So despite my vows not to go to Skin Fair 2016, I did.  Only to discover that almost no vendor creates system avatar skins anymore.  They only skin mesh heads now and mesh parts.

This awful outcome is the result of two things...market exploitation and and ideology.

Market Exploitation

I suppose most avatar creators feel that mesh parts and mesh avatars are the end all and be all.  Little does it matter that Mesh bodies and parts are unalterable by their purchasers. If you buy a mesh body, it will deform a bit in correlation to the system avatar body, but not by much.  Mesh heads cannot be changed at all.  So a customer will look like every other customer who buys the same mesh head.  If they try to alter their look, they can buy the now legion offerings from various skin creators.  But that still doesn't stop them from looking like every other person who purchased the same skin.  I can also see why creators are clamoring to skin mesh avatars and parts, it's easier.  The bodies and heads don't change.  In fact all they really need to create are the heads.  The body skin can be the same across all lines since only the head will change.

Ideology

For many years now, there have been motivated howlers, mainly creators, screeching how the average SL user creates lag.  That all of us ruin SL by making our avatars too tall and many bodies are also out of proportion.  Their opposites would point to the "your world" ethos of SL and stated that people were allowed to design their own looks.  Now I can see both sides of the argument.  Yes, out of proportion avatars can make designing items harder in SL.  However telling people they can't design their own features in VR is just as awful.  Now I see that the Mesh avatar movement has done by stealth what the vocal restriction advocates wanted for years.  It prevents people from designing their own avatars.  We have in  proportion avatars that are cookie cutter boring.

The almost total abandonment of people who do still design their own avatars is heinous.  There are people in SL who do have a sense of proportion and enjoy playing with the body controls to create their look.  Why should these people (I am one) be forced into mesh body pieces?  Not only that why should I have to suffer the fetish peccadilloes of certain creators (Big Asses, Big Lips, Big Hips, Big Boobs etc) when I buy items for my avatar?  Why is it a crime that I want my avatar to share some of my own features?

What is even more disturbing is that the few creators who do still create system avatars put absolutely no enthusiasm into these items.  Almost all the creators at this year's skin fair, the few who did create system skins, used the same skin template.  Hence every system avatar looked the same no matter what creator stall you visited.  Now that is just miserly.  Unless it's a subtle dig at mesh resistors and meant to push them into the standardized clone economy of mesh.

So now it seems that I will be locked mainly into skins created in 2015 and before.

This is what I will be prevented from doing from now on.  I can't look myself with mesh heads:





Nor can I design Portrait Avatars such as these with Mesh heads:

If only I could get onto the Sim!

A few years back The Season's Story hunt was all the rage in SL.  I was one of its fans.  But due to time factors and other things, the group behind this hunt disbanded and the hunt ended.  A few people from that group created a new event in the spirit of Season's Story and called it Arcade Gacha.

Arcade Gacha or more like GOTCHA!  I love and loathe Gachas in SL.  Gachas are little quasi-gambling machines where you put money and hope to get a good prize.  Mainly a rare.  Which in the picture above the rare is a beautiful little cottage for your avatar.  Lately I haven't been doing much in SL but I do try to attend this event.  And I spend too much money at it.  But how can anyone resist?  Look at another vendor offering victorian treehouses!

If home items aren't your thing, there are plenty of vendors offering fashion items, clothing and avatar skins/hair.  Pets are very popular as well.  The popular pet to collect this fall are Shibu Inus.  But if you really want to be one with the animals, there is a gacha specializing in Raccoon Avatars.

There is so much more available.  So if you have time during September try to get on the sim and buy!  See the rest of the vendor offerings HERE.

Dinkies - That Funky Feeling

I came across the Dinkies cat avatar last year at Fantasy Faire.  It was so adorable, I dropped a lot of cash collecting different breeds.  At the time, there weren't a lot of clothing and accessories for them. But at this year's faire, there were clothes galore for them.  It made me take out my avatar for a spin.



I never thought to look for videos on youtube for the avatar but they are there, quite a few.  The one I linked to on this post is fantastic.

Second Life Music Videos

It has been a long time since my last post.

What have I been doing?  Well I've gotten back into Warcraft a bit.  My thoughts on that later.  I'm still in and out of LOTRO, Rift and Elder Scrolls Online.  I've even dabbled in the Candy Crush mobile world (horrible time suck and phone power suck).  But I have to admit, I no longer have the fire, the resolve or the desire to play these games long term anymore.  They require too much from me, more than I can give now.  It just reminds me that I'm a heck of a lot older than I was when I first got into WOW and I no longer have the extra time I did when I was younger.

