. But, as Al noted, the discussion does not deal with issues of identity management and storage yet. And, from what I could gather when I attended Sunday’s, “Introduction to the new Second Life Grid Architecture Working Group” with Tao Takashi, the thorny problems of asset management and IP issues are definitely not on the table for the moment.

But these are heady times — Singularity conceivable in less than a decade, plans from LL for a global grid with 50M to 100M on-line in a couple of years?

Harnessing The Wisdom of Crowds

I also attended the “deep content” bonanza of Dr Dobb’s Life 2.0 Summit in Second Life last week. Tapping the wisdom of crowds in Second Life came up directly and indirectly many times. David Orban proposed a reinvention of industrial design and production with a new model of design that brings objects, social communities and genetic algorithms together to the project of evolving useful objects where the measure of success in an on-line world like Second Life is interaction. David’s presentation and slides are available here. I interviewed David after his talk so more on this later in this post.

Then there was Julian Lombardi from Croquet’s presentation at Life 2.o. Lombardi didn’t mention harnessing the wisdom of crowds but he certainly presented a whole new concept for large scale metaverses with Croquet’s: “very extensible technology that can be used to support very large scale metaverse implementations without, and I have to underscore this, without the need for servers to support them.”

I also interviewed Keystone Bouchard and his Wikitecture collaborator Theory Shaw on their plans to revolutionize architectural design and city planning in Second Life. They are busy developing new ways to tap into the wisdom of crowds in their Wikitecture project. The Wikitecture 3.0 Experiment will have its first kick off meeting Tuesday, September 25th @ 9:00am PST/SLT. Here is the slurl link to the ‘Studio Wikitecture’ parcel in Second Life. Keystone presented at Life 2.o on implementing Wikitecture in Second Life “to develop disciplined opensourcing and collaborative creation of virtual and RL architecture components and structures.” I will be posting more on Wikitecture soon!

China and Artificial General Intelligence in Virtual Worlds

There was interesting news from China too. The Chinese Government is going to present virtual world infrastructure plans at VW Fall 2007 Conf. in San Jose! And I keep hearing a buzz about HiPiHi meeting with Linden Labs. Hiu Xu, Founder and CEO will definitely be in San Jose for the conference as he is speaking there.

Phew, it is clear we are in a hang on to your hat time for sure.

As Dr Ben Goertzel was in Wuhan, China when we spoke, I asked him about Artificial General Intelligence and Virtual Worlds in China.

Ben said there was certainly lots of interest in AGI in Chinese academia. And Chinese Universities were hiring AI and AGI researchers and powerhouses. “An American professor in China may have up to 20 top quality researchers working with them in a very short time. In contrast in the US they would have much of their research time taken up writing grants just to get started, and just to get funding for a handful of assistance.” Ben said that he was not sure what the status of AGI R&D was in Chinese industry. But he did note that the venture capital community and economy is growing so fast, many things are possible in China now.

I asked Ben to speculate about HiPiHi and Second Life. “Well, obviously, in some ways life in China is more restrictive than in the West, so there will be more of a contrast between ‘real life’ and the totally freewheeling virtual-worlds life, for Chinese users as opposed to Western users. And of course China doesn’t have the continuous tradition of property rights that the West does, whereas Second Life is all about property rights. But really, right now, China is just about the most capitalism-happy place I’ve ever seen, so the laissez-faire economics we see in Second Life would in some ways fit right in with the contemporary Chinese scene. It seems to me that the Chinese — at least the ones with high-bandwidth Internet connections — are going to eat this stuff up. I’m really curious to see the culture that will emerge in HiPiHi and how it may differ from the way Second Life culture has evolved.”

How Can Virtual Agents Work In a Virtual Economy?

Novamente in collaboration with Electric Sheep Company is bringing artificial intelligence to virtual worlds as a business venture. I was interested to know about ways Dr. Goertzel thought you could monetize intelligent virtual agents. Ben pointed out that the system of micro-payments has made many different things work in Second life. The many possibilities include, for example:

– micropayments for knowledge (buy knowledge, capability, etc. for your agent)

– payment for tuition (send your virtual baby to school, etc.)

– companies hire virtual agents as employees.

On the Novamente blog Ben has a very interesting post On the Merits of Parrots … or: “The Wisdom of Crowds” as a Strategy for Educating Young AI’s)

This is Bruce Klein (president/CFO) with a parrot at Novamente’s Second Life Headquarters. Also see Bruce’s blog for a report on Singularity Sabre Rattling at the Summit.

