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The serendipity of Second Life has worked its magic again to bring together an extraordinary team with a vision. In a search that looks inward and outward, Rita J. King and Joshua Fouts are asking questions about what it means to be a conscientious global citizen, and the role of virtual worlds in creating global communities.

Recently, I met with Rita J. King, CEO and Creative Director of Dancing Ink Productions (a.k.a Eureka Dejavu in Second Life) whose work as a visionary entrepreneur in Second Life was written up in the New York Times recently, and Joshua S. Fouts (a.k.a Schmilsson Nilsson in Second Life) who directs the USC Center on Public Diplomacy. The center has been awarded a $550,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to explore the role of the foundation in virtual worlds. A second grant has been received since for $250,000.

Rita and I are examining what it means to be a conscientious global community translated through the prism of what a foundation might do to improve upon the meaning of “conscientiousness” and “public good.”

In addition to meeting in New York City, I chatted with Eureka and Schmilsson in Second Life and visited The Windmill that is their work/home and a place to explore virtual expression and creativity.

We discussed how virtual worlds can play an important role in creating new ways for people to form meaningful relationships with each other across boundaries of culture and geography.

Rita and Joshua are not restricting their activities to Second Life. They are exploring the potential of other platforms too. As Rita pointed out, “Too keep it simple. It is the power of creativity that allows us to connect to each other.”

Gwyneth Llewellyn in a brilliant article on what sets Second Life apart from a wide field of competitors notes:

the biggest reason why we — the inhabitants of Second Life — are so special is because we say what a virtual world is supposed to be. And it’s not just “saying” it; we, the residents, implement it.

But, while Second Life is the exemplar at the moment, the power of creativity will emerge in many forms.

Joshua has joined Dancing Ink Productions as the Chief Global Strategist and is heading up the think tank for the company which is called DIP (Dancing Ink Productions) 150. Rita explained this is based on the idea in Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “The Tipping Point,” which stipulates that over one fifty a group loses its intimacy factor.

So we won’t go over a hundred fifty members. Clients will be able to access the think tank or they can be part of the think tank. They can bounce ideas off the rest of the group.

Business in “The Imagination Age”

I asked Rita how she first came to explore Second Life and her path to virtual entrepreneurship.

IBM was my first client. I’m currently working on a report for IBM about the development of their virtual universe community. A couple of years ago they started off with 15 passionate early adopters, and they ended up over 5000, growing daily and globally working together. So I’m chronicling the evolution of that group for them.

It’s really interesting because the first person I ever met in Second Life was Jessica Qin. She’s wonderful. But I had no idea that she was a star of Second Life when I came in. It was an IBMer who told me about second life to begin with. I just finished an investigative report called “Big Easy Money, Disaster Profiteering on the American Gulf Coast.” A friend of mine, Dr. Clifford Pickover who works at IBM, suggested that I investigate something that was more fun for a change. I said fun things don’t usually require investigation. And that is when he told me about Second Life. I was astonished! I went and checked it out that day. Jessica Qin was the first person I met, on his recommendation. She offered me to live on her island which I still do.

So what IBM is doing in my estimation is transforming from the idea of a multinational corporation toward a globally integrated enterprise.

[Dancing Ink Productions] focuses solely on corporations, universities, any entity that is interested in the emergence of an authentic new global culture in the Imagination Age.

Rita pointed out that a key question facing people in the an age of mass media is how can you emerge and express yourself creatively and make a contribution?

I think that the answer to that is becoming a conscientious global citizen in the most creative way possible, so that your art becomes your life. In other words, you’re not creating music, books or paintings. You can, of course, and that’s a great way to spend time and express ideas, but if you approach your own life as a work of art, everything you do in that framework is something you’re creating, that others can watch and perhaps even learn from, and you can enjoy.

The motion toward life as art is the hallmark of the artist of the conceptual age, the people age.

The Windmill is where Rita/Eureka Dejavue explores the expressive and creative potentials of living in a virtual environment. The tub behind us, she explained was inspired by a Schmilsson Nilsson.

Schmil can change his skin color from green. When he’s feeling sad, he turns blue sometimes. Angry, he turns red. Green is the Zen state. So one night he was blue, and it was crushing to see. But you can’t FORCE someone to turn green again! So during the course of our conversation he went back to green, and I thought what a great place SL is for expressing the true state of your mind at a given time.

So I decided to set the windmill up with things that are reflective of that. If I am in the tub (or if guests care to take a dip) then it means I have tears to wash away. I don’t have to spend a lot of time chatting about my emotional state of mind. When I get out, it means I’m not crying anymore. The Scheherazade furniture has a similar idea. If somebody has a yarn to spin, we go there. This chaise lounge has two options - to brood and to regress.