But I'm still regularly in Second Life.  Quite simply because the game only gives what you put into it and no more is required.  There is no grind, no leveling or other elements that turn it into a kind of half-ass job.  To me, it serves as a micro-vacation in that I can go "places" to sight see and relax.

Even though I have been in SL for so many years, it still strikes me as being extremely futuristic.  It transports players into worlds that are one of kind, made by other average Joe/Jane players.  It is sometimes unprofessional and messy but it still has fire.  Something that is missing from regular MMORPGS nowadays (although I'm holding out hope for Camelot Unchained).

NWN has linked to an SL music video recently.  It looks amazing and yes, SL can look amazing.  The old 2007 screen captures used in the media are just poor news reporting.

This is the SL, that regular SL players know and live:



Another vid with typical female SL avatar looks popular right now.

Ready or Not Player One

Above is my current avatar standing in one of the patches of land that I rent.  At the time it was taken, this SL visit was just like any other day.  Little did I know that a few days later I, and other SL players, would discover that Second Life is basically over.  And not over by any other company than its parent company Linden Lab.  Due to a planned or unplanned leak, Linden Lab has confirmed that it is building another virtual world.

At first I was excited.  Second Life needs a great many quality of life upgrades which are mostly out of reach due to the age of the platform.  A new place with better avatar tools would be great.  But as I came down from my high, other more logical questions started to surface.

Mainly about land. The land market is now essentially dead and that is a little frightening.  Because Second Life's revenue stream is land.  Prokofy Neva wrote a great post about it from the rental business viewpoint.  This could potentially be a fiasco that could be a bigger than the Zindra shakeup a few years back.  Ebbe Linden answered a few basic questions on Sluniverse.com regarding the new world.  He mentioned that they were thinking about lowering land costs in favor of item taxation.  A concept which I thought was strange.  Does the lab think that they can make more from adding fees to creators and buyers?  Did they have an accountant look into this?  Or is this another pie in the sky idea from some insane ideology that Silicon Valley people love to worship?

How will LL plan to deal with all the landholders, including myself, who are now holding the bag for worthless land that costs a monthly fee?  Granted I only hold almost a quarter of mainland.  Not a lot compared to people like Anshe Chung, Prokofy Neva, etc.  but it is still a big investment compared to most single users in the world.  This isn't including the land I rent from themed estates that I love such as Winterfell and 1920's Berlin.  I admit I spend much more on land in Second Life than I should.  But I look at it as an entertainment expense on par with going to the movies.  When all is said and done, I would spend the same amount attending the local movie house.  But I get more joy from Second Life than I've ever received from passive film watching.

Will there even be land, as we know it, in the new place?  Already people on sluniverse are screaming for no setup fees or tier fees.  They are campaigning for bubbles (like the failed Cloud Party) that will disappear when their users are not logged into the world.  So there will be no world, no places to visit, and no homes or landscaping to admire.  That would be a deal breaker for me.  I simply would not move over but stay in old SL until the lights go out.

According to Ciaran Laval's site, he pointed out a Linden post on sluniverse that Second Life isn't on par with World of Warcraft but more like the old Everquest.  Which just flabbergasts me.  Why is an employee of the company downplaying the success of the company's core product?  What possibly good could that do in the public image?  This indicates to me that LL, as well as the rest of the VR tech community, are still beguiled by the Snowcrash/Ready Player One fantasies.  Fantasies that have been shown time and time again to be just fantasies.  WoW didn't get made with fantasies that there were about 10 million people out there waiting to play its game.  They were hoping for old Everquest success of a few hundred thousand to a million people.  That they attracted more was an outlier.  So developing the next VR with the idea that millions of people will pile on is laughable.  Especially when it has been proved that only a small number of people feel comfortable with the avatar experience and an even smaller who are capable of self directed play time.

