Maybe my posts have become way to long, or I’ve become more obscure, but for whatever reason my recent post on the permission system in Second Life didn’t get the response I was anticipating until today, when Jacek posted a long reply - which I’d call thoughtful if there wasn’t the claim that I had been “taken in” which is a short form I suppose for “duped”, something that firstly implies that I was duped BY someone, and perhaps I have, but I’ll explain by whom in a moment.
In the post, I pointed to a recent JIRA which proposes changes to the permission systems in Second Life, and proposed that it not be implemented, for a variety of reasons. Among those reasons:
- Any change to a core feature of SL should be done within the context of a broader policy discussion and road map
- I take issue with the idea that choice is necessarily a good thing, based on current economic theories (and common sense) in which individuals require nudges and incentives within a choice architecture, in recognition that they are not always rational actors.
- This change is based on the assumption that usability is necessarily connected to desired behaviors.
The World is No Longer Run By People Who Run Worlds
Now, Jacek responded at length, and I will respond to some of the specifics on the Tentacolor blog.
But let me state that my main intent here is to “nudge” a much broader discussion of where SL is headed, and to state that my main belief is that Linden Lab needs to do a much better job of articulating and planning policy in a way that is transparent and thoughtful and that brings the kind of intellectual and philosophical heft which must have been in the air in the old days when they flew in economists and MUD-developers to talk about what the heck to do with this “game” they had come up with, and suddenly invented, well, perms.
It may be too late. At a time when Linden should be making sure that its foundations are strong - that it has an articulated philosophy and an effective governance strategy, instead they’re off launching new stuff that is world-changing without it: significant changes to voice, creation of new continents with more to follow, launch of some sort of “Web 2.0″ thing with profiles and Flickr embeds and Facebook widgets and whatever else they have planned for the Web site.
Mark Kingdon (M Linden) is already well along the path of making these fundamental changes. And yet the best I can tell none of those changes is being articulated against a framework for understand how they will impact the world, its culture, and the interpretation of policy and enforcement, other than some fairly vague guidance on how adult-oriented content will be handled. This articulation would shift us past “growth curves” and “usability” and remind us that change in a WORLD is multi-factoral.
I’ve heard a few token comments about “yes, we believe in land” and lots of stuff about how exciting and vibrant the community is….and then a change as fundamental as voice mail for you avatar comes along, and it shows up in the business press first….somehow all those churning voice minutes were a business story and not a resident/cultural change story.
They may BELIEVE they know that it’s a world, but they’re either not articulating that or they don’t know what they don’t know.
For these reasons, the very small matter of a “usability JIRA” actually points to a much wider problem: the Lab isn’t providing a framework or articulation of its philosophies around governing a world, possibly because they believe it’s a platform.
The Killer App
Evidence of this is supported by M Linden’s focus on the killer app, although which killer app he can’t seem to decide.
Grace McDonough has a landmark post, one which will fuel dialogue and become, I believe, part of our new vocabulary in discussing virtual worlds. Her post is one of those before/after things: there was how we looked at the world BEFORE Grace, and then there was the clarity and dialogue we were able to have after.
She proposes that M’s scattered discussions of a “killer app” are misguided:
“The killer app within Second Life is that which allows for rich fields of weak ties, that which affords relatively easy access to other people, other art forms, other spaces, ideas, cultures, music, and all within the context and dynamic immersiveness of Second Life.”
And I completely agree.
The killer app of Second Life is prims. Everything else follows from that. And prims create rich fields of weak ties because they are nearly endlessly available, and they are created by individuals or small groups. This was Philip’s vision: to create a world which is build from an “atomic” level. When he first started SL and when you watch his early presentations of it, this was the thing that drove the platform: if you created a world which was created in an almost molecular “from-the-ground-up” fashion, you could fashion a deep new reality.
And he was right.