“Immersive 3D is going to completely change the way global cultures interact”

Joshua also talked about how creativity was key to his interest in virtual worlds. Joshua first got interested in virtual worlds through Star Wars Galaxies when Raph Koster was promoting the notion that content in SWG should be driven by the community. Joshua pointed out in 2003 many people in SWG were so passionately involved in creating content that they never followed the quests. Although since Raph’s departure from Sony Online this is no longer the trajectory of SWG.

I asked Joshua to talk about how he first became inspired by the potential of virtual worlds.

Doug Thomas and I, who work at USC together, have been long time video gamers. For the past ten years we have been having LAN parties. When MMO’s came out, we were very interested in those with the multi-user text based engines and we played those. But then Doug introduced me to this game called Star Wars Galaxies in 2003 (screenshot above from Gamer Shell). He said, “there’s this great game, you don’t have to be Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker. And I thought of you immediately Josh because you could be a chef. You don’t have to kill anybody.”

I got into it and said to Doug. “I guess I should take that as a compliment that you don’t see me as a hero archetype in the world of Star Wars.” That being said loyal friend of his that I am, and long time collaborator, we went in.

I started my account and the first thing that I discovered on the very first day that I entered into the game is that no one in the game is speaking English. In fact there were up to 5 different European languages that I could identify which was Spanish, some Portuguese, Dutch, German and French. I immediately called up Doug and said,

“Doug this is going to change our world. The fact that I am now playing a video game and building these relationships with people that are meaningful because of all these shared experiences.”

It was at that time that we had also just launched the USC Center on Public Diplomacy. Public Diplomacy is usually described as how governments work to build relationships with different cultures. It was at that same point that I met Connie Yowell of the MacArthur Foundation. And I had this epiphany where I said the immersive global nature of video games is going to completely revolutionize the way that cultures interact, the way they perceive each other, and ultimately the way that they get along.

So Doug and I launched the public diplomacy in virtual worlds initiative. The notion was that virtual worlds were going to transform the way people met each other, the way cultures interacted.

What is the role of a foundation in virtual worlds?

In January this year Connie Yowell invited me to come and present this idea to Jonathan Fanton, the President of the MacArthur Foundation. And they said OK this is great, we’d like to support it. Doug and I wrote a proposal that looks at what is the role of a foundation in the virtual world? The first event was June 23rd when we brought Jonathan Fanton into Second Life. He loved it. Loved it! And now he wants to go back again and apparently this is one of his prized projects. He was very comfortable. He loves getting IM’s to his avatar [I enjoyed sending him an IM too! See my post on The Role of Philanthropy in Virtual Worlds.]

Starting on November 26th with Connie Yowell, Director of Education at the MacArthur Foundation we’re going to start bringing in MacArthur Foundation program officers to talk about what they do.I think it’s going to be difficult for the Second Life community to answer what it is that foundations should do, if they don’t understand what a foundation does.

Another series we are working on is on developing what we call Exemplars … focusing on key issues that foundations support and doing an event around it.

Rita’s helping us to design these thematic events. They are to help us explore how this space can be used toward the greater public good. Public good is kind of a loaded term. But it’s the best way I can describe what foundations mean.

Then we’re also going to do these exemplar events that will be on civil rights themes, education, national, and corporate.

The MacArthur Foundation is the only major US foundation supporting this kind of stuff right now. There’s this inherent fear that foundations have of the whole video games area. I think many of the major foundations have bought into this media idea that video games are bad. It’s that binary view. One is that video games are corrupting our society. But the new alternative one is that people can get rich off of virtual worlds, which I think trivializes them. My refrain is that they either trivialize or demonize.

There are also plans to stage similar events in HiPiHi in Spring.

Global Citizens Waging Peace

Recently Schmilsson Nilsson was interviewed by John Jainschigg for a GridTalk on Dr. Dobb’s Island about the meaning of public diplomacy.

He explained that Public Diplomacy is conventionally defined as what a government does to reach out to a foreign public or polity to explain its culture, policies, values, and beliefs. But Schmilsson and Eureka are rethinking this idea and looking at the responsibility of us as individuals and civil societies to communicate with each other as a global community.

Schmilsson pointed out to the Grid Talk audience:

Public diplomacy is NOT just a U.S. practice. The term may have been defined here, but it is the UK that has implemented it best. One diplomat in the U.S. government, Nicholas Burns, describes public diplomacy as a government’s effort to “wage peace”.

Indeed, I think at its heart “public diplomacy” is about facilitating inter-cultural dialogue. Public Diplomacy’s roots come from propaganda. The earliest days of it was doing counter propaganda to the Nazi propaganda machine.

Diplomacy is government to government communications. PUBLIC Diplomacy is government to people. But I think that Public diplomacy, as I mentioned, has evolved. It is very much people to people.

This conversation is about how we as representatives from other countries and cultures coming together to understand each other. What I mean is that other groups, citizens, civil societies, NGO, non-profits have realized the importance of helping people understand each other. In a way, the PEOPLE have taken back the world. And I think that’s a good thing.