Recently there was a news story which stated that children who don't learn their letters through penmenship (just by typing or tracing letters on a computer pad) are not forming the same neural connections as people who did learn their alphabet by writing.  Technology is literally changing the human brain.  And I'm beginning to suspect that this has a large bearing on Virtual Worlds.  Mainly because the audience for a free form virtual world that only LL offers (SL) has an audience that skews older.  The known, guaranteed audience for virtual worlds are old as in old enough to have gone through the schooling system before new technology.  This is something that must be taken into account and in fact should worry virtual world creators.  If this is the case (as it appears to be)  their audience is old and getting older with no one to replace their numbers.  I speak from experience.  I'm in middle age and getting older than that soon, I love SL but my young niece was wary of it.  All the people who grew up in new technology either gravitate to on the rail games or just hang out in Facebook like interfaces but mainly text message/twitter.  Twittering, by its very nature, doesn't encourage exploration, it doesn't encourage deep thinking.  What it does encourage is burp like exclamations about lunch and bathroom habits.  That is not the kind of thinking that takes well to virtual world experiences.

Despite warning signs, I really hope that it will be Linden Lab that creates the next popular platform.  Mainly because I'm more comfortable with the devil you know over the devil you don't idea.  Linden Lab does like doing things its own way but it also has consistently changed its direction due to public feedback.  Granted many changes were due to outcry but at least things got changed.  Worlds don't get made without protest or the ability to protest.  Unfortunately the fascistic turn that real world and the tech world are experiencing actively discourages protest.  Where will that leave us?

Right now, we are left in a holding pattern.  Land will become a lot cheaper as people dump their holdings in preparation for the new place.  But I don't see much of this land being purchased.  Who would want to buy something that will not carry over to the new place?  I'm at the max of the tier I can pay, I should probably dump what I have but I can't do it.  Not yet.  I already came to the conclusion that I will not recoup my expenditures.  Not only will the land market suffer but I see people holding back on home purchases such as housing and landscaping.  Maybe fashion will be able to hold up.  But really why spend loads of money on things that will not transfer.  This is worrying because by all accounts the new place will not even be ready for another two years.

Whatever the case someone's goose is being cooked.  Just whose it is, is not clear.

Secret!

This is an advertisement for a popular store in Second Life called The Secret Store.  I've loved all their clothing for awhile now. Unfortunately, my VR inventory is exploding and I have a serious moratorium against buying anything new.

As I've noted at New World Notes, this is the Second Life I see when I'm in world.  Its a place of sophisticated VR art and items and motivated people doing what they love.  Unfortunately that isn't the SL most people see when the read about it in the local news or on TV.  They still see SL being a backwards place with lousy graphics and sleazy people.

And if they do by chance see anything like this, the world is set up that getting started is hard to conquer.

Wootberry Joos!

The team behind Raglan Shire in SL has created an animation series inspired by their VR town and community.

Its adorable and I can't wait to see what else they have in store.

Hamster Lovin

Second Life was the first program that got me into massive multi-player worlds. In fact, I think I found SL so easy to learn because I was not a gamer. So the arcane UI was not a hinderance. It did however make learning WoW's UI a torturous experience. Anyway games come and go but I always find time to wander a bit around SL. A lot of people find the place daunting and unfriendly but to people willing to stick out the learning curve it becomes more like "Cheers". Fall is the best time in Second Life. People are starting to gear up for the holidays and the major shopping events and hunts begin all over the grid. Right now the place for SL hipsters to be is The Arcade Gacha Event.

The Gacha events have taken up the slack of the much missed and very much loved Seasons Hunt event. Unlike treasure hunt events, Gacha events are a bit like going to Atlantic City. You put a bit of money into a slot machine and win various different prizes. It can be addictive. Especially for popular items. The Arcade Gacha Event is set up like an old Victorian, Atlantic City pavilion. It is filled with little slot machines which contain numerous variations of prizes that consist of furniture, clothing, knick knacks and avatars. The big hit of this event is Beetlebones' Hamster.

This adorable hamster is a mesh based avatar that a player can wear. It comes in various colors. The price to play and win a coveted color is 100L (around a $1 real money). So far, I have only 4 colors.

The Arcade event is extremely crowded and I haven't been able to get back after my first visit. But I will be heading back to bet on more hamsters and other fancies.

For those interested, Second Life will be coming to Steam soon. There are some changes being made to accomodate this new partnership. Perhaps it will even out the steep learning curve. Who knows? If it does, then you too can be a hamster.



The Hamster vid is from Larcoco's Flickr stream

The Third Cat

THE THIRD CAT from gorrr aka. Mosmax on Vimeo.

This was featured on New World Notes today in honor of the passing of filmmaker Chris Marker.

The machinima was created by Max Moswitzer in collaboration with Chris Marker.  It is a love note to "The Third Man" but this time around, starring Chris Marker's lovable feline.  It also features some of the most spectacular builds in Second Life.