The challenge is that because the world is built from the ground up, you end up with a field of weak ties, as Grace points out. And the challenge then becomes to allow ease-of-use in how we find things, and in finding things (which includes “places”) find other people, and in so doing play to the true killer app which is Second Life.
Our Gods Built Worlds Before
Now, the thing that gave SL the kick-start that shifted it from being an obscure “game engine” to a world-changer was commerce. And the commerce happened because the Lab turned to people who knew about virtual worlds, and had studied them, and had built them.
And those are the same people that I turn to, usually through books, sometimes on blogs, sometimes face-to-face. And they’re not the interface developers or the coders: they’re the people who understand that code and interfaces are one part of an interlinked system in which other things like policy, law, enforcement, philosophy (which informs how employees interact with Residents), communication all work together to create the delicate web that is what binds a world together.
To recap: I give M a lot of credit. But I also point out that he’s not a virtual world builder. Nor are most of his new staff members. And I can’t help wondering how many of them have read Richard Bartle, or Raph Koster, or Tom Boellstorff or any of the other folks who know what it means to build and maintain a world. Because it seems to me that one of the few senior people around who know much about ‘world management’ is Philip - the rest have decamped elsewhere, both in the executive suite and down the line.
So let’s start with this: Linden Lab is now run primarily by people who come from the interactive experiences industry. There are very few people left who have the experience of building SL as the world which it is. And Philip, bless him, has always been somewhat accidental in how policy and code and customer outreach and all that stuff which makes UP a world is constructed, other than to be guided by a libertarian slash Californian surfer/Zen thing, which has taken us, nonetheless, a long way.
Being Duped & The Lab Think Tank
Now Jacek says I’ve been “taken in” and I’m a victim of FUD.
Side note: I had NO idea what FUD is - it’s one of those acronyms used by coders, I find, that has all kinds of cultural connotations that are beyond me. The other term Jacek uses is “wetware” which I take to mean, um, “humanity”, and is another term that seems to have this slimy implication that those wet squishy human types are just oh so problematic.
I have no idea who Jacek thinks I’ve been taken in by. I know who I listen to, and read, and respect. So if Jacek means THOSE people then, well, I guess I have, because I don’t mind being duped by Raph Koster, Tom Boellstorff, Edward Castranova (well, on SOME things), Richard Bartle, Julian Dibbell, Bruce Damer, Richard Vogel, Ian Bogost (on occasion) and others.
Because what these people have in common is the idea that a world is comprised of interlinking and cross-disciplinary issues, and recognize that the FACT of this interlinking makes it imperative for virtual world developers to proceed cautiously when it comes to tinkering with the mechanics that are at the heart of their world designs.
As the Lab engages in this next wave of change, maybe it’s time to couple discussions of interface changes and voice improvements with a think tank or two: bring in the anthropologists and economists again, bring in some of the sociologists and philosophers - think through some of these changes that must SEEM like usability issues, and put them in the context of, say, anthropology, and remember how Boellstorff pointed out that even the most seemingly trivial thing can have a deep and profound impact on the world’s culture.
I’d propose, for example, that Boellstorff would discover, if he studied it (and he probably did - I know he had nearly a chapter on lag and AFK for example), that discussions of perms and all the attendant hassles and chat and frustrations are a PART of the culture, and that those cultural norms have an impact on how people perceive perms, and their level of awareness of them.
The educators would tell you that the frustrations are part of a learning curve.
Raph Koster would tell you that frustrations and mastery are part of FUN.
The economists would say that any change to a choice architecture can have a deep impact on the economic model of the world, even if that change is seemingly minor, or an improvement.
But Jacek is only concerned with choice, I guess. Culture, economics, anthropology, world development and governance, policy and philosophy - those things are less important than coding something because it can be coded, and because it SEEMS like a logical thing to do.
Maybe I HAVE been duped. Maybe I actually believe Second Life is a world, and I should start thinking about it as an application. It’s just that I have this feeling that the day I do that, I probably won’t want to log in anymore.