Having a better informed perspective on other countries and how they REALLY are informs you and, hopefully, does something to reduce our tendency toward conflict.

A Platform for Inter-Cultural Communication

Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Lab, in his keynote address at the Managing Virtual Distance conference held by the Institute for International Research in The Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, CA., made a number of points on how 3D immersive platforms like Second Life can facilitate inter-cultural communication in new ways.

He pointed to the rich communicative capabilities of the immersive environment that provide opportunities for people to cross barriers of language and culture in ways a 2D web site cannot. He gave the example of how opaque a 2D Korean web site was to a non Korean speaking visitor when compared with the experience of visiting a Korean sim in Second Life (picture above).

“Only Open Will Win”

Philip Rosedale also emphasized the importance of open sourcing the Second Life server technology to ensure the growth of a global community and reaffirmed his commitment to this.

Many of my Second Life, Facebook, and Twitter friends were at the Managing Virtual Distance event in Second Life. They have put together some great reports already focusing on different aspects of Philip’s presentation. Metaversed has a detailed summary. Arts Place also noted Philip Rosedale’s expression of commitment to open sourcing the Second Life server code.

Tara Yeats has put together a nice concise video report. Fleep did some mo blogging on Twitter and live blogged from Second Life using BlogHud. She commented on her blog: “I was really tickled to have Philip speaking right into my ear through the voice client.” This was the first time also that I have been at a Second Life event that chose to use Second Life voice system to enable a speaker to present remotely to a live and Second Life audience. The set up was simple but effective.

Metamusic

Dizzy Banjo (Bob Thomas in RL) has an excellent post on Philip’s keynote (some cool Windlight photos of Philip and Torley Linden too). Dizzy asked a visionary question about Second Life that didn’t reach Philip during the event but Torley answered later.

Dizzy Banjo: in 20 years…when the virtual world becomes as compelling as you envisage.. what do you think will happen to the social networks of society.. do you think virtual worlds will ever be able to convey the intricacies of REAL human contact ? Whilst being incredibly positive in terms of sustainability and global innovation - are you concerned about the potential for isolation ?

See Dizzy’s blog for Torley’s answer!

The important role of music in Second Life communities was one of the points that Philip emphasized.

Dizzy Banjo is a pioneer and leading advocate for the development of the Second Life soundscape (see his recent post on the Metamusic Roadmap). Dizzy described the work of Metamusic to me in this way:

Music and sound in Second Life is definitely getting more attention lately from Linden Lab. Personally I think we need ‘Windlight for audio’. That’s the kind of qualitative difference we need, if not more. Far more of our perception of space happens through audio than most people think. If we could create a real sense of place through sound ( as well as music of course ) Second Life will be far less like the “cartoon version” of reality which many people refer to it as. Metamusic has really been about trying to find out what people want to do with music and sound, and how we can implement it.

JenZa Misfit has some great photos of a recent meeting of Metamusic and the many Lindens who have been attending.

Business in the Imagination Age, Dancing Ink Productions, Dizzy Banjo, Foundations in Virtual Worlds, global citizens waging peace, HiPiHi, Jessica Qin, Joshua Fouts, Linden Lab, Managing Virtual Distance, Metamusic, Open Source, open sourcing Second Life, Philip Rosedale, Public Diplomacy, Rita J. King, Star Wars Galaxies, The Imagination Age, The MacArthur Foundation, The Metamusic Roadmap The USC Center on Public Diplomacy

White African noted last week that in “The Best of Blogs, “there’s a number of African blogs in there” and a lot of activity over the last month in the African blogosphere.

The nominated blogs include two from Africa:

• Actualités de la République Démocratique du Congo in the best Weblog category
• Diário de um Sociólogo from Mozambique in best Portuguese blog

Recently, when Joshua S. Fouts (a.k.a Schmilsson Nilsson in Second Life) who directs the USC Center for Public Diplomacy was interviewed by John Jainschigg for Grid Talk on Second Life, much of the latter part of the talk was spent discussing issues of digital divides with the audience.

Schmilsson noted that among other infrastructure challenges in Africa, “40 countries on the African continent do not have reliable Internet access. Thus, they are not a part of our conversations here. This is a major problem.” The conversation that followed covered a number of the hotly debated issues around the role of technology in situations where food, water, clothing and medicine are pressing needs.

This is an ongoing debate at Uthango’s Virtual Africa project (for more about this see Africa’s Second Life, Our Virtual Reality). Uthango are also coming up with creative ways to connect global virtual communities. They are currently organizing a BLOG CARNIVAL. The Grid Talk discussion on Public Diplomacy indicated there is much interest from Second Life residents in the topic of Infrastructure development in Africa. The blog carnival is an opportunity to connect this conversation to the wider online community and African bloggers in particular. Alanagh Recreant of Uthango explained:

We believe that Africans offer a unique perspective on global issues and all stops should be pulled out to increase their authentic presence in virtual worlds.

