Comments on: Welcome to the Metamess: Can openSim and Virtual Worlds Save Us From Spam? http://dusanwriter.com/index.php/2008/07/30/welcome-to-the-metamess-can-opensim-and-virtual-worlds-save-us-from-spam/ Virtual worlds and creativity, business, collaboration, and identity. Sat, 02 Jul 2011 20:45:43 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Justin Gibbs http://dusanwriter.com/index.php/2008/07/30/welcome-to-the-metamess-can-opensim-and-virtual-worlds-save-us-from-spam/comment-page-1/#comment-8517 Justin Gibbs Thu, 31 Jul 2008 06:13:15 +0000 http://dusanwriter.com/?p=752#comment-8517 The birth of the metaverse is a great opportunity to correct some mistakes made with the internet and web. However I'm afraid some issues you mention will prove more difficult to solve - it isn't like we've solved them in the real world either. Generally the more secure a system is to protect privacy and assets the more inflexible it is. Part of what makes theinternet so powerful is it's openness, the same openness also leaves it open to the escalating battle between spammers and technologists. This battle is not without its casualties - newsgroups fought an escalating battle with spam and eventually lost. Other technology will also fall. As they say, the strong survive. I think the ability to coup withspammers and the like is the true test of any new technology. Everything comes with trade offs. We can beat CopyBots if we restrict access. But this is a decision Linden Labs has chosen not to take as it seriously restricts the platform. Perhaps the OpenSim community can find some technology that can solve the issue, but I doubt it. I'm sure Linden Labs investigated many possible technologies and found them lacking. Ultimately many of these issues end up in trade offs - trade offs better set by an open and innovative competition. The metaverse community will need to learn how to develop within those trade offs. The birth of the metaverse is a great opportunity to correct some mistakes made with the internet and web. However I’m afraid some issues you mention will prove more difficult to solve – it isn’t like we’ve solved them in the real world either. Generally the more secure a system is to protect privacy and assets the more inflexible it is. Part of what makes theinternet so powerful is it’s openness, the same openness also leaves it open to the escalating battle between spammers and technologists. This battle is not without its casualties – newsgroups fought an escalating battle with spam and eventually lost. Other technology will also fall. As they say, the strong survive. I think the ability to coup withspammers and the like is the true test of any new technology.

Everything comes with trade offs. We can beat CopyBots if we restrict access. But this is a decision Linden Labs has chosen not to take as it seriously restricts the platform. Perhaps the OpenSim community can find some technology that can solve the issue, but I doubt it. I’m sure Linden Labs investigated many possible technologies and found them lacking. Ultimately many of these issues end up in trade offs – trade offs better set by an open and innovative competition. The metaverse community will need to learn how to develop within those trade offs.

]]> By: Pais Kidd http://dusanwriter.com/index.php/2008/07/30/welcome-to-the-metamess-can-opensim-and-virtual-worlds-save-us-from-spam/comment-page-1/#comment-8375 Pais Kidd Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:29:19 +0000 http://dusanwriter.com/?p=752#comment-8375 I am mostly responding to your last question, Dusan, but other parts, like mention of "semantic web", lined up some thoughts... I remember a conference with some of the semantic web bleeding edge/www.w3.org types of people pointing at their FOAF/RDF/URI and emphatically saying, "that's not a URL; that's *me*", and I could not grok how they could think this. Perhaps I have been over-drilled from the corporate personal privacy protection types that tell me I mustn't put personally-identifiable information about myself or colleagues on the web, yet the idea of a web resource that can track me through my personal and professional network of friends and associates, my interests and movements, does not sound wise. I know we need to redefine freedom and privacy in a general sense, and this is not my topic. What Dusan got me thinking about having avatars that move through platforms, worlds, domains, and what-have-you reminds me of the concepts of having methods for not only representing ourselves to others, but also how to represent our interests. For instance, I have a yahoo launchcast music account that I have entered thousands of ratings for songs, artists, albums, and music genres; this is combined with collaborative filtering so now my "radio station" plays things I like, avoids things I don't like, and tries to find new things I'd like based on commonalities in taste shared with the crowdsource data. Same kind of thing goes with my Amazon tastes. These could be characteristics of our avatars, our fingerprints of interests that help us filter in the stuff we are likely to want to see or know, and filter out that which we don't need or want. I am not sure if Dusan was visualizing this dimension of self-encapsulation that we do to create our avatar(s), but I know this is a functionality that has been attempted before and I think it still has potential. I like being Pais, in part because he is a simplified version of me. When I do things as him I don't have to account for all the other aspects of my other selves, roles, and responsibilities. It should also be assumed by anyone that trying to connect Pais to my RL counterpart is taboo except in extenuating circumstances. Sort of like a famous author of literature may want to use a pen-name to write some pulp fiction for a lark. I am mostly responding to your last question, Dusan, but other parts, like mention of “semantic web”, lined up some thoughts… I remember a conference with some of the semantic web bleeding edge/www.w3.org types of people pointing at their FOAF/RDF/URI and emphatically saying, “that’s not a URL; that’s *me*”, and I could not grok how they could think this.

Perhaps I have been over-drilled from the corporate personal privacy protection types that tell me I mustn’t put personally-identifiable information about myself or colleagues on the web, yet the idea of a web resource that can track me through my personal and professional network of friends and associates, my interests and movements, does not sound wise.

I know we need to redefine freedom and privacy in a general sense, and this is not my topic.

What Dusan got me thinking about having avatars that move through platforms, worlds, domains, and what-have-you reminds me of the concepts of having methods for not only representing ourselves to others, but also how to represent our interests. For instance, I have a yahoo launchcast music account that I have entered thousands of ratings for songs, artists, albums, and music genres; this is combined with collaborative filtering so now my “radio station” plays things I like, avoids things I don’t like, and tries to find new things I’d like based on commonalities in taste shared with the crowdsource data. Same kind of thing goes with my Amazon tastes. These could be characteristics of our avatars, our fingerprints of interests that help us filter in the stuff we are likely to want to see or know, and filter out that which we don’t need or want.

I am not sure if Dusan was visualizing this dimension of self-encapsulation that we do to create our avatar(s), but I know this is a functionality that has been attempted before and I think it still has potential.

I like being Pais, in part because he is a simplified version of me. When I do things as him I don’t have to account for all the other aspects of my other selves, roles, and responsibilities. It should also be assumed by anyone that trying to connect Pais to my RL counterpart is taboo except in extenuating circumstances. Sort of like a famous author of literature may want to use a pen-name to write some pulp fiction for a lark.

]]>