Dionysian Bacchanalia

History is a study of circles.  We all know this and yet we travel in the same rut.  We ignore the well worn signs.

Life at the end of Weimar Berlin is now.  Just as Weimar Berlin was the same as any great culture on the verge of collapse from Greek to Roman to Ming to Mayan.  People sense the impending disorder, get nervous and mindless just like wildebeest do when sensing an approaching predator.

Leave your Troubles Outside!

So Life is Disappointing?  Forget it!

In here, life is beautiful!

The Girls are Beautiful!

Even the Orchestra is Beautiful!

At those tipping points, people find release in fantasy.  We create a spot for ourselves in that cave of wealth and death (written about by blogger Elaine Meinel Supkis).  In that cave we play with mirror societies.  Those mirror societies are decadent, they push social norms and explore new expression.  Of course, this all has to do with sexuality because the cave is sex at it's most basic and it is a death too.

In the past, these mirror societies were created by artists.  Audiences with similar desires, but with no talents, would vicariously live through the artists' work.  But at our moment in time, that has been destroyed. Our current art and performance offerings are not allowing us the release we need.  In fact, our current culture is fighting the very need for release.  But this impulse cannot be denied, it must find an outlet.

Virtual reality has allowed the previously untalented spectator to recreate the cabaret, to celebrate the Bacchanalia and push boundaries.  In VR, as the song says, life is beautiful even the girls are beautiful. In VR we explore sexuality and gender roles.  In VR, women can be men and men can be women.  What is beauty or sexy?  In the past, the artists had all the fun while we watched.  Now, in this temporary bubble of order and disorder, anyone can take part in the cabaret.

In most articles on VR, Second Life is most often pushed as the pinnacle of decadence.  But SL is not the only cabaret.  It exists even in World of Warcraft, where many have designated the Inn at Goldshire (on just about every server) as a free zone for Bacchus.

Of course, the developers have no idea what they created or why it makes people drunk.  I believe Prokofy Neva once pointed out on his blog, that the developers are largely conservative.  They are more attracted to tight-ass, fascistic movements such as Singularity.  They have no idea what to do with the "freaks" who settled in their utopia.  Far from playing masters or mistresses of ceremonies, they want to change everyone into their ideas of what VR should be, of what avatars should be or how we should play their games.

If only some enlightened developer would come along and willingly become an avatar of Dionysus.  To delineate for the revelers the sensible division between fantasy and reality.  To stop the nonsense that VR drunkards are currently telling everyone, that their drunken revelries are part of real life.

But I suppose we should be happy with what we have now.  It won't last...when the money runs out and the backlash takes back our new ground.  The merry-go-round goes on....

Viewer 3.0

Linden Lab is working on the Viewer take 2.  Unlike most, I've never really had serious problems with the official viewers.  I just muddle through the crap.  But now we will be getting Viewer 3 and the Second Life community is doing what it does best...snark galore.

Run Devil Run - Girls Generation

In Second Life, I mostly hang around the Japanese and Korean sims and stores.  They have a very twee sensibility that appeals to me.

While making my rounds for the Poupee Hunt 2011, I visited a store called Pink Ribbon 21.  I noticed some t-shirts called "Girls Generation" with various pretty model types.  It intrigued me, so I did an internet search on them.  At first I thought they were some kind of TV show, but it turns out they are a girl pop band in Korea.

They are pretty good, if a bit over-processed.

I've included a youtube vid of their version of "Run, Devil, Run".  There is a little war on the page concerning who sang it first and who sang it better between Girls Generation fans and Kesha fans.  Whatever

I just love discovering new cultural icons through SL.

My VR Photostream

My Flickr photos in Pummelvision from Melponeme_k on Vimeo.


I discovered the link to Pummelvision on GoSpeed Racer's webpage.

Its an interesting stream of all my VR travels including a few flashes of my RL photos.  It is the RL that looks bizarre in this grouping.

Empty Universe

Linden Lab is slowly but surely working on new features in their browser. Some of them are a bit boggling (transferring profiles outside the world), amusing (body jiggle) and beautiful (shadows/Depth of Field).  The newest features (shadows/DoF) are still experimental and can only be turned on in the advanced menus or a player can download one of the sanctioned 3rd party browsers.

Anway, the above machinima showcases SL at it's best and the work of it's many players as well.

The location in the video is Japan Dream Kenjin, a quiet little sim that emulates a small Japanese fishing town in the early 60's.

Proof of Concept

I just watched a video feed of a conference from Gametech in Orlando via Metanomics in SL.