The BLOG CARNIVAL topic is: “Infrastructure as an Enterprise Enabler in Africa.” The carnival is managed by the acclaimed blogger Benin Mwangi (currently with African Path and respected writer for Global Voices Online, Africa Ready For Business).

It is really simple to participate by using the little form provided here:
http://blogcarnival.com/bc/submit_1680.html

Do you have any article or would like to say anything about INFRASTRUCTURE development in Africa? (This could include IT infrastructure or property or any other kind…)

Choose a blog article to share, and note its Permalink URL.
Fill in the other fields (hint: copy and paste!), and hit Submit .

Uthango’s Virtual Bike-a-thon

Uthango Social Investments is blazing the trail for African participation in immersive virtual worlds like Second Life while continuing to work at all levels of community development, on-line and off-line. Part of the registered not-for-profit company’s work include asset-based community development to identify gaps and find resources for adequate infrastructure, such as small business ‘incubators’ and shared community ICT facilities.

Another related ongoing project from Uthango in Second life is the [e]bizikile fundraising drive for a specific Opportunity Center in a Cape Town community for unemployed job seekers. Uthango’s Directors speak about transference from SL to RL and vice versa. They point out the [e]bizikile project could be an example of their attempts to do just that! Real life bicycles are also for sale as part of the project and will be donated to an African family in rural Africa.

“In many parts of Africa, bicycles (and mobile phones) are the appropriate technology to drive the local economy,” says Enakai Ultsch of Uthango.

Second Life residents can purchase virtual African bicycles designed by Shukran Fahid of !BooPeRFunK! for L$250 and next year, participate in a grid-wide virtual bike-a-thon (for more Ambling in Second Life). I picked up my bike at the November 15th launch party.

Recently I participated indirectly in the The Foresight Insitute’s Vision Weekend. I joined Melanie Swan’s tour of Nanotechnology Island on Second Life which she conducted live as part of her virtual worlds presentation to the unconference.

I was delighted to meet Melanie, the principal of MS Futures Group, for breakfast in New York City a few days later. She is a futurist and hedge fund manager based in Silicon Valley. Melanie has a highly nuanced understanding of the intersection of technology with social, political, legal, regulatory and economic regimes (see her post here). Melanie is also one of the organizers of She’s Geeky. Unfortunately I couldn’t make the lunch last Saturday here in New York City to discuss She’s Geeky EAST this winter.

Melanie and I had a fascinating discussion over breakfast about many aspects of the metaverse including it’s potential use as a platform for Artificial General Intelligence. Ben Goertzel (see my post on Ben Goertzel’s work here) also presented on “AGI meets the Metaverse” at the Vision Weekend and Melanie mentioned the very interesting work of Monica Anderson who presented her Artificial Intuition approach.

Picture is of Melanie Swan in NYC and on Nanotechnology Island in Second Life.

Last Saturday I went to the Book Party (and after hours party) celebrating the launch of, “Second Life Herald, the Virtual Tabloid that Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse” by Peter Ludlow (Urizenus Sklar in SL) and Mark Wallace (Walker Spaight in SL).

The book, a history of the Second Life Herald which began in 2004 as The Alphaville Herald in The Sims Online, comes out at a very interesting moment.

The sun is rising higher on the metaverse(s) and there is much speculation about a bright day to come in some quarters (e.g. Ugotrade), more skepticism and a wait and see approach from others (e.g., Gartner), and fears of a “high noon” kind of show down between a “bottom up” user generated creation culture versus “top down” corporate control (e.g. Second Thoughts). For a thoughtful look at “Do virtual worlds liberate us?” see Ren Reynold’s post on Terranova.

Ludlow’s and Wallace’s book not only looks at a crucial time for the metaverse, its birth, it is also a study of some of the most important questions about the metaverse’s expansion. One question that motivates my own writing is quoted by Ludlow and Wallace in their intro. Legal scholar Lawrence Lessig in his 1999 book, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace:

the very architecture of cyberspace is up for grabs: “Depending on who grabs it, there are several different ways it could turn out.”

Ludlow/Wallace’s approach to this challenge is very different from my own. I focus on the blurring of virtual and real worlds and how this access and control to data and meta data that will certainly empower business and government can also be available to benefit people and the planet. Also I try to keep people who do not yet have access to cyberspace in the conversation where possible. Ludlow and Wallace, on the other hand, focus on stories from some of the first people who began living much of their lives in the metaverse and “the conflicts between the owners of virtual worlds and their users, and between groups of users, and between individuals.”

I found myself aware of The Herald’s “mission” very soon after I began blogging about Second Life. Prokofky Neva, with a typically irreverent Herald turn of phrase, dubbed me “the chirpy whitewasher from Ugotrade” (here ) for taking too lenient an attitude, apparently, to a notorious griefer. And, in the body of the post, I was lumped fairly and squarely in the camp of the chief Herald antagonist, Philip Linden, (aka Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Lab) who got a wicked Herald tongue lashing for what was described as his “granola crunching fatty huffing way” of dealing with the same griefer.