“Openess and the Metaverse Singularity”

Jamais Cascio’s, “Singularity Summit Talk: Openness and the Metaverse Singularity,” looks at Singularity through the lenses of the four scenarios/provocations to thought presented in the Metaverse Roadmap that he authored with John Smart and Jerry Paffendorf.

what has struck me more recently about the Roadmap scenarios is that the four worlds could also represent four pathways to a Singularity. Not just in terms of the technologies, but — more importantly — in terms of the social and cultural choices we make while building those technologies.

As part of his conclusion Jamais writes:

My preferred pathway would be to “open source” the singularity, to bring in the eyes and minds of millions of collaborators to examine and co-create the relevant software and models, seeking out flaws and making the code more broadly reflective of a variety of interests. Such a proposal is not without risks. Accidents will happen, and there will always be those few who wish to do others harm. But the same is true in a world of proprietary interests and abundant secrecy, and those are precisely the conditions that can make effective responses to looming disasters difficult. With an open approach, you have millions of people who know how dangerous technologies work, know the risks that they hold, and are committed to helping to detect, defend and respond to crises.

Novamente and Open Source

With all the talk about the possible opening-up of Second Life’s server code, it’s interesting to speculate about the opening-up of AI-for-virtual-worlds code as well. Dr. Goertzel says, “Novamente.net is proprietary but we are also experimenting with the issue of open source — we’re debating launching something called OpenCog, an open source AGI toolkit and playground for AI researchers. But we’re still not sure how much of the Novamente software is going to go into OpenCog. Almost surely, if we do OpenCog, we’ll put our knowledge representation code in there, and some of our AI learning mechanisms, though. If we do OpenCog, we want to create something that a lot of researchers can build on in a lot of creative ways — coming up with some ideas we can use within Novamente, and other stuff that may be irrelevant to Novamente but useful for advancing knowledge and the AGI field.”

Ben pointed out to me in our conversation that there are really two questions to consider when thinking about the pluses and minuses of open-sourcing AGI technology:

1) Will open source get to powerful AGI faster?

2) Will it get to safer and more beneficial AGI?

The answer to these questions is not clear yet, he pointed out. There is no guarantee of safety with open source — the bad guys can take your code and do as they will with it. But on the other hand, in the open-source scenario, but there are more good guys with access to deal with security, and creative ideas about how to ensure security. And obviously in the closed-source scenario there is no guarantee of safety either; plenty of damage has been done in human history by small, dedicated, secretive teams with good intentions! These ethical and strategic issues don’t have easy answers; and because of his belief in the importance of exploring these issues, Dr. Goertzel has become involved with the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, a non-profit organization focused on AGI research and also specifically on exploring issues relating to the ethics of powerful AGI.

Artificial General Intelligence at home

Novamente virtual agents can be integrated into both centralized virtual worlds (like Second Life) and distributed virtual worlds (like Croquet). While parts of Novamente need to be on a cluster of powerful servers, a server farm running Novamente could be interfaced with a peer to peer virtual world like Croquet, with the distributed network of machine that runs Croquet also potentially running some of Novamente’s cognition processes.

As Goertzel explains it,

How could our approach to AGI synergize with the Croquet model? Well, we could run our AGI on a centralized server farm and have it connect with a P2P virtual world like Croquet… but that’s not the most interesting way to do things..

The more interesting possibility is that the virtual-agents’ brains could be largely distributed across a P2P network, just as the Croquet virtual world is.

Roughly, about 1/4 or so of our AGI’s thought-processing needs to be on a centralized server farm, just for computer science reasons — but we could massively distribute about 3/4 of it…

So then the AGI brain and the virtual world would both be massively P2P and distributed around the world… in other words, a genuine Global Brain

I co-organized a conference called Global Brain 0, in Brussels, in 2001. We never got it together to have a Global Brain 1 conference — but it seems the global brain may be coming anyway….

Artificial General Intelligence and Artificial Life

A discussion of artificial life came out of my question about whether the bottom up approach of genetic algorithms was used in the Novamente brain.

Novamente AI agents, Ben explained, have genetic-algorithm-like methods operating inside them, but these are combined with other methods in a sophisticated overall design. If I understand Ben’s talk on the Google campus correctly (here), this containment of genetic algorithms is a necessary part of AGI due to the problem of “combinatorial explosion” that results from using genetic algorithms on their own.

