Linden Lab, under the guidance of folks like Tom Hale (ex Adobe) have become less like Adobe, and more like Apple – or that’s the premise of Ari Blackthorne in a well thought out post that lifts off the current controversy caused by Steve Job’s decision to exclude Flash from the iPad and iPhone platforms.
Now, for those of you who don’t follow the tech or business pages, the decision to exclude Flash from Apple’s mobile devices was positioned as a purely technical one by Steve Jobs in a compelling argument for the decision:
Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.
The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.
New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.
His full argument seems, well, so LOGICAL. But calling Adobe a closed system versus the “open” one of the iPhone or iPad (by which Jobs means Web standards) is a bit of a pot calling the kettle black. The Web standards may be open, but everything else about the platform is closed.
But Ari’s point isn’t to compare Second Life to Apple because of the closed or open nature of the systems, but rather to make the point that whereas Linden Lab may once have been more like Adobe, providing tools to creators, they are now more like Apple, with a singular focus on the users.
There Are Always Middle Men
It’s a compelling case.
Linden Lab has clearly moved from the days of Philip, which were focused on an intense belief in the TOOLS of production – give a community robust ways to create content and innovation (and success) will arise. Those are the days documented by Thomas Malaby in his book Making Virtual Worlds:
The near ubiquitous appeal to ‘tools’ around Linden Lab….is consistent with a deep commitment to and acknowledgement of Second Life as a domain for empowered users to create content with a minimum of vertical direction or control. Just like the users of the Whole Earth Catalog, Second Life users are given access to tools, and this issue of access (often glossed as “open participation” around Linden Lab) was of continuing importance.
Malaby quotes Philip Rosedale (emphasis added):
We will not move in a direction that will restrict Second Life as to the number of people it can conceivably reach. This means that we will struggle to have Second Life work in any country, be available to anyone wanting to use it, and work well on a wide range of computing devices. As another example, we will not restrict Second Life by adding constraints which might make it more compelling to a specific subset of people but have the effect of reducing the broadest capabilities it offers to everyone for communication and expression.
Second Life more like Adobe, perhaps, in the sense that Adobe focuses on the tools of creation with minimal interference on the end consumers of that creation. And this shift evident in the sense that Second Life has reduced its broadest capacities in order to appeal to a specific subset of users: the Philip Rosedale paradigm over-turned.
And yet as Malaby pointed out in his book, there was a contradiction in this seemingly empowering vision: because even though access to the tools was the liberating notion, there were some people with MORE access to tools, to software, than others. Even within the Lab, the coders held precedence over, say, someone in customer service or accounting.
Removing the friction between the ‘platform’ and the end user doesn’t mean the friction is removed entirely, because strategic or tactical choices are always being made, and in this case those choices resided with the makers of the tools themselves, just as Adobe makes decisions about whether to upgrade its software to the Apple OSX operating system, or Linden Lab makes the decision about whether to allow flexis, or whether to deploy Havok 4 (and how to do so), or how to handle mega prims.
So while there is, on the surface, a certain appeal to the idea of “let people create and then get out of their way” even open source software is bound by decisions that get made – what enhancements to invest in, the road map, and whether you have the skill set or access in order to change it yourself.
You can never entirely get out of the way of the person using the tools – even a pencil needs a sharpener. And yet, it certainly SEEMS as if Linden Lab shifted from a faith that providing great tools would de facto lead to a growing world, to an increased focus on controlling the experience of the user, which Ari equates to Apple.
(I’ll leave aside that I don’t think the choice is binary for now – the Lab clearly believes that it is on a path to create more tools for creation, such as mesh, and that this argument of a shift away from tools is, well, specious).
The Culture of Second Life
Nowhere is this shift at Linden Lab more evident than in Tom Hale calling the idea of a Second Life culture specious.
My argument has NEVER been that there aren’t many cultures or many different communities. My argument has always been that the governance, tools and affordances of Second Life contribute to a wide set of cultural norms and symbols.
The “old” culture of Second Life placed precedence on tools. This emphasis led to concepts of governance and platform development that created shared values and symbols, even as individual cultures and communities thrived.
Just as I can be Indonesian (as Tom Boellstorff would point out) and share cultural symbols with other Indonesians, I can also be gay and share or appropriate cultural symbols from the broader gay community and make them my own.
Culture becomes a short-hand for how we perceive our participation in place and community. Without thinking about culture, we think of an interface as merely an interface (or interference) and not an affordance for shared symbology.
Culture is a lens, and whether we believe one exists or not, it’s a useful lens for thinking about things like interface design. But so are economics, sociology and politics. I mean, I wonder if anyone at the Lab has ever read Richard Bartle.
Regardless, I believe