For those of you who were in Second Life during the time this book covers hopefully it will bring up narratives and memories that you might have otherwise forgotten. For late sleepers who missed out on the “dawn,” Ludlow and Wallace provide an opportunity to catch up (also see LA Times Review).

For me the book provides an opportunity to look deeper into the question of what the metaverse has to teach the paraverse and visa versa by providing an intimate “Herald style” history of a metaverse, Second Life, that has truly succeeded in creating communities around user generated content.

Zha Ewry, a key metaverse architect and thinker I met in the Architectural Working Group in Second Life, said something that I have really taken to heart recently. Though Zha herself said it with a *chuckle*:

I sometimes, when I am feeling.. difficult.. assert that I don’t really trust the judgment of anyone who has never

1) Lived in Second Life or Everquest Online, or The Sims Online long enough that they can get 20 or 30 residents who count them as someone they know by name and behavior

2) Cracked at least half way up the level structure in World of Warcraft, Everquest, or similar

3) Managed some sort of small social community (wiki, bbs, moderated maling list..etc)

The Ludlow and Wallace team have done all of these three things and done them deep. So when Ludlow and Wallace talk I prick up my ears. On the left Urizenus Sklar and on the right Walker Spaight at his wedding to Destroy TV.

The Metaverse and The Paraverse

Exactly how and when the metaverse(s) and paraverse(s) like Google Earth and NASA’s World Wind actually evolve (and likely merge) to become a phenomena that millions or rather billions of people participate in is unpredictable at this juncture. But the consensus is that is will happen soon.

My own optimism for the future of the metaverse is based on an underlying proposition that the blurring of the lines between “virtual” and “real” worlds can be an exciting and liberating juncture for humanity and the planet (see many previous posts). I asked Peter Ludlow the same question I asked Cory Doctorow in London (see previous post):

1) What happens when Virtual Worlds become flooded with data from “real life” objects, geo- positioning, etc., and extreme life–logging enters virtual worlds? Or as Cory D. rephrased it: “What happens when cyber space everts?”

Peter Ludlow:

well, the blowback of info from RL might be useful for some applications of virtual worlds, but I always found virtual worlds to be fun and interesting precisely because the bandwidth of communication with the real world was *narrow*. I don’t want that crap coming into my virtual space — it kills the atmosphere and sense of presence.

I don’t doubt that massive info blowback will have a role in virtual worlds, but that is the point where they aren’t really virtual worlds anymore but just boring communication devices — information rich telephones.

So if the blurring of the virtual and the real is inevitable (which in my view it is) and I agree with Ludlow that mere blowback of data into virtual worlds is potentially a boring phenomenon: “What can the metaverse teach the paraverse?” And, “How do virtual worlds avoid becoming just another boring communication device?”

“What is most likely to become boring when the lines between virtual and real worlds blur is the physical world.”

As David Orban pointed out as we chatted in skype:

My view actually of the blurring is not that the online worlds will be invaded by the physical worlds’ data but absolutely the other way around. The richness and variety of the online worlds will explode into the physical via interfaces and mashups and we will look back and see the physical world as boring and static.

“Huh, a tree that doesn’t even tell its own species?” without the augmentation, or “How could you meet people who didn’t send ahead their v-agents?”

“If you can drape real information across the physical world there is no reason why you can’t drape imaginary information over the real world.”

Mike Liebhold from the Institute for the Future said this in his presentation at the Stanford University’s Metaverse Meetup (much more on his presentation later in this post).

This room may be a conference room in Wallenberg Hall. But with a click of a mouse or a flip of a switch, I could convert this room into a meeting room on Starship Enterprise. Or right outside the walls in the quad in Stanford you could have a Medieval Tournament going on. You can drape total fantasy, total fiction, total imaginary reality on the physical world.

He showed an example of some dramatic new thinking in the world of video games - a mock up of a game idea from a Nokia sponsored research program in Finland. And Liebhold noted, this is only a hint of the kind of ideas people are working on.

How Not To Be Just Another Boring Communication Device.

And even if cyber space everts it will not become just another boring communication device if the read-write culture that has defined the metaverse (exemplified by Second Life) continues to flourish.

Again I refer to the brilliant Larry Lessig who in his TED talk points out that read only culture was ushered in with the telephone. Lessig demonstrates how the digital age has created new opportunities for read write culture again, even though many of our laws are at odds with this.

In my view, whether virtual worlds remain the heart of a reemergence of read write culture or turn into “boring communication devices” is not so much about “massive info blow back” itself, but more about how the culture that has arisen around social networking and user generated content, again the great exemplar of this is Second Life, is worked out in the confluence of metaverse, paraverse, and meat space.