Artificial Life experiments were popular in the ’80s but after some initial successes the interesting new results stopped coming. The reasons why aren’t quite clear but Goertzel feels they’re connected to the lack of a fully-featured physics, chemistry and biology in artificial life simulations and virtual worlds. So Goertzel’s view is that, while it would be interesting and fun to use genetic algorithms and other techniques to seed various forms of artificial life in Second Life, this probably wouldn’t lead to any major breakthroughs beyond what was achieved in Artificial Life systems in the 1980’s and 90’s. Current virtual worlds are strong on the social aspect, which is more important for AGI than for Artificial Life. When virtual worlds get more realistic on the physics and chemistry level, they may be more exciting as Artificial Life playgrounds, he feels. But for now he’s most bullish on the potentiality of virtual worlds for harnessing the wisdom of crowds — by letting the citizens of the metaverse fill AGI learning agents’ minds with human knowledge and understanding … just by interacting with them and playing with them.

Interview with David Orban on Vulcano:
Genetic Algorithms and Wisdom of Crowds

In his presentation, “Evolving Useful Objects,” David Orban, Questar, introduced two examples Dr Dobb’s Life 2.0 Summit of how Genetic Algorithms can harness the wisdom of crowds in Second Life. One example was a 3D mind map and the other a button bar.

David’s complete presentation at Life 2.o is available now on Slideshow on Slideshare.net and slidecast as well.

After his presentation I went over to the Vulcano sim with David.

How do you see Second Life using Genetic Algorithms for the evolution of objects?

The measure of success in a community in online worlds is the level of interaction. The advantage we can obtain by measuring the interaction levels does not stop at the mere metrics of an area or community: if we carefully choose the categories of the objects that we measure, and introduce variations in the populations of objects through the use of genetic algorithms, then the value of the objects to the community increases. This co-evolution of objects and communities is the heart of the value of online worlds.

I enter into a deeper analysis of this argument in my talk.

Tell us a little bit about Vulcano!

On Vulcano there are no a priori rules and everybody can build anything. The community just started from one initial indication: “Use common sense…” Since this means different things to different people, and of course there is the 15000 prim limit, there must be a communication among the people who build, in order to avoid chaos. Here we are looking at a real time chart of the prim use of Vulcano.

It is itself a social experiment in evolving social and political structures (an other talk of mine).

And it is going rather well, with interesting discoveries on both individual and group behavior. Cleaners, helpers, etc., we have different roles here, which have not been decided up front, but emerged little by little. All the roles are voluntary, and nobody is denied a role if they ask, as much power as it has (for example a cleaner can return anybody’s objects). Since the power that comes with the role creates a strong sense of responsibility. There is really too much on Vulcano going on, even I don’t know most of it.

How do people become involved in the Vulcano project?

Everybody is welcome to Vulcano, and the individual projects are not approved, or discussed, unless the people behind the project don’t initiate the discussion themselves. But as I said this is almost guaranteed, given the strong community orientation on the island.

Astronomical exhibits, RL political parties, Israeli Palestine peace project etc. A language school teaching Italian to Chinese… who then have to come out and practice! You walk around, and some avi says “Ni hao”! So the projects just come up… one after the other. And there is no voting (I think at least, last time I checked!).

How do people learn the rules of the game so to speak?

People learn by playing, and making mistakes… It is not efficient. Which here is really the point. If it were, people would not need to talk. Since they make mistakes, they are corrected, make friends, learn, and later on become teachers themselves.

The idea is also that of surrounding Vulcano with other communities. One of them to the south is Lipari, dedicated to the Universities. An other one will be for illustrating and studying technological change…

How are Genetic Algorithms integrated into interactions on Vulcano?

Each project individually can decide if it wants to use GA techniques. Not everything needs them, or applying them can be too difficult.

How do they learn or know these techniques?

You see, exactly because humans are part of the GA itself, and the community of Vulcano is a GA, at the end of the game they learn it by doing! Not all the algorithms get explicitly spelt out. I like to keep a little of the mystique, by actually not spelling out all the details all the time.

But isn’t the whole of SL a GA by that measure?

Yes, it is.

And Second Life is a very quick one as well. The evolution of new tools is amazingly quick. So there you go, my approach is proven!

For me the creativity of SL is hard to match today in other worlds. I participate a little, and experiment. But WoW for example or others, while very compelling and quick to absorb you, are not fruitful. And they are selfish in capturing your attention without giving a lot back. That is why I am rooting for Linden Lab to pull it off, and make Second Life interoperable as soon as possible. The explicit separation of Second Life from the grid is a great first step and to also explain the architecture.