No, Jacke’s reference is to me. He thinks you’ve been taken in by my critique of Creative Commons and my critique of this IP-shattering feature request which is a stealth bomb for the copyleftist opensource gang to decouple perms and objects. His references are solely to me, he’s just being coy and pretending to avoid drama.
I think you’ve put your finger on it. There are no intellectuals anymore at the lab. Philip isn’t exactly an intellectual in the sort of classic sense like a Susan Sontag, but he did think about a broad swathe of issues and did have a vision. Robin was another one who thought through all the aspects of the world and had some intellectual framework for it. So did Cory, one of the few PhDs in the lab. There are a few others.
But you feel like the age of those greater thinkers who pondered the making of worlds, and summoned people I *don’t* like, like Lessig or Doctorow or Dibbell, to give them tips, but at least they had an idea that there are “schools of thought” and they need to consult “the scholars”.
Now, it’s more like they are just trying to hack and slash through it and get it working. The Golden Age of Heroes gives way to the Iron Age of replication or something.
I don’t think that M Linden sits around the way we do and contemplates the affect of opensource hackery on an integral world where objects contain the CMT “friction” as you call it, as a property to keep their uniqueness. That is, when I IM’d him in urgent alarm about this JIRA with the mass liberation in it, he said, “I’ll look into it,” but it was a sort of pro forma answer. I’m 100 percent sure he doesn’t grasp what bothers me about it, or you, nor does he think about it. If he thinks about it at all, he thinks, but look at the convenience for creations, and that fits an age-old mantra at the lab — the killer app for David Linden — remember him? the VP? — was content, content, content. Other people making the content so you don’t have to. Like Other People’s Money. That stil resonates greatly with the Lindens.
So the problems of property rights are less interesting. I think I nailed it when I really went for the jugular on this, and said on Metanomics, in reply to his answer that no, LL is not going to release the server code.
“So, Mark. IP protection for you. And not for us. Is that’s how it’s going to be?”
And that about sums it up, eh? IP protection for him — he’s not going to be releasing the server code and will still make money from the magic of SL, even if OpenSim reverse engineers (yes, *reverse engineers* SL).
But what about us chickens? Well, for us, there will be…some toy…automization of DMC notices or…a place to stick a Creative Commons license on the viewer (I already see how they have made one in 1.23.2 — it sickens me.)
As I keep saying, the Lindens created c/m/t inspite of themselves, even in defiance of their own copyleftist ideologies, merely because for a time they were entranced with the idea, inspired by Lessig, of sticking it to the man, i.e. having “the little guy” have IP that he cuold protect against a company, against game gods, against corporate software makers, which is what the Lindens are. They were so entranced with the man-bites-dog effect of having game players have IP against game gods, unlike WoW or anything else, that they didn’t think it through. Lessig tired of it immediately. What’s interesting about a zillion dressmakers? As someone snarkily put it on my blog, threat to IP, copybot — meh, who cares, little dress-maker genocide…
And yet, little dressmakers — well, they’re the heart of the world.
Linden is dealing with two business models in Second Life — two mutually incompatible business models.
One business model is creating a thriving virtual world with a robust and functioning internal economy and protections for citizens and creators.
The other business model is creating a stand-alone platform which businesses, educational institutions, and other groups can create their own virtual worlds.
What’s good for the Second Life virtual world is not necessarily the same as what’s good for the Second Life enterprise server.
By keeping a leg in each camp, Linden is sabotaging each business model. At some point, it may make sense to split this up into separate companies.
For example, hypergrid connectivity is a must for enterprise users — they need to be able to connect to other enterprise grids out there.
But hypergrid connectivity is dangerous for content developers in Second Life unless the permissions systems made much more robust and secure.
Pseudonyms are fine in a game-playing environment like the Second Life virtual world.
But they’re an obstacle in business and educational settings.
Or take the Linden Dollars - critical to the Second Life economy. But what would a company need these for, on an internal enterprise grid used for training and meetings? Or a college, on its classroom and laboratory grids? If they do sell products from their virtual worlds, they’re more likely to want to take credit cards, or PayPal payments, rather than Lindens.
