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.

Gaming the Populace

Jesse Schell, Professor and CEO for game design, was Metanomic's end of season guest today.

His topic was turning the masses into game pods ripe for companies to scrape.  What will they scrape data, money, Intellectual property, human rights etc.  Truly the world is their oyster.  And is this professor even thinking about ethics?  No.  What he is dreaming about is unending streams of funny money.  Funny money that you and I will receive in payback for our lost rights.  Yes,  dear folks, in payback for you being turned into a walking commercial for Disney, Proctor & Gamble, Chase and so many others in lifestyle "games", they will give you a few cents worth of "game" money.  In the past they would give you about 20 to 40 bucks for your input on their services.  But now it won't cost them a penny anymore because you will be their "product game" monkey and you will dance for banana WoW gold.

In response to my comment about data scraping, Schell was flippant in stating that Google already scrapes with their gmail program.  So the length of his ethical deliberation in all of this was...Google does it.  So if Google does it, then its full steam ahead.  He also stated that it was up to the people to either use or not use these "games/services".  Because the companies are already so honest as to make clear what they do with our data.  Their long and convoluted TOS policies are generally ignored by the public whose eyes glaze over when they see long blocks of text.  Which the companies are counting upon.

You see, Schell is working on the California Business model.  Which is to exploit any holes in the system until there is a mass uprising against underhanded practices.  This is what occurred with the newspaper, film and music businesses.  The technology companies scraped, scraped and scraped away using the populace as their cat's paw until the news and entertainment businesses started to fight for their IP.  Now they have moved on to bigger pastures...us.  And mind you, they will milk us dry for everything that is of any monetary value.

And if you don't think this is the case, watch the Metanomics program on their site.  Schell was very adamant about the people having to cause a stink about this mass enslavement for "games" before any changes could or should be made.  This coming from a PROFESSOR who teaches the younger generation.  No doubt his professional connections to many companies and his own company also taint his ethical stance on these issues besides him just being rather blithely sociopathic.

Because when any person starts to see the cave of wealth and dreams (as Elaine Supkis calls it), it twists them.  It starts them on the path to seeking the infinite.  Which just as assuredly spikes upward then crashes to zero.  This happened with the dot com bust.  It occurred with the big data scrape heist (this war is still ongoing).  VRs are just starting to go bust except for the big behemiths like WoW or games connected to behemiths like Facebook.  And now the new bubble of customer data scrape and IP heisting of the little consumer will begin in earnest.

This of course will crash as well.  And perhaps the current financial disaster will work in our favor.  After all people cannot buy bread with WoW gold.  Or sleep in virtual houses.  Someone still has to pay the bills.  Perhaps deep in the back of their lizard brains, Schell and his colleagues know these facts.  But the tech industry is built on exploiting holes and ponzi financial schemes.

They are going to sell these pipe dreams to companies for all they are worth.  Hopefully becoming infinitely rich in the process then pulling out to leave some jackass holding the bills.

And that jackass will be you and me, the game losers.