What we see today is just one instance of how the grid can manifest itself and in the future we will have other grids with slightly different orientations.

artificial general intelligence, Artificial Intelligence in Virtual Worlds, Artificial Life, Artificial Life in Second Life, China and Virual Worlds, Croquet, Deep Blue, Dr Ben Goertzel, Dr Dobbs Life 2.0 Summit, Electric Sheep Company, Genetic Algorithms, HiPiHi, Hugo de Garis, Metaverse Roadmap, Novamente, Open Source Metaverse, open source Second Life, positivite singularity, Second Life Architecture Group, Second Life Grid 2008, singularity, Singularity Summit 2007, Sophont, sophont cluster, The Artilect War, The Hidden Pattern, The Wikitecture 3.0 Experiment, Virtual Worlds Vulcano

A road-map for imagining a future and the benefits of virtual worlds was laid out at The Serious Virtual Worlds Conference held in Coventry University, England last week.

In the picture above are David Wortley, Director of the Serious Games Institute (holding the user interface for Guitar Hero) and on the right Dr. Timothy W. Foresman pioneer for the global expansion of the Digital Earth vision.

On Day 2 all the speakers presented wearing the Guitar Hero guitar. Perhaps this was a reminder of Babbage Linden’s warning from Day 1 to beware of making false dichotomies between play and work. But with this in mind and wearing the guitar, Dr. Tim Foresman made a serious call to action for a Digital and Virtual Worlds Commons to address the most pressing needs of the 21st Century.

In an interview with Ugotrade Dr. Tim Foresman gave a prediction for Second Life.

Second Life taps into an element called culture. Culture is that which we have evolved to which doesn’t exist in other species which is the creme de la creme for our evolutionary consciousness. Culture is the key here.

This will be the penultimate statement I am going to give you. The Chinese are not ready for us to watch the Olympics in Second Life. And, we are going to watch the Olympics in Second Life. And, it is going to change the dialogue ‘cuz there are going to be a whole lot of Chinese people sharing the details of Chinese social and cultural evolution within the context of that display. And I am predicting that will be the milestone for 2008 for social shifts and the technologies that impact on them.

There are so many Chinese who can make this happen and so many interested people who have this figured out.

Digital Earth, Virtual Worlds and Our Future

Dr. Tim Foresman’s early inspiration was Captain Jacques Cousteau. Foresman brings a quarter century of experience as a scientist, professor, author, entrepreneur, consultant manager and administrator, and world traveler to imagining a future with digital and virtual worlds. Dr Tim Foresman explained to me the trajectory of his career which has always included working inside and outside of institutions and being active in communities on environmental issues:

to give back what Jacques Cousteau gave to me and to provide inspiration and honesty as to what is going on in a positive way.

He explained how his concern with the environment led to entrepreneurial efforts. He also played a pivotal role in Keyhole Corp. which was bought by Google in 2004 and has become Google Earth.

So once I started realizing the power of spatial tools - when the satellites went up in 1972 - I fell in love with that. ‘Cuz I was out in the field doing research the hard way. And all of a sudden I could use these computers to map what I had been walking and communicate to other people these issues - just mind boggling.

So I started my own company right out of grad school because there were no companies behind me in those days so I started a company. And I have always shown that entrepreneurial spirit. But I have also joined various organizations. I have worked for the EPA, worked for NASA and for the UN. When the time is appropriate and you role is to work within an organization, I have felt it was a good thing to do. So I have worked in all kinds of the positions.

But the constant theme is to really take seriously our role here but also to have fun. ‘Cuz if you are not having fun you’re going to be spending the kinds of hours and time that I do.

I asked Dr Foresman how he became involved Keyhole Corp.

Because I led the Digital Earth program at NASA headquarters when it started in 1998. And I was monitoring all the various groups that were doing these kinds of technologies and actively engaging them and coming together and saying we need to harness this technology to deal with a virtual globe that will make a meaningful difference for the community at large - so there will be free access and we can all share information that is easily accessible and understandable. Because you are looking at the earth you are looking at your neighborhood, it makes sense.

So Keyhole was four young programmers in San Mateo. And, in 2001, I gave them there first contract when I was the chief scientist of the United Nations environment program.

We were able to demonstrate how this would profoundly change the decision making process with which the policy makers are involved with at the UN - 200 nations come together and make decisions about fisheries and forestry. They don’t have the information. This was going to be a different approach. So Keyhole was a wonderful, wonderful way of demonstrating this with our data on that display mechanism.

So Keyhole really only provided the framework, we put the information around it the satellite data etc. Well then Google bought them and now they are Google Earth. They are one of the many that are successful. There is also NASA World Wind which is open source and very good, powerful.