My interview with Peter Ludlow was conducted by email because the book party was too much fun. I could not ask one of the hosts and a man in demand to retire into a quiet corner. The book party was also a metaverse meetup and packed with Second Life movers and shakers including, Nathan Freitas of Cruxy, Joshua Fouts, Rita J. King of Dancing Ink Productions (Eureka Dejavu in SL - see her blog for more on meetup), Marvel Ousley (see he post on SLNN), Andrea Foster of The Chronicle of Higher Education, Eric Reuters, Jessica Segal (aka Pica Paperdoll, Electric Sheep Company, Andy Fundiger, Marshall Sponder (see his post), Morton Swimmer, California Condor, Donald Schwartz Image Link Productions, Dean Pence, and many many more. I posted some pictures to Flickr.

Notably the party was held in 3rd Ward the artists/entrepreneurs city in a warehouse that is home to WelloHorld - the start up that is the brainchild of co-author Mark Wallace, with Christian Westbrook and Jerry Paffendorf. They are on stealth mode so Mark declined an interview until their launch. But I did snap this chart pinned to their office door that might give some clues to their direction.

The after hours party that Peter hosted back in the Marriot by the Brooklyn bridge was also too entertaining to interrupt. It included both a screening of Peter’s screenshots taken through “dawn of the metaverse” and a very rock ‘n roll drama with the hotel security who were bent on ending the party early. In the picture below Ron Blechner (aka Hiro Pendragon) talks with Peter Ludlow about Peter’s early experiences in Second Life. Mark Wallace is on the left and Boris Kizelshteyn of Combined Story (aka Adonis Bussy in SL) is seated on the couch.

Interview with Peter Ludlow.

I collaborated on questions for Peter with my friends Gwyneth Llewelyn, David Orban and Hiro Pendragon. I will indicate which are their questions.

1) Who/what will be the future competition to the SL - based metaverse?

As you probably know, there are lots of alternatives to second life under development, but I continue to believe that ultimately Trevor Smith of Ogoglio has it right: the metaverse is not going to take off until we have widely available web 3.D development tools in the hands of tens of thousands of website designers. When that happens we will each be building our own little corners of the metaverse and supporting them on our desktop computers. Communications protocols will govern how we move between these worlds and what we can take with us.

2) Your current work is in RL on Philosophy of Language? The new book you are working on - is it a collaboration with the Prof. from NYU I met briefly at the party?

There were a couple of profs from NYU at the party. I’m not collaborating with them, however David Velleman has interesting things to say about narrative and avatars and agency, so I recommend that your readers check out his web site.

Right now I’m working on a book on the philosophy of generative linguistics, which has to do with conceptual puzzles that arise in computational/representational linguistic theories like Chomsky’s. Basically I’m obsessed with that at the moment.

3) What is the future of the SL Herald as an SL institution and what will be your role in it? Will the Herald go the way of SL Insider and start to cover 20 other MMOGs like Massively. That is will it become the Metaverse Herald? (This question was suggested by Gwyn)

In the past the Herald has covered other MMOs, but in the way that a hometown paper covers other towns. Typically we would only cover events in other MMOs if they involved a political protest or some dispute with the game company.

The Herald will stay in Second Life at least until our readers and the people we report on move elsewhere. That is, we aren’t really reporting on Second Life so much as a community that currently resides there. We followed them from TSO, and if they go nomadic on us again we will follow them.

4) What is the relationship between Peter/Uri -similarities/differences? Do you have alts and avatars in other verses? (Hiro’s question)

We all have many different avatars that we use in everyday life. We dress and act differently depending on whether we are conducting business, socializing or whatever. If you think of these ways of acting and dressing as modes of presentation, then you see that it is the same as using an avatar to present yourself or mediate your social interactions with others. Like you I have lots of different alts and avatars even in the real world. You’re talking to one of them now!

5) The digital doesn’t fossilize in one out of a billion specimens, but allows perfect preservation of time-sequences, in the changing metaverse. This means that unavoidably in time it is going to become richer than the physical world itself. How are we going to equip ourselves in coping with this? (Question from David Orban)

it can’t become richer than the actual world because information has to be encoded in physical states of the world. That having been said, I’ve never been impressed by the preservatory aspects of the digital so much as the fleeting and fragile aspects of it. This has been made salient to me by my years in Second Life. I’ve seen so many interesting builds and groups come and vanish. Part of the project of our book was to preserve some of this history. But rereading the book yesterday I was reminded of a lot of events that didn’t make it into the book and may be lost forever.

More generally though, digital media does not give us perfect preservation. You can’t fight the second law of thermodynamics. High entropy will trump low entropy, and there will be lots of bit rot between now and the heat death of the universe.

6) Are we living in a simulation? (David Orban)

There’s a philosopher at Oxford who says that there is something like a 75% chance that we are. But I’m going to go out on a limb and say “I don’t think so.” Actually, I know we aren’t, but if you want that story you have to take my course on skepticism.