Meanwhile, the field of potential competitors is growing — both on the platform side, with both proprietary enterprise systems and open source server platforms like OpenSim and realXtend — and on the virtual world site, as the costs of creating a new universe for users to play in is dropping daily.
Sure, Second Life has a large mass of users. But users are fickle. Give them a new platform that’s slightly better or slightly cheaper and off they go. In particular, people follow the content creators — the designers, the game operators, the nightclub owners.
By splitting their focus, Linden risks losing their content makers and their enterprise customers both.
You’ve been duped. But not by Prok. Frankly i find her the most transparent of the whole SL related hanger ons;)-transparency as good;)
And check again. your list of vr worlds “greats” never implemented or proposed user “economy” and “value” commerce in 3d worlds before 2006ish ….none of them.
They followed in years later the “apparent success” of Linden’s final solution to not going bankrupt in 2003 (user gen and IP ownership marketing as draw), They all made games or social 3d virtual worlds that never allowed or sold anything to or from anyone but them as a single company. None of them are elected officials who are tasked to run complex community systems. They make “toys” or evangelize “books” about toys.and most run organizations of under 20 people.
Where is the reality?
SL is the mess it is because LL never made a hard choice to what they sold. a TOY or a Platform for Business. Frankly they look at all of us as “personal entertainment usage” and they ONLY as the Business…. ” and this has been obvious from day one 2001.
Anyhow. You can play as long as you like, I do. I wont pay them to lose money, or suggest any client do the same. If there’s a USE for the Lab, and SL. Use it.
BTW- Microsoft bought and has now killed off caligari truespace ( birthed 1995is), which “was” also another 3d MU tool/platform that allowed for collaborative inworld building- it had been through vrml ages, and evolved into that state in about 2003 or so, the same time SL did by allowing prims in world. It had its issues on needed higher end machines, but without an internal “perms” like system that “nudged” for commmerce. not freebies, Truespce in the end made alot of money for only one group- caligari- and the dreams of its creator, a 3dweb of millions using it as a platform foundation, never happened–again.
food for thought for those feeling duped.;)
“As I keep saying, the Lindens created c/m/t inspite of themselves, even in defiance of their own copyleftist ideologies, merely because for a time they were entranced with the idea, inspired by Lessig, of sticking it to the man, i.e. having “the little guy” have IP that he cuold protect against a company, against game gods, against corporate software makers, which is what the Lindens are. They were so entranced with the man-bites-dog effect of having game players have IP against game gods, unlike WoW or anything else, that they didn’t think it through. Lessig tired of it immediately. What’s interesting about a zillion dressmakers? As someone snarkily put it on my blog, threat to IP, copybot — meh, who cares, little dress-maker genocide…”
i don’t believe this is correct. I can remember quite clearly the SFWEB3D meeting where the question being asked by Corey and Robin was “HOW DO WE GET PEOPLE TO USE THIS STUFF?”
The repeated answer, over and over again, then and every time I saw Corey sadly sitting by himself with no takers at a Macworld/or Media show, was “IP OWNERSHIP ans ITEM SALES” - Why would I spend time building YOUR PRODUCT/Services for FREE? Forget Lessig, that SFWEB3D room was filled with Students!!- a class at SFSU.
That simple.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10248520-37.html?tag=newsLatestHeadlinesArea.0
apple store pulls virtual watches//
more ip news.. think sl willbe getting more of these soon, and after playing with metaplace, i cant see how they are immune either.
any picture, grabbed from the web, gets repackaged and resold in 2d as an application??… somethings gotta give….
Cube:
Good history lesson, thanks for that. It wasn’t how I read the history of it (via Hamlet and elsewhere)….but then historical accounts often leave out the important stuff (or I read them selectively).