Imagining a Future

I snapped this slide during Dr Foresman’s presentation. It very clearly shows that how we represent data makes a meaningful difference. All the water in the world is shown on the same scale as earth on the left, and all the air in the atmosphere on the right. This puts a whole new perspective on the myth of great expanses of ocean and atmosphere.

The ITC Framework for the Operating System for Planet Earth

This slide is also from Dr. Foresman’s presentation. People working in disciplinary silos will be able to engage in collective environmental, economic and social decision making through a Digital Earth vision. But just as important as the unification of science based knowledge is the active, distributed community enabled by free access to the basic infrastructure.

I asked Dr. Tim Foresman about the role of open source and open standards in creating an operating system for planet earth.

We have to be vigorous and vigilant in all things and not assume that the approach right now is sustainable. I think that is very important. We have to actively engage and ensure that the parts of it we need for public dialogue and good decision making are done in open systems and international protocols for data interoperability - ISO standards - all the good standards for interoperability that we use. We need to be vigorously monitoring that. That is very important.

And are there any threats to that you see on the horizon re this? I asked.

When I see different systems offered for pricing and I realize that there is no policy by Google to keep this stuff free. There is nothing written down. This is just based on their good will at the moment. And corporations and goodwill are two different things. Corporations have to answer to their stockholders. And if they make a corporate decision they could end up saying well we are no longer offering it for free. But the competition will probably keep it out there for free….ArcGIS Explorer, Geomatrix, NASA World Wind.

Google is going to recognize that they have got their spot in the sun now. But it is not guaranteed and if they don’t behave they will be underwritten.

I have posted recently on the Second Earth project by NOAA that merges Second Life and Google Earth. I asked Dr. Foresman if he was aware of the policy of Linden Lab to fully open source Second Life and if he had had discussions with Linden Lab.

Yes I have talked with various members of Philip Rosedale’s team. They came out to Berkeley to our 5th International Digital Earth Conference. And the open source issue was definitely a strong suit. I think Philip would have to move his offices out of San Francisco if he went proprietary. Because that is open source Mecca. It has become a philosophy.

Yes it seems to me they are moving as fast as they can on the full open sourcing of Second Life. I added.

What we find out is that if you are a purist open source really isn’t 100% open. You are always going to find that it is difficult to find code at certain levels. But what it is - is the best that we can do and that is the approach. And by allowing the best that we can do then we can balance that with proprietary systems, interchange standards and that becomes a very effective playground. And that is what we want.

Active distributed community and the networked intelligence of humankind.

Dr. Tim Foresman gave a brilliant and commanding demonstration of why and how a Digital and Virtual Word commons will provide the operating system for planet earth and its inhabitants and fulfill the words of Buckminster Fuller.

Currently Dr Foresman is working with many international institutions and agencies promoting availability of and enhancing access to the scientific information needed by decision makers as well as the planet’s citizens for as sustainable future.

From 2000 to 2003 he served as the director of the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Division of Early Warning and Assessment from the Headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya and then as UNEP’s executive science advisor. He gave Keyhole (now Google Earth) their first contract at this time. And in 2001 they were streaming information from UN servers. They zoomed in on Africa and used this system to protect resources and to communicate issues.

Dr Forseman stressed that operating system earth will remain inoperable without us! The networked intelligence of humankind depends on all of us. We need to be involved in designing our future. And Dr. Foresman doesn’t just talk brilliantly, he walks the walk. He reaches out to all including children with the message of concern for the environment. First Editions of his new children’s book “The Last Little Polar bear” are available from Blueline Publishing (see thelastlittlepolarbear.org).

At the end of the presentation I asked Dr. Foresman if connectivity issues presented special problems in Africa. I explained that I have talked to many different people about the potential of Second Life in Africa. But broadband connectivity issues often come up as an obstacle to the idea that Africa should be at the forefront of the paradigm shift in global communications exemplified by the collaborative, immersive 3D experience of Second Life.

Dr. Foresman said that we should be careful of setting up false assumptions. He has lived and traveled in Africa and he explained:

The roads are well paved enough almost every where I have been in the world to where that is not the problem now. I worked in the mid-nineties on a project reducing poverty with women. I sat and listened for two years to how they were using technology. And when I listened from that perspective, I found they are using whatever is available. So it is a continuum.

That was why I was laughing yesterday when I talked to Maggi [Prof. Maggi Savin-Baden presented the Second Life launch of Coventry University Island and experienced lag as many Second Life avatars and "real" life conference goers sucked up the bandwidth]. That is how I experience Second Life because I am on the end of a Satellite dish. You get spoiled here with your bandwidth.