7) What is the future of identity and IP in the open metaverse? The call for identity authentication grows louder by the day.

Identity shouldn’t be a problem. It should be possible to establish identity even for avatars using a version of public key encryption for digital signatures. IP is another matter. Technologically, preserving IP is getting close to impossible, but on the other hand if the US Congress keeps passing draconian laws that “give” IP rights for patents like crustless peanut butter sandwiches well then maybe it can be preserved by old fashioned meat space head cracking. Zero tolerance for crustless peanut butter sandwiches. Sell one and you go to prison. The only question is how much of that kind of crap people will put up with. When they finally figure out it is a scam (of if they do) then that will be the end of IP.

Is the blurring of the lines “between us and them” - human and machine the “high noon” of the metaverse? Or as Ben Goetzel writes here in his post on Global Brain Memes. ” I think this ties in with Ray Kurzweil’s point that by the time we have human-level AGI, it may not be “us versus them”, it may be a case where it’s impossible to draw the line between us and them…” (Also see David Orban’s Conversation with Ray Kurzweil on YouTube).

I don’t buy this for a nanosecond. First of all, is there even such a thing as “general intelligence”? I’d be surprised. “intelligence” is just a covering term for a basket of cognitive abilities that we prize. If you are impressive at enough of those abilities we say you have intelligence. It’s like athleticism. There is no single property of athleticism, there are rather lots of different physical abilities that we prize. If someone has enough of them we call that athletic. When we say something is “intelligent” we are just saying that we are impressed by it. I remember when playing tic tac toe counted as “intelligent” in AI. It doesn’t anymore because the problem is too easy. We aren’t impressed by it anymore.

Now, on the question of whether we are becoming indistinguishable from machines (and I can’t help but think of Blade Runner here) I am also dubious. First of all, I seriously doubt that we will ever see a machine that can pass the turing test for any significant amount of time and broad range of contexts. But that just goes to the question of whether we could be fooled in conversation. The real question is whether machines are actually like us, and here the real problem is that we have no idea what *we* are like. We have just a glimmer of a picture of the nature of our cognitive architecture and zero idea how that architecture supervenes on our wetware. Well, if we don’t know what we are like, then it is difficult to know how to build something like us. It is not an engineering problem. It is a basic science problem. If we knew *what* to build I don’t doubt we could build it. But what to build?

The State of Play

If you are unfamiliar with the state of play between paraverse(s) and metaverse(s) Susan Kish has an excellent roadmap. My friend VJ also has a nice collection of paraverse links tagged in Delicious. In her report, “Virtual Worlds: Second Life and The Enterprise,” Kish notes, “The combination – whether a Google Life or a Second Earth or another similar entity - could be the ultimate enterprise in Virtual Worlds.”

The question is also: Will this confluence be as important and beneficial to non-profit centered enterprises. For example, the notion of Amazon.org is a social software entity that Bruce Sterling evokes in Shaping Things.

And, of course, very importantly, the question that Peter Ludlow raises - will the confluence NOT be boring.

3D Data For Real Virtual Worlds

I was fortunate to attend the very inspiring presentation of Mike Liebhold from the Institute for the Future titled, “3D data for real world virtual worlds” at the Stanford University’s Metaverse Meetup organized by Henrik Bennetsen. The meetup was streamed into the International Spaceflight Museum in Second Life last week. It was an amazing lens into the state of play in the paraverse. Henrik published the talk abstract before the event:

Abstract 3D data, maps, and software will change the way we compute and interact with spatial services. Moving beyond simple texture mapped terrain and boxes, new 3D mapping frameworks are rapidly evolving into platforms for real world virtual world media, interaction, commerce, and science. In this talk I’ll review work of various groups who are building different components of a 3D Geoweb. I will first describe how their 3D data and software will work as a platform for a 3D real world virtual world, and then, what kinds of new applications and user experiences might be developed on these platforms, and then finish with a brief discussion of prospects and mechanisms for data interoperability allowing users to create, discover, use, and exchange 3D data across platforms.

And Leibhold truly covered everything outlined above! The fascinating talk will hopefully be posted to the web soon here. But there is a very entertaining and thought provoking post up on Wrxli FlimFlam’s Second Life blogSecond Front already. I chatted a little with Wrxli who is a performance artist with Avatar Orchestra Metaverse during the meetup and look forward to more conversations.

Highlights of the talk - Leibhold’s responses to some of the questions.

Once again I asked the question that came from call to action that Cory Doctorow made in my previous post:

1) How can the kinds of data visualization and aggregate statistical information about the world that are frequently only available to big companies and used by them in order to realize profit and control also be put into the hands of individuals?