I refer to the people I do because of their belief that virtual worlds are complex systems, not because they’re experts in user-generated economies. I use that as my starting point and then move into the second questions, which is within that complex system how does an economy such as SL continue to thrive, or, for that matter: does it.
There is definitely a sense in the air that the Lab is juggling two competing views: one in which content creation is a by-product or service to enterprise, and the second where they hope to see mass adoption through some not-yet-named but-hoped-for killer app - music? Dancing? Whatever it is, they don’t typically say “user generated economy and content” as THE killer app, which is troublesome.
All of which is to say that if the Lab is sliding into SL being an enterprise platform on the one fire-walled hand, and an entertainment/music/dancing platform on the other, then all the more reason to try to pay attention to ANY change that might impact the mechanics of perms while we wait for them to tell us whether they matter, how, and what the road map is to improving them, protecting them, and making them easier to use.
yes. i agree. they MUST outline a road map IF they attempt to be a “government”.. like any candidate who am “investing” for -what will they do?
killer apps and 3dweb are 1995 all over again…Linden is looking very CA.-)
almost all these vr worlds are toys…when run by children they try to have it both ways… my toy and ill take it home with me. “transparent” is an illusion they hide in CC and singular (arity) speak:)
we need a media and platforms to build an industry.. not these vanity experiments that even i am forced to do ever few years.
youre asking the right questions…. i only wish they were asked and listened to 3 years ago…3 years ago you didnt see much of these questions blogged, all you saw was “evangelical exuberance” and whore to millionaire rhetoric..
anyhow
here’s another experiment: tonight at 10 pst. web based vr movie screening ,,,its buggy but thats the techworld:)
http://horrorhostnews.blogspot.com/2009/05/cinema-insomnia-screaming-room.html
not sure it;ll work, but not asking for 1000 dollars and 295 a month to try it:)
btw– tribalnet is dead;;no moany made or gotten via bankers..:)…my open sim there gone..
i did reach out to folks like maria and “reactiongrid” as well…started up a test there…
i would love to see Opensims grow to apache type ubiquity…. but people made money on html servers in 1996.:0— and the web 1996 was a “presentation” media for the mass,,,, time will tell, again..
There is a lot of confusion here, and unfortunately on the jira. The confusion is between politics and engineering. A propper working granular permissions system enables people to do their work how they wish.
If folk wish to use it to express copyleft principles, or to make life difficult for pirates (and usually themselves in the process) then that’s up to them. Politics has nothing to do with the engineering UNLESS the system is engineered to restrict the choices you have in how those permissions are applied. The current system does this - it makes decisions on your behalf as I will explain.
If people want to use permissions simply then by all means provide a simple interface for them. That interface likely looks a lot like C/M/T by the way. That is not however the full story as C/M/T can not encompass all the possible behaviors of a permissions system. If you enable debug permissions (an advanced option in the sl client) you will see LOTS of extra info about the permissions of your objects - this extra info shows the decisions about how permissions look different to folk other than yourself or how permissions will change if the object changes hands. These changes to permissions happen automatically.
Put another way, this is the hidden information about decisions the permissions system makes on your behalf. Intentions - which by their nature somewhat political - are encapsulated in these rules. These intentions are the ones that decide on our part and in our absence that we shouldn’t be able to modify the objects we create, for example.
They are the reason that I can’t sell an item in SL to a client without giving them full perms if i may wish to provide any customer support modifying/customizing/fixing the item. The SL permissions system is particularly idiosyncratic in that way and locks up and breaks content more often than not.
A proper granular permissions system is not political in that way. It needn’t be difficult to use either - just as windows networking has simplified model and full control permissions systems, one can provide a simple and complex interface to the same system.
You will find that engineers such as Jjacek, Tateru Nino, Ordinal Malaprop, etc who actually work with these systems daily usually argue for a “propper” permissions system, and do not mix metaphors between permissions and drm. Folk who’s primary thing is IP rather than coding however often mix up permissions, drm and IP politics. The FUD (fear uncertainty and doubt) JJacek mentions in her blog post is exactly this, a domain confusion built out of a simplistic and flawed view of how a tool works and it’s implications for IP.