It is a matter of saying no we’ll use the tools and we will use them effectively. But we won’t use them like you see in some of the images in New York City.

The Serious Games Institute - Creating Buildings that are Sexy and Smart

The picture above is of Prof. Lizbeth Goodman (right) and Babak Davarpanah Varnosefadarani from the SMARTlab Digital Media Institute being given a tour of the Serious Games Institute “smart” building by David Wortley.

David Wortley talked to me about the SGI “Smart building” project. David “aims to make the SGI a thought leader and focal point for games based learning simulation and immersive 3D environments.” He plans to take the concept of “smart buildings” to the next level. Buildings will not only be smart and helpful to people and the environment. They will be sexy - intelligent, entertaining, conversationalists that are fun to be around.

When I talk about “smart” buildings - there is a lot of debate about what people consider “smart” buildings - I think most people consider “smart” buildings as buildings with environmental controls built into them, e.g., the light switching off when someone goes out of the room, or the heating going down when no-one is there, being able to recognize where people are and so on and keep the costs of the building down to the minimum.

I go much further to say I think smart buildings of the future are going to be about how the building represents your organization and adds real value to its stakeholders. So, instead of saying let’s design buildings that keep our overheads down to a minimum, I say let’s design buildings that use technology to increase our income and the effectiveness of our operation.

So if you are a local council you want to make the building as approachable and friendly as possible and suitable for the stakeholders who go into the building. That is why we are trying to embed technology that will allow us to do some really sexy things that will say what we want to say about Serious Games and the companies that are based there.

In this way we will bring business into these companies, helping to develop a reputation for the university, and the West Midlands region. That is why we have invested in digital signage and interactive type displays, and are implementing location tracking so that when people move through the building you can identify where they are and use that in clever ways to deliver content to them based on where they are in the building.

We are also thinking that when someone goes into a building with a PDA or mobile device the location tracking detects that person and creates an avatar in the virtual version of that building. So as you move about through the building the avatar moves about in Second Life and can interact with people in the virtual world as well as the physical world.

The photo on the left is of avatars listening to Serious Virtual Worlds 07 in Second Life. On the right, is a picture I took at the Smart building demonstration, tour and cocktail reception. Roo Reynolds, IBM, (the tall guy with his back to us) manages to keep one eye on the video stream from Second Life and an ear to the conversation in First Life.

David Wortley noted that at the cocktail party some of the ways the “smart” building can orchestrate interactions between first and second life were demonstrated.

In both the “real” and virtual versions of the Serious Games Institute there is a projector streaming video for the people gathered in both worlds. In the virtual reception there was video being shown from the “real” reception:

The thing that fascinated me was the fact that when we got the projector set up and logged on to Second Life where my avatar appeared there was nobody in virtual reception with me. We set the video streaming going and over a period of a few minutes more and more avatars began to appear in the virtual reception sitting down to watch people enjoy the real reception.

David noted that while this was a simple example it was an indication of how compelling interactions between virtual and “real” worlds can be.

Artists are playing a key role imagining a future and the benefits of virtual worlds

I have frequently posted on the vital role that artists, musicians, architects and performers are playing in creating the experience of Second Life. David also noted

One of the things that has come over extremely well in this conference, and is personified by people like Prof. Lizbeth Goodman (who is a dancer and performing artist by profession - so her background isn’t in technology) is that highly creative and passionate people have realized the potential of technology and performing arts to deliver social benefit to people in need - disadvantaged women, disabled people etc.

Hope for the future comes from grass roots people who are doing really clever things with technology

There is a lot of hope for the future for the way that technology can shape our sustainable development and that hope comes from grass roots people who are doing really clever things with technology that technologists don’t imagine.

Two of the stellar presenters that I met at the conference were the awesome Simon Stevens, (a.k.a Simon Walsh in Second Life) who presented “Wheelies - Second Life and disability: a review of the issues,” and Prof. Lizbeth Goodman, “Virtual World Community Applications.” I will meet both in Second Life to continue our conversation

Like Roo Reynolds (see his blog), I was nearly moved to tears (actually I did have to grab a tissue) by Lizbeth’s work enabling severely disabled children to play games and explore and create in beautiful custom-built worlds. And how severely disabled adults with control of only eye movement and a single neck muscle can gain the ability to create music.