One of the issues that came up about VRs and their application to the military was regarding price.  As in how to make it all less expensive.  Particularly in regards to content portability.  There was a great concern that they (as in military companies and providers) couldn't take their toys to all ports hither and thither.  That they were stuck on proprietary platforms.  All of this kind of talk reminded me of a comment once made by Prokofy Neva.  That little Second Life was at the epicenter of enormous interest by various parties and it was trying all it could to remain autonomous.  That this was most likely one of the main reasons why the company culture was so insular.

This led me to look upon the whole issue of various groups fighting over content, control and platform direction as a battle over a very successful proof of concept venture.  Second Life is not a commercial platform.  It is an experimental proof of concept to the world that a non-game virtual environment can be done.  How well is open to personal opinion.  The company is not public it is still under the domain of private capital.  As such, it is at the mercy of the various whims and ideologies of it's investors.  The investors still look at Second Life as an experimental prototype with it's direction still open to change.

The monkey wrench in all the works are the regular users.  As far as we are concerned Second Life is done.  We erroneously thought that becoming a social entertainment VR was what Second Life was all about.  However all the jabs that Linden Lab made at becoming entertainment have been half hearted.  But once again they are trying to give themselves direction as entertainment and as a result hired Rod Humble (an exec with experience in the gaming industry) as the new CEO.  Truly everything hinges on whether or not Rod Humble is successful in turning SL into some kind of attraction like a regular mmorpg game.  Because if he isn't, I believe Second Life as we know it today will cease to exist.

The military and it's satellite company providers are now very large investors in the Second Life prototype.  Recently they purchased the Enterprise platform subdivision of SL.  And it is truly no surprise why.  Second Life is a reliable and working platform.  There would be no need for the US Military to commission it's providers to program a working alternative.  Of course since they did spend a lot of money for this variation of the platform, they are looking to cut corners off in other areas.  They want their purchase to come with benefits.  Benefits such as getting rid of proprietary content restrictions.      Its all under that cynical notion that content should be free to move.  But what it means is that the military doesn't believe in Second Life as a stand alone company with proprietary rights to it's IP.  Now why would they have that opinion?

I think about the track record of the various big names of LL, including Philip Linden, and all of them support the notion that the platform of SL should be like some kind of utility.  That it should be a jump off point for some kind of mega grid with free highways to move information.  This led me to a deeper understanding why these people hated the notion of land arbitrage and shopkeeper economy in SL.  These money making elements depend on proprietary systems.  They depend on lawful restrictions to protect property of the guinea pigs who thought Second Life was about them.  Meanwhile, we guinea pigs in SL were just an example that the grid was workable.  An example to various interested parties that many would do high grade graphic work and accept chump change for payment.

Many of the VC bigwigs of Second Life don't really care if Second Life becomes a big entertainment platform.  They just wanted to create a "Snowcrash" world and go down in the history books as the first founders of this mega grid.  They already made their billions, so SL's success as a stand alone company wasn't of utmost priority.  Now that the military is sniffing around, the same entity that funded and launched the internet itself, this group is getting excited.  I have a fear that they will happily throw Second Life users out the window,  requisitioning our content to placate the Military complex.  Especially if it means it will launch the Snowcrash.

MyANIMATION - Melanie Kidd

MyANIMATION from Melanie Kidd on Vimeo.

I enjoy Melanie Kidd's blog on SL, Grid Expectations, and her Flickr page.  She always has beautiful photos and interesting posts about SL fashion.  Kidd also has a store in SL called Mela's which sells hair, shapes and more.

This video was created by Melanie to show off the great dance animations available through the store MyANIMATION.

Race Play

In every game I play, I usually create loads of alts.  I've cross gendered by creating male characters.  But the more interesting experiences occur when I play as a character of another race.

Does racism exist in virtual worlds?  Well, all any player needs to do is consciously be aware of how many players appear as ethnic avatars.  In my experience not many at all to the point of non-existant.  Some games do not even give players a chance to even choose a darker skin color.  What they give as a sop to ethnicity is a kind of tan color.  Warcraft and Warhammer are games in the latter category.  Their argument could be that they are fantasy games.  Which is just bunch of crap.  There is absolutely no reason why an avatar can't be black in a fantasy game.