As for myself, I am very anti piracy. I refuse to use photoshop for work for example, though it inconveniences me greatly, as I don’t own a copy. It is estimated that over 80% of photoshop installs are pirated and nobody else seems to think twice about it. This has not stopped me using the tools of piracy to unlock my own content when it has been borked by the idiosyncrasies of the SL permissions system. No digital content protection system is bulletproof, and I’m quite happy to break them when they lock me out of my own content that I created or paid for.
Now here is the issue. If i make an object in SL, and due to idiosyncracies in the permissions system it locks it so that I am unable to transfer/edit/copy it - this is 100% my own creation here - I have no choice but to use one of the many methods available to break those permissions. In doing so I am circumventing DRM which makes it a criminal act. Off the top of my head I can think of at least 7 ways of committing this criminal act, so clearly DRM is failing to do it’s job of protecting the content. The only way in which it succeeds is by turning me into a criminal for editing an object I created in the first place.
If the permissions system was more granular I’d be able to set things up so I didn’t have nasty surprises like this. So the simplified permissions system we have is already political as it makes decisions behind our back about what is right and wrong, and by making it more granular we would be making it _less_ political.
There are no mysteries about what makes a granular permissions system - they have been around since the 1960s. It’s not rocket science - there’s one in the computer you’re using right now. Jjacek, myself and others have been arguing for a long time that the permissions system needs an overhaul to reveal the hidden data that I spoke of earlier and remove the ways in which it makes decisions on our own behalf. This is so that the technicolor rainbow of approaches to content management can be encompassed rather than the stupid mix of copyleft meets IP paranoia that we have now. I leave you with a final example.
Right now I’m making an orientation path, with some 40 or so signs that i spit out of keynote whenever revisions go through, and upload in bulk, and each time I do…… I have to manually go through every single texture uploaded and set permissions to allow the textures to be reused…. why? Because SL assumes that I don’t want anyone else to be able to edit these items ever and that selfishly I wish to ensure that those textures are useless to anyone else. Now I may think that’s braindead having spent countless hours working on teams setting these stupid permissions every time or chasing folk who’ve set them badly, or using tools to re-rip the textures cause someone has screwed up their perms and we need to edit a build or wotnot….. but who am I to criticise? Surely in _some_ universe this is the most sensible way to deal with permissions on textures……. it just sure as hell isn’t in mine, nor is it in the universe of anyone I know. As for scripts, which are more likely to need modification after the fact, it’s even worse.
So in conclusion.. sure the lindens are silly and do strange things and need to strategise and communicate better, but that’s got nought to do with how borked the permissions system is. The perms system just needs to be normal and act normal like a perms system should, rather than as a third party lurking over our shoulder, which we need to placate in order to get anything done.
better interface for permissions needed for group projects. -true
the insistance that “technical” solutions are free from politics and economics - false
the dogmatic belief that the media does not influence the message– just damn stupid.
i read jjacek posting stuff… it was i believe wrong about IP/licenses/TOS and ownership.
dogma strikes again.
“Politics has nothing to do with the engineering UNLESS the system is engineered to restrict the choices you have in how those permissions are applied.”
obviosly you havnet used a “modern” paper ballot to vote in the last 20 years.
youre subcribing to the idea that MORE is always BETTER.?
who are you people? really?.. i mean lets stop this avatar shit… it really is just allowing more stupidity to spread. But more is better, itll just magically transform us into a borg collective.
im getting too old for this .
Pavig:
Thanks for the response, although in some ways I think you made my point FOR me. What you point out is that there are things in the system of perms that go beyond usability: the current system has embedded in it a form of paternalism or, as you say, acts as “a third party lurking over our shoulder”.
Yes, they do, and that’s my point. What is being proposed is a change in this paternalism. I am not SAYING the perms system is usable. I am not SAYING it’s not incredibly frustrating. I am not even necessarily saying that this paternalism is the desired state of the world.