Leibhold’s response was concrete and detailed but due to the sound cutting out in parts I will have to refer to the recording myself when it is posted here later this week for all the details. But Leibhold mentioned several examples including police crime maps that were increasingly available, and the sensor web project at Microsoft where they have networks of all kinds of environmental sensors out there available freely in GRSS format on Microsoft Virtual Earth. Leibhold pointed out the sensor web architecture at Microsoft is built on common standards will work on a variety of sensors. He continued:

We are also seeing a lot of sensor data collected by life scientists and physical scientists available. A lot of biological information and weather information is going to come on line. There are citizen sensing projects Eric Paulos at Intel Labs, Berkley who has being doing all kinds of things using mobile phones as sensors. There is a group at UCLA called CENS (Center for Embedded Network Sensing) that has a whole project to allow citizen sensing. And Nokia has a project called Sense Web, I think. And they have sponsored research programs at about ten universities world wide to come up with interoperable standards and mechanisms for ordinary people to create and share 3D sensor information and to visualize it as well.

Another very interesting point he made re a larger vision of interoperability was that:

while there was division between the worlds of geospatial standards, the worlds of scene rendering and Hollywood, the video game worlds, CAD, Google will prosper. And Google is creating defacto standards around KML and Collada that we are all going to have to live with.

But when I raised the notion that Second Life’s expansive vision for a new open grid architecture might mean noting that, in my view, “Second Life is also the furthest along re open sourcing of the 3D immersive worlds” (someone from Sun disputed this assertion pointing out Project Wonderland has been open sourced top to bottom since March, and I realized I should have limited my assertion to previously closed immersive virtual worlds). But Leibhold’s response was interesting:

I would dispute the fact that Second Life is furthest along. I think that quite frankly I believe that any day now Google is going to announce avatars and avatar based social networks for Google Earth and the rumors are rampant that they have already tested it. And if that is the case they are farther along. There are structural problems with the computer server architecture in Second Life that restrict the kinds of applications you can run. I think that Second Life is one of the greatest social experiments but technically I think they are going to be eclipsed.

I had IMed Ginsu Linden at the start of the meetup to offer him a TP (teleport) if he wanted to attend. But unfortunately he was busy. But, of course, immediately I shot off an IM to him reporting this prediction of Second Life’s eclipse by Google’s imminent launch of avatar based social networks for Google Earth! Ginsu sent me back this reply:

[8:32] Ginsu Linden: Thanks Tara5. I am actually really looking forward to Google’s entry into the market. Will give people something to chew over.

Yes, it will! And IMed my friend Zha Ewry too reporting this prediction of Google supremacy. In response she pointed out how much depended:

19:25] Zha Ewry: on how Google approaches things,and how much freedom they give their residents, if they are even at all residents, not merely transitory avatars. It will interesting to see how they do at running it.

And of course there is the Linden Lab initiative to restructure the Second Life grid to be watched and participate in through the collaborative effort of The Architectural Working Group.

To return to the theme of this post:

The very architecture of cyber space is up for grabs, and: “Depending on who grabs it, there are several different ways it could turn out” (Lessig).

Don’t Miss the Next Stanford Meetup!

The event is taking place on Thursday, November 29th, 2007 from 6:00pm – 7:30pm SLT/PST and to attend via Second Life you go here:

http://slurl.com/secondlif e/Spaceport%20Bravo/66/74/184/

Physically it is at:

Wallenberg Hall, Stanford University

Jamais Cascio writes about the intersection of emerging technologies and cultural transformation, focusing on the importance of long-term, systemic thinking. His work regularly appears both in print and online, and he has spoken around the world on issues such as the global environment, technological transformation, and political change. In 2003, Cascio co-founded WorldChanging.com, the Utne Independent Press Award-winning website identifying models, tools, and ideas for building a “bright green” future. In March, 2006, he started OpenTheFuture.com as his online home. Cascio presently serves as a research affiliate at the Institute for the Future, as the Director of Impacts Analysis for The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, and as a founding fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.

Talk abstract: The Metaverse — what does it include, where is it going, and how will it change our lives? Based on my work for the Metaverse Roadmap Overview, I’ll look both at the underlying technologies of the Metaverse and at the social, cultural and economic impacts it could have.

3rd Ward, architectural working group on Second Life, artificial general intelligence, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, Brooklyn Metaverse meetup. Stanford metaverse meetup, citizen sensing, embedded sensor networks, geospatial standards, Ginsu Yoon, Google Earth, Lawrence Lessig, Linden Lab, Mark Wallace, metaverse, Microsoft Virtual Earth, nanotechnology, NASA World Wind, Ogoglio, paraverse, Peter Ludlow, positive global development, Project Wonderland, Second Life, Second Life Herald, Sensor Networks, singularity, social networking, The Dawn of The Metaverse, the metaverse roadmap, the open future, Urizenus Sklar, Virtual Reality, Virtual Worlds, Walker Spaight, Wello Horld, Zero Linden Zha Ewry