The picture above is from the SMARTlab Flickr stream that has many more pictures of their great work. As part of their project “InterFACES: the human face of assistive technologies” SMARTlab has been testing the effectiveness of available tools for using eye movement as a control mechanism for communications by people with little or no other voluntary muscle movement. This picture is of collaborator James Brosnan, the ‘alpha user’ of the system.

Fireworks on Coventry Island

I was fortunate enough to be there for the whole of this superlative event. But if you weren’t the video archive is being made available on Wednesday from http://seriousgames.org.uk/ Don’t miss this ground breaking event! You will also find notes on all the presentations for Day 1 and Day 2 posted on Roo Reynolds - What’s Next? and see Eightbar. And, as Roo notes, there were a bunch of people conference taking photos. Andy Powell grabbed some great screenshots (e.g., picture above) of the Second Life portion of the event when Coventry University cut the ribbon on their Second Life island.

Here are four of the presenters preparing their digital cameras and PDAs for the Flickr and Twitter fray.

From left to right: Roo Reynolds, IBM, who presented on “Virtual Worlds for Corporate Collaboration” and engaged in some serious mo blogging repartee on Twitter with Ren Reynolds (a.k.a RenZephyr) from Terranova throughout the conference. I was sitting right behind them both most of the time. I kept in touch with their conference commentary and humorous backchat through Twitter. It added a lot to the experience of the event much the way IM channels enhance conference experiences in Second Life.

Next right is Christian Renaud from Cisco Systems who gave the keynote “Getting Serious About Virtual Worlds.” Christian is pioneering the creative use of the special qualities of networked virtual environments - the power of these electronically mediated social environments to enhance communication. “It won’t be face-to-face, but it can be richer.”

To Christian’s right is Dave Taylor (a.k.a Davee Commerce in Second Life), National Physics Laboratory, who presented on his innovative Second Health project and the use of Virtual Worlds for informal education and knowledge transfer (see Ugotrade post here).

To Dave’s right is Fabrizio Cardinali, CEO Giunti Labs, chair European Learning Industries, “Innovating learning in a flat, virtual world.”

And although he wasn’t there in person Rik Riel showed up on a slide in Dr. Timothy Foresman’s presentation!

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Second Life Art is beginning to enter the mainstream of the art world. Visionary artist and art theorist Richard Minsky (his avatar in Second Life is appropriately called ArtWorld Market) and Second Life’s rising art world star Jeffrey Lipsky - known as Filthy Fluno in Second Life - are playing key roles in bridging the two worlds.

Minsky is publisher and managing editor of the brilliant and gorgeous SLART^TM magazine. “In urban slang a slart is between a slut and a tart,” Minsky notes. I caught a glimpse of SLART^TM in real life at SLCC. SLART^TM will be launched as a series of in-world books and exquisitely produced real life limited editions.

Filthy has been making the news and traveling with his exhibit, “The Adventures of Filthy Fluno.” On sept 14th, his show will open at “The Revolving Museum” in Lowell, Mass with a live performance from renowned boogie blues musician Komuso Tokugawa (see a video and post here).

Live from Japan, Komuso will broadcast his raucous guitar stylings and singing into the Revolving Museum using Second Life technology!

SLART^TM and the Second Life art exhibit at SLCC curated by Lipsky had a huge “must see” buzz going on in Chicago. I talked to Richard briefly after his presentation on The Art World Market of Second Life. But I really caught up with ArtWorld and Filthy in Second Life on Thursday, Sept 6th, just as they were preparing to stream the opening of “Crater New York: A Lunar Drawing Contest” into Second Life from Soho’s Location One.

Soho + Second Life

On September 26th a special jury of artists, journalists, a rocket scientist and a realtor will select three winning drawings. The drawings will all be exhibited in Second Life until the judging. “Crater New York” is one of a series of very high profile mixed reality events that are planned for September. See SLART^TM for the full schedule.

I live only a short subway ride from Soho in NYC but was nearly late for the opening. As Tara5 Oh, my avatar on SL, I was busy chatting with Filthy and ArtWorld while they set up the streams from Location One into multiple locations in Second Life. It was almost 6.30pm when ArtWorld urged, “hurry - you’ll be late.” I hastily packed up my laptop and camera and jumped on the #1 train down to Greene Street.

And soon, with the help of Location One’s IT guru, Drazen Pantic, I was logged into Second Life and watching 3D artist Everett Kane making his drawing for the contest both in real life, right in front of me, and on my laptop in Second Life (see the picture below). Filthy was still in-world. I continued my chat with him while explaining Second Life to interested gallery goers, many of whom had never seen Second Life before. Second Life will be projected into Location One for the rest of the show on a large screen.