The child's game Wizard 101 has admirably included black avatars for their game base.  My character on the top of the page is just such an example.  Why did I create her?  Well, it was spur of the moment when I decided to roll another alt.  But also I wanted an avatar that represented another race.  Despite being offered, only very few of the players in Wizard 101 play as anything other than caucasian.  Her class in the game is a tank based school which means she is strong and primarily protects other players.  As soon as I got out of the orientation phase of the game, I ran into another player.  This player barked at my character, I suppose to convey the opinion that he/she thought my avatar was dog ugly.  Since Wizard 101 only offers about 10 different facial expressions (all of which look about the same), I could only deduce that this barking player found my avatar's skin color unattractive.  I suppose in the minds of some online bigots, mmorpgs are all white people or we should present ourselves as white.

In Second Life there is a different problem posed that causes me discomfort.  Because the game can be as photorealistic as possible, representing another race leads to the question of cultural authenticity.  Second Life is a visual feast and the players inside it are continually seeking beauty.  That beauty leads many to use avatars that can be any race as long as they are lovely to behold.  While being black in SL is  to stand out,  it won't cause troglodytes to bark at you.  At least, I've never experienced hostility from other players.  But that isn't to say that it doesn't exist in SL.  Racism is alive and well wherever human beings bring their personal failures.  Using a black avatar leads me to this disturbing concept...is representing myself as a black a kind of blackface?  Is it another form of racism?  In my quest for beauty (see the above photorealistic avatar) am I fetishizing other races?

To approach the problem another way I think of my own race...Native American.  How do I feel when my race is represented.  On the surface, it doesn't bother me.  But it certainly upsets me if I think about the context in which my race is represented.    If the person behind the avatar is using my race as a joke, as a stereotype or as a kind of role play slave then it certainly does upset me.  Sometimes there are well-meaning but delusional people who think they are emulating or re-enacting real events.  They reside in historical SL sims that copy the days of manifest destiny.  A time when my race had no civil rights, had no voice, were marginalized at every turn and murdered if it wouldn't raise any eyebrows.  Role playing this in a VR is not healthy.  It helps no one.  It does not lead to new insights.  It just perpetuates racism.  When I think of someone impersonating my race in that fashion, it is upsetting.  So is representing myself as black the same thing?

In many ways, yes, it is.  I make no claim to know the what it is like to grow up black in the US.  Although I have experienced many kinds of racism growing up due to being a native, I will never know the kind that black people experience in their lives.  I will never know the legacy of being the descendants of slavery.  I cannot even speak with authority on racism in virtuality since I've only seen glimpses.  When I think of this, I feel that it is not my place to use a black avatar.  But then I equally notice how very few or non-existant black avatars there are in these worlds.  They are marginalized and without voice.  There nonexistence impresses the subtle notion in gamers minds that an all/ or only white world is "normal".  And that anyone with shades of skin darker than pale are abnormal.  When I think of this, then I obstinately do wear Black avatars and all other non-white avatars to break that cycle.

Because VR is a learning place.  And what we are learning, or in fact re-indoctrinating ourselves with the notion, that dehumanization is normal.  It is right.  And when someone barks at a black avatar in a child's mmo, it is okay because players should not be anything other than white.

The Proteus Project

Many have written of a disturbing trend among our tech elites of recent years.  About their untoward fascination with sci-fi dystopias and their desires to make these stories reality.  Second Life was created as a bid to mimic the world featured in "Snowcrash".  Unmentioned but just as influential was Stephenson's other novel, "Diamond Age".  It too was a warning novel, a story about a poor girl who is raised by a cloth dummy mother (like those poor Rhesus lab monkeys), in the form of a virtual reality book.  Our elite techs ignored the disembodied VR which could give no maternal comfort to an orphaned child and just focused on the VR represented in the book.  And they wanted to create it in reality.

Well they did to a certain extent.  And were also gravely disappointed that it didn't change it's users in quite the same way it changed a fictional, motherless child.  They were all so gung ho to teach us to "share and share alike", mainly by giving up our IP to the void for free.  It didn't work and it is still not working.  Whether or not Philip Linden and cohorts are still interested in this project of reeducation remains to be seen.  But now they are on a path to mimicking other dystopias.

"Finally, Rosedale mentioned the possibility of creating AI avatars that could learn from interacting with the avatars of humans in Second Life. "I find it very likely that any artificial intelligence we create will live first in a world like this," said Rosedale."

"At the time, I would have bet that by 2009, a group of us would have moved on to the brain project. After all, building Skynet always felt like an appropriate follow on to Second Life."

Work. Software for companies to work better and faster. 
Money. A digital replacement for world currencies. 
The Brain. Can 10,000 computers become a person?



