Plus, I can’t help getting all ‘meta’ as Cube would say about the simplest things. What’s that paper they wrote a while ago? A spoon is not a spoon or whatever?

I need to get the quote up from Boellstorff who said that a chair is the combination of physical materials and the IDEAS of the craftsperson. So I didn’t mean to make it sound like the tangible good isn’t important – you can’t SIT on an idea, you sit on the physical good of the chair in which an idea is embedded.

His point was that a physical good represents knowledge, not just, well, that it’s a chair. And knowledge in SL is embedded in goods, in scripts and poses and chairs. My broader point was for people not just to think of themselves as “making prims” but to think that they’re contributing to a wider set of ideas of what a virtual world is, how the economy works, how goods are exchanged, how governance works.

I’ve written about it countless times, Prok, that C/M/T and the economy of SL is a masterpiece. And it’s a masterpiece because some little mom and pop business CAN and DOES exist. But even in those tangible goods and sales which might be a few bucks, an ideal, an idea, a concept is being reinforced and a culture developed and maintained that should be protected, nurtured and considered as we rush to link to OTHER types of cultures such as that of Facebook where the NORM is FREE.

I think we’re in agreement on this. The in-world economy isn’t an anachronism, it IS the future. C/M/T isn’t BROKEN, it’s a revolutionary force.

(And you’re right, the few things that could be changed could probably be done so easily but I fear erosion….although I think this is one of the few places where T and M and gang “get it” mainly because C/M/T helps them make bank in the long tail).

Texture sellers can include a license on a notecard or require people to sign a TOS the way the sion chicken people do every time you open their boxes, and keep it all on a server. But no, they’d rather junk what works for 99 percent of other merchants as a permissions/licensing system. It works *well enough* not to be undermining it this way. The reason why it’s important NOT to underminde c/m/t is that the interoperability gang, starting with Joshua Linden and Zha Ewry and ending with the extremist extropian Morgaine Dinova, are busy dismantling c/m/t when it moves offshore. They would like to see merely a notecard dispenser on all this.

I don’t know if it is worth saying for the 1,000th time that the first user experience is not about the software. It’s about policing the infohubs and orientation, and about human greeters, and it’s also about enabling advertising in welcome areas so people have ads to click on to go to interesting places. The market will take care of this, coupled with an efficient state that prevents crime in public areas. Instead, what we have is the socialist stifling of the market, the lack of choices and knowledge, and no policing.

Re: I believe the mistaken notion is that the great asset, whether of Facebook or Second Life or a lot of other businesses, whether in the digital world or the physical one, is the tangible good, whether it’s virtual or physical.

If I were to take one view of Second Life or Facebook or wherever else, what I’d see are transactions, data, and information that can be extrapolated and extended into some OTHER meaningful transaction, whether for a pair of virtual shoes or real ones.

Dusan, try as you may, you can’t escape your socialism, somehow. Connections and information and uploading pictures are cost centers, not profit centers. They are not a business model. Connecting people isn’t something special. Buses, telephones, the post office do this, but hey, they charge *fares*. What’s the “fare” on Facebook? It’s not even a quarter.

Tangible goods sales *do* matter. They give people a way of covering costs, first and foremost — many of the mom and pop businesses run at a loss, but they cover *some* costs. And many make a profit, even a modest one. This motivates creation, rewards hard work. It’s all good. There’s no need to disqualify tangible goods as something “in the past” and “outdated” and not part of the groovy new future.

I understand why it’s used. Most people equate the internet with the web. So if you want to describe a network of interconnected media available online, the web is a metaphor that everyone will understand. The trouble is, it also generates a certain set of expectations and presumptions that don’t necessarily apply.

The single biggest barrier to SL becoming anything like the web is its walled garden nature. Until any old Joe with a spare server can host his own VW online and interoperate with the LL grid, SL will be to virtual worlds what AOL was to the web. And we all know how well AOL’s walled garden did.

As for the first person view, Tinky, I wouldn’t want to have mouse-look automatically imposed on me by default. It doesn’t work for me. After five years I’m used to looking at the SL world from just behind my left shoulder. In first person I’d be running people over and bumping into walls (well, maybe not that bad but it wouldn’t be comfortable), but to each their own. However, the new beta version 2 viewer allows you to set your view the way you like.

Yup, rinse, repeat. What is this? The 5th time around? Iow if inet society is a more prepared to embrace the virtuality this time around? I mean, sure, avatar has certainly whetted their whistles, and now we have companies coming out with 3D TVs and all. But how long with that fad last? All things considered, and imo, it’s a supply/demand sort of thing. And I personally, remain unconvinced the demand bit will remain high enough to sustain it. Even this time around.

@dusan who wrote in part “aggregate and own the portals of distribution, and find a way to monetize the data itself”

Or… use the data to monitor and control us ala 1984. After all, power is by far much more important than money. The latter being rather, virtual. The former being, well… in any hands, dangerous. Yeah, yeah, I know, tin foil hat, and all. But seriously, think about it…

less game gods… more immersive designers. pretty much same old thing as happens before ..

anyhow— as much as you love to laud linden;) there were a new buch- some even a old bunch of 3d tools/rt engine folks, who showed off some nice evolutions oif web based 3d MU tech….and if all moves forward and they learn the errors of the latest big vr tech leaders who have all been still born or died before release in th last few months….–there might be some large developer changes for LL to deal with

anyhow–same thing happend after web3d self destructed in 1999….