I met and had an interesting talk with Location One Executive Director, Claire Montgomery and Director of Media Relations Flavia Destefanis. Location One is a very cool art center devoted “to the convergence between visual, performing and digital arts in a time of rapidly changing technology.” And, I met the conceivers of this participatory project - the artist duo of Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese. Crater New York playfully explores topics pressing to art theory and global culture like “what happens to landscape in an age when nature is increasingly replaced by humans?”

Ligorano/Reese’s project gives a new spin to “deeper questions about affordable housing and the place of artists in the New York of the future. A trend that also mirrors the shift in perception of the moon from a heavenly body to real estate.” Crater New York uses the moon as “a model for contemplation,” and “a launching pad for your imagination.” The winners of the drawing contest will each receive a deed for property on the moon.

The Location One team has turned the gallery into “a control room that channels your imagination into the great beyond.” And, as Marshall explained to me, this thinking naturally led them to Second Life, and:

A series of networks of live video feeds and internet streaming virtualcasts your work from First Life into Second.

See, “Whose crater is it anyway?” for more (or click the picture below left) and see Rhizome. The picture on the right shows the stream coming into Second Life. In the picture below, gallery goers discuss the moonscape.

The Metaverse and the Moon

Ligorano/Rees have invited other artists to help them imagine and create the first colonies on the moon - the first lunar group show!

Look closely and you’ll find fantastic architecture: hydroponic gardens, lunar residences, an amusement park, a cathedral, an intergalactic reading library, an oil derrick, coffee shops, and a monument for the Apollo program (visible from earth in 1:16 scale).

Second Life is, of course, the first and greatest group show in the metaverse with countless metascapes to explore. And now there is a world class meta art theorist/avatar, ArtWorld Market (Richard Minsky), to bring the emerging art movements of Second Life into a mainstream critical context.

See here for the SLART^TM visit to the amazing world of Sabine Stonebender, or Visit her Zero Point environment now..

Sabine Stonebender inside her scalar work Plasma Cheerios.

The Art World Market of Second Life

Minsky presented a paper at SLCC that contextualizes the art of Second Life that has no RL equivalent as “using in-world tools and scripts to create native artworks that could not exist in RL.”

These [works] can be huge in virtual scale, animated, and interactive, and can combine visual art, music and performance. These works have no RL equivalent, and the artists are dependent on in-world collectors, individual, institutional and corporate patronage, or their own resources.

Minsky articulates an art world view on creation, production, marketing, distribution, ethical and legal issues of Second Life art.

I found out when I met two of Minsky’s ArtWorld Market avatars in Second Life that this is a man/avatar with some extensive bandwidth.

Minsky is not only a successful artist with a considerable reputation. He also is chairman of the board for The Center for Book Arts. He was Visiting Artist at Brown University, “at the Ivy League East End of things,” and taught on Advanced Thought Particles at the Wizard Academy in Austin, Texas last year. He worked for the Hirshhorn Museum when it was in NYC before they moved to DC. Minsky had a contract to bind their books, which quickly turned into an art history education. Then he took a job as the museum’s photographer, and shot about 2000 paintings and sculptures.

All the best art photographers came to take pix there, at the Hirshhorn Warehouse. I learned a lot about how to look at art from them.

And now, Richard Minsky brings us SLART^TM which got a chorus of WOWs and AMAZINGs at SLCC where he previewed it.

Interweaving the worlds of paper and electrons

Minsky is introducing the world to the metaverse’s art stars. I have already been fortunate enough to meet and talk with one of the brightest, Jeffrey Lipsky, Filthy Fluno in Second Life. Filthy Fluno’s “biomorphic surrealism that brings together graffiti and cartoons recalls the work of Tanguy, Matta and Arp,” Minsky notes.

And, “Lipsky takes the lead in interweaving the worlds of paper and electrons.”

Filthy talked to me about how he got started in Second Life.

i started to really become inspired by the people and creations i came across in SL… so i started making RL art about it pastels and charcoal drawings. i’d photo them…upload them to SL and exhibit them and share them with my community. Next thing you know people started asking for the real stuff. Then i met someone from IBM [Doug McDavid]… he thought what i was doing was interesting so they flew me out to San Jose to lecture and make art… that led to more commissions and more lectures and more chances to travel to exhibit like at Gallery 555 in Porto, Portugal.

More about Filthy’s success story here. And, how he is using the island Artropolis as a platform to help other artists.  Also, see Filthy’s blog and a YouTube of “Filthy Drawing NMC”  here.

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