Well last night was another late one. Having been out of electronic communication standing in on a completely unrelated bid meeting I had to compress my quick 5 minute daily patches blogging, SL and metaverse thinking etc into a much longer block at night.
Not least becuase of feeling the need to help some collegues understand some of the extra benefits that metaverse approaches such as Second Life brings.
Anyway, I realized something beneficial in the area of ‘protecting the innocent’ . A social object appears to be that people can and do hide behind their avatars. Consequently they may mis represent and not be nice people. I apprecaite the problem people have, but something occured to me on an internal discussion.
This is by no means water tight but its something to bear in mind. Second Life et al are generally public spaces. People tend to start to meet in public areas. Even if you are not in a meeting you can see others in one, and that is a benefit. In normal chat rooms people pose as other people to try and attract people away. Very often the rest of the chat room is not that bothered. In SL if we see someone approaching someone in an unsual way, or are aware of a certain reputation we are able to intervene. Now the counterpoint is that its much easier to pretend to be someone else, but there is an element, just as with the co-location of land generating traffic to your site based on where it is not what its called, that must play into the ability to protect the innocent.
Obvioulsy if someone is very devious and nasty they will get aronud any of this, but getting to know people by their actions as well as their words may highlight the nasties more? Either way its social responsibilty and education that lets us ‘protect the innocent’
As it was late I decided to repay a visit to the space centre, and very good it is looking too.
I had somehow missed the planetarium last visit. Also Davee Commerce’s NPL stand looks to be showing a lot more now too. My visit cheered me up and restored my faith in our digital personas.

As an ageing resident of Second Life I am happy to see this stat “The median age is about 33. The older you are, the more likely you are to continue using SL.” written by Giff of Electric Sheep via Corey at Linden
“In any 7-day period, about 15% of residents write code. The monthly total is equivalent to the amount of code in MS Office.”

This CBS article is crisp and captures some of the main points. It also features Philip Rosedale getting to say “Yes we just call the FBI” when asked about the hackers and griefers in Second Life.
I now have a little sarcastic saying everytime we see some mainstream media refering to all things metaverse. “Yeah but there’s probably nothing in it”. The SL part with the anchor man was created by the electric sheep company.

Linden Labs have combined their official Second Life blogs to this one
The most recent post is one about the new feature to let residents report exploits, or hacking opportunites directly through the Second Life client. Hence removing the pressure and problems of people sometimes posting the exploit on a public forum in order to get it sorted out.
This is an interesting extension of the principle of the residents policing the behaviour and looks of individuals, as an exploit may have been discovered but not actually used by anyone.
Anyway, one for all interested parties to add to their RSS reader lists.

Wagner James Au has a very full article around the thoughts that came out during an event with Julien Dubill author of Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot.
Its it money or art of the builder that drives Second Life?
It is fascinating to hear from someone who made a mint doing this. Whilst I have been vocal about not falling into the dot.com trap a fledgling economy does have its advantages to those who spot the early opportunities.
Some of this article though is more about the industry that is emerging. Its well worth a read. It is not often you get to see things like this form, but we can all experience it and form our own thoughts.

Hugo Dalgleish, a fellow eightbar member, invited me over to his working area last night. This was spurred on from some of the conversations we had with Jeffronius Batra at his presentation facility over how to use the parcel media, and suitable split thereof, to get more live information from places like amazon such as pictures of books.

Hugo has an object that you ask for a book title, and it finds the first hit on Amazon and displays the book cover, along with the other related books.

Here I asked for both the now popular in business long tail and the popular in my house Gruffalo, both suitably different to illustrate the principle.

Ok, so I missed the actual grand opening, sometimes the timings of this things dont fit well in a UK based Real Life.
However I did pop along to see what Amercan Appareil were doign with their first store.
It is a convincing looking store, and whilst I am not up on this particular set of brand values I think I see who they are aiming at.

Most interesting was this poster though, buy the same item for teh real you as in the SL store and get a 15% discount. Its not quite buy the virtual and real one as a single transaction but its very close.

The video wall mock up was interesting. I am assuming that this is a video texture, with a set of see through TV’s jumbled around to make it look like a multi tv video wall.

The inside is styled as one might expect, though the crates of “free beer” are an interesting adjustment to what you might expect in a real store.

Timeless Prototype, a long time and very influential member of Second Life and I met in Real Life today and had, as you would expect, a very interesting discussion around Second Life and around metaverse concepts.
We were both already aware of one anothers standing in the community and various contributions. Timeless is the creator both of the London Eye I blogged about recently and the famous Multi Gadget.

I will not expose any Real Life details as that’s for Timeless to choose to do.
However, we certainly are on the same wavelength, and are both totally committed to the future that we can see, feel and already experience with these metaverse concepts.
As with the ‘business’ exchanges with various key influencers in Second Life we all seem to be very experienced people, who have mentally qualified this direction as extremely significant.
Significant enough to invest our own time and money, and convince people around us to join the cause. Those of you who look up our Second Life eightbar group will notice the membership topping the hundred mark. All individuals around the world, who all have the same employer.
I came back home from our meeting, even more inspired to find that my wife was sitting reading the Saturday Times and a 2 page spread on Second Life. Also mentioned on game tommorrow my Andy Piper
Anyway, thankyou Timeless, and I hope we get to work together somewhere and ride this incredible wave.

I have recently been trying to consider, in order to explain, why there is such an effective and instant bond created when people collaborate in Second Life. Giff Constable from electric sheep
explains a particular interaction within a team and also adds “The one thing you hear over and over about Second Life is how it triggers some sort of psychological reaction in the brain that makes you feel like you are WITH somebody else, even though in reality they are thousands of miles away in front of a computer screen.”
I have a few theories. One is that currently the people who are using SL are the people who know how to communicate in this sort of way, the sense of ownership and investment being a self fulfilling virtuous circle. Which could equate to believing our own hype.
The other is that we have evolved to become more literate in electronic communication, and up to now we have been restricted by the interface. Having the experience that we all tend to have had up to now SL is such a breathe of fresh air that it opens up some things that have been squashed for so long by emails and documents. Like suddenly moving from B&W silent movies to colour surround sound and a plot we can influence.
A few of us have said also how it is changing how we look at real life, I certainly look at the architecture buildings in a new way. An adrenalin charged game entertains, enthrawls and then you need a rest. Metaverse interaction in Second Life is a continuing flow of ideas, chance meetings, humour filled interludes, discovery of other things as well as a design and tech geek environment. I can be talking cross corporation collaboration one minute and writing some code the next. This makes it more fulfilling, without a context break of changing systems, travelling to meetings, dealing with bureacracy etc.
This is not to say it is better than real life but it does allow for a more flowing approach to operating in multiple threads and modes. When you know the other people in the environment are there for the same sort of reasons you are then immediately more on one another wavelengths.