Look. I build. I make my own textures. I sculpt. I work with others, and with groups, and I forget to wear my tag, or share with group, or set my perms right and it drives me out of my mind. I UNDERSTAND how borked it is. I’ve listed in this blog and elsewhere things I’d like to see changed, but only within the context of a broader statement of purpose, a road map, and an articulation of strategy and philosophy.
A change in the philosophy….from paternalism (sloppily executed) to choice, say, is still a change in philosophy, and I’m proposing that we need to be clear that it IS a change and not be confused with the idea that the result of usability and choice is simply improved usability - even subtle changes can have wider impacts, as Boellstorff and all the economists would agree - a butterfly in Brazil kind of thing.
I suppose the argument I’m hearing is “screw the Lab, we’re going to make the platform better with or without them”, which is what OpenSim is trying to do…and maybe in the end that’s what the world needs - one that’s truly built by the imagination of its users (just wait, oh wait, until they open source the server code, what fun THAT will be)….but I’m of the opinion that those leading the charge should include those who will look beyond interface design into policy, sociality, culture, economics, and law, with code and design being supporting infrastructure for a reasoned view of these factors.
For now it’s the Lab who’s in the lead, whether we like it or not. On OpenSim it’s the coders. Maybe tomorrow it will be the dress makers. Who knows.
*”Technical” people are rarely political beasts. Conversely, they are not the people who decide what the software they create should do – that is between the customer and the suits of the business.
*This is a single, small choice being made available to the small percentage of people who build, and who want to use the new feature. It does not change, extend, or otherwise alter the permissions system, it just makes it easier to use.
Feldspar - I highly doubt the world will end with this change. But it seems to me that there’s no better time, on the cusp of a major UI overhaul, with the addition of all these voice features, with a “Web 2.0″ thing on the way - to revisit our core values, for whatever excuse, whether a JIRA and a “minor change” or because of stuff that’s more profound.
How the Lab responds to the JIRA says a lot to me about whether perms are a micro issue or whether the coders check in with the “suits” by way of verifying whether the governing philosophy allows changes to the usability with due consideration for a broader, clearly articulated approach to something so central to the Grid.
Will it change DRM, or perms, or is it ONLY usability for a minority of users? Again, I’d propose that the anthropologists, economists, sociologists and “world builders” would say that there’s a strong possibility otherwise, or at the very least would say “let’s map this out in a thoughtful, measured way.”
(BTW, where do you get those stats from?)
I’m not goingbto fight anyone on the idea that code can inform use and or politics. I’m a firm believer that it is so. However I am also a long term SL user who has seen every miniscule overhaul of usability in the client crippled under the weight of argument about what it means. There is a place for political and philosophical challenge in the interpretation of code, but sooner or later it needs to be written or we get nowhere.
There is no danger to ‘paternalism’ from implementing minor usability tweaks. If we can’t accept even this without being buried under the weight of analysis we can’t hope to agree on the nature of the long overdue major perms overhaul.
It is not like Linden Lab is removing the permissions system…is it? So why does an extra option, become so political? I think this speaks volumes about the politics of the detractors, rather than the politics of the people who suggested the feature. Do the detractors believe we will all be avatars in the future, and that we need ‘avatar rights’ as we do in the real world? I suppose, if we loose the ability to be normal, walking, breathing humanoids, and are forced to dwell in VR (a la the matrix), then this is hideously political, but until that horrid day comes..these are merely settings and options in a piece of software. SL has still not got a ‘Save As’ option for saving ones own creations..Jeeze, silly software. Thank you OpenSimulator, where I can backup my creations to an oar file.
Actually, the missing ‘Save As’ option in SL, does seperate SL form virtually every other piece of creative software. So maybe I did miss the point…SL is not ordinary software. Or at least in the old-fashioned sense, where a person creates, saves out, and does what they choose with the files created.