Singularity University Lecture in which Philip Rosedale (Linden) compares SL mainframes to a brain.

In recent news regarding Second Life, it seems the last CEO (M Linden) has been shown the door for the return of Philip Linden to the helm.

As I've previously written, M Linden was vilified by the general SL populace for all that was wrong in SL.  I did not adhere to this storyline.  In fact I thought it more likely that M was hamstrung by the incredible backstabbing mess of a corporate culture that Philip Rosedale dumped into his lap.  He cut some fat then was cut himself.  I've seen it happen before in companies I've worked for and companies in the news.  So it was no surprise that he would be labeled the fall man.

However the rejoicing over Philip Linden's return is premature.  Most SL residents are under the assumption that old Phil will be up to his old tricks.  But that isn't the deal at all.  Philip Linden has a new direction and he has left SL far behind.

In my last post about Rosedale's Love Machine I highlighted that it was an extension of the JIRA policy that ruined Linden Lab's culture.  But Love Machine has a more ambitious plan behind it.  It is Rosedale's bid to create an independent AI.  Far from being a tabulated record of love or hate votes, it will probably be taking in data about why the voters voted the way they did.  And through that information, Rosedale hopes to fashion the basis for his AI.  But besides it being used by a high profile company such as Kevin Rose's Digg, I haven't heard of it taking off with any amount of success.  Perhaps it didn't attract the VC it had been hoping to receive.  And Digg couldn't provide it with enough voting data to fashion a prototype AI.

So now back to Second Life.  Which Rosedale has already likened to brain like activity.  A collective data point of every user's creativity and decision making.  A sizeable test bed to launch Love Machine.  Because just maintaining a virtual world was not Philip Linden's total interest.  All his interviews and comments point to this end result.  He needs SL to provide a launch pad for his AI.  He needs it to grow because the larger the data from willing test subjects, the better for the Love Machine project as a whole.  The same way the JIRA stratified residents into fighting over bugs and services, I'm sure the Love Machine will now be used in lieu of the old search mechanism in the browser.  It has been said that the search function was broken deliberately and remains unfixed.  I wonder how long it will be before all of us are asked to give Love votes for our favorite places and why.

Just how much will this Love Machine data collection system permeate the grid?  How will it affect the SL world culture?   Will it destroy it as much as JIRA destroyed Linden Lab?  Does Philip Linden care about the fallout caused by all these possible ill will votes?

He told us the world was safe in his recent address.  It is for now.  But when he receives all the information he needs for his new company, I doubt he will have much enthusiasm for keeping Second Life running.  He will most likely fob it off to another hastily chosen CEO and let it find it's own level.

I believe Linden Lab is basically gone.  It is Love Machine handling Second Life now for the time being.  We are now the side show not the attraction.

The dystopia I believe the techs are emulating now is not the Terminator Skynet from Cameron's films but the AI Proteus in the old 70's flick "Demon Seed".  A film in which this insane AI raped a helpless woman and created it's own love child.

Hence, I give you the genesis of the Love Machine.

All for Love

For quite some time, I've noticed a smallness of character inside Philip Rosedale.  A flaw, if you will, in the great work.  This does not negate my past opinion that the man has real genius.  He does, but like all of us, he is at the mercy of the subconscious.  Each of us labors under the aspirations of who we hope to be and just as surely hampered in these aspirations by desires that work against them.

Rosedale wants so much to be an influential cultural pundit.  He sincerely wants to make the world a better place through technology.  But each time he creates, he plants a seed of destruction.  In Rosedale's case, he has a need to set opposing forces in motion.  Which doesn't have to be as catastrophic as it sounds, but Rosedale sets them up in such a way that there must be a victor.  And the more bloody the victory, the more legitimate the winner.  He presided over these blood battles at Linden Lab when he set up the policy of the JIRA(Malaby - Making Virtual Worlds - Ch 2, pg. 76)

The JIRA had a horrific effect on the company and employee spirit.  It encouraged the formation of employee gangs that would kill or vote up specific issues that these gangs favored.  Not only that, it completely marginalized departments that were not glamorous.  Frankly it was ridiculous that a department such as accounting should have to compete against the technology division in a JIRA policy war.  Did Rosedale even notice this deformation in the company character created by the JIRA?

Apparently not, because he then instituted the JIRA for residents as well.  So the warfare metastasized outside company walls into Second Life itself.  It pitted resident against resident and resident versus Linden Lab employee.  The gangs enlarged creating a cutthroat atmosphere that completely disenfranchised minority voices.  Simply because they did not have the numbers to combat the gangs.  Linden Lab employees so used to working the JIRA inequities in house, used the public JIRA to force their own interests or bury ones they did not favor.  Some residents who voted consistently against popularity were banned from the JIRA boards.

But none of this ruffled Rosedale's feathers because he was under the impression that, ultimately, crowds would vote for their best interests.

He is once again working on a project that uses psychological warfare, a company called Love Machine.  In essence it works on the JIRA type of spirit.  A company with the Lovemachine in place enables employees to send "love" to other employees.  These "love messages" (commendations) are then posted on computer screens around the office for all to see.  At the end of each quarter, management can then count how many love messages an employee received or did not receive and base promotions upon this horrific system.  It doesn't take even a dunderhead to realize the problems in this system.  The fact that it would once again inspire employees to form gangs in order to give a thumbs up to certain employees or lynch mob employees they would like to jettison.  What is even worse is that it doesn't factor in malfeasance from management that could skew the love results.  Just as it did with the JIRA at Linden Lab.  Like the JIRA, the Love Machine would and will create balkanized groups voting for their own interests, their own people.

Somewhere along the line, Philip Rosedale conceived the notion that he could change people psychologically for the better.  That through his technology he could institute cultural experiments that would inspire people to be more communal or selfless.  That he would be able to short circuit the motivation for individuals to be self serving.  But each time he attempts this grand experiment it blows up in his face.  I don't understand why he keeps banging his head against this particular wall.  It only leads me to believe that he enjoys the wars he causes and legitimizing the notion of might makes right.  Despite his genius, he doesn't recognize the fascistic motivations swimming deep down inside his own mind.  He uses these policies to convince himself that he is selfless in his love for his fellow man but works in such a way that is anything but selfless.  I don't believe that he respects people outside of the technology business.  Because if he did, he wouldn't have the need to change us.  The sooner he recognizes this fault in himself, the sooner he will create something truly groundbreaking.  Unless he truly enjoys being a Marquise de Merteuil, then all bets are off or more likely voting up love messages.

These are not photographs

The screenshots taken above are not photographs.  They are screenshots of proprietary material, each and every one.  If I were to put these forth as an example of artistic effort, I would be laughed out of any art institution open today.  What these are...are souvenirs of different mmo worlds.  Again, the artwork does not belong to me.  Unlike taking photos in public places in RL, these mmo worlds are not public.  They all require some fee to access their content.

Somewhere in the process of mmo creation, Second Life has put forth the idea that people who take screenshots are artists.  I suppose it can be possible.  But for that to be true, they should be the creators of anything contained in the screenshot plus the screenshot itself.  Otherwise taking an mmo screenshot is the equivalent of taking a screenshot of a film.  No matter how much you crop it, edit it and put fancy effects on it via photoshop, the screenshot will never belong to you.

I too once thought that Second Life was different.  But it isn't.  It merely pushes forth it's underlying ethos of creative commons, info wants to be free meme.  Which means it subtly denudes creators of their copyright rights.  Recently, as I wrote before, Second Life has changed their TOS to decree practically all of SL to be a public zone.  Which means everyone has the "right" to go around and take screenshots. It cuts off creators from the right to control whether or not they want screenshots to be taken.  Its also worse since some landscape designers use creations from others and can not give permission for the items they only use not create.

What LL is attempting to do is blur the lines, to use it's customers as proxies to scrape data (much in the way CC zealots like to push forth music downloads), to take value from the creators.  In the process transferring the value from the creator to the screenshot taker.  Why is it so hard to understand the difference between say Renderosity (that sells material with some commercial rights attached), to the totally proprietary material in Second Life?  All the screenshots above are the same.  I don't own them.

Many SL users have had this smoke blown up their asses for so long, that they feel they have rights to sell their screenshots or claim artistic titles.  NO, no, no, no.  These are not photographs.  These are not the same as going into the RL street and taking photos with a theme in mind, with technique or inspiration.  This is more like RPing a photographer.  Which is why this article from New World Notes is so wrong headed.

If you have any talent or interest in photography, go out and take photos.  Those photos will be yours.  Those photos will have room to grow and open up to artistic efforts.  Screenshots are a dead end.  They are merely just a past time.  If computer art is your thing, then learn to create computer images that you own totally.

Just don't be a party to the big data scrape that ethics free Silicon Valley loves to support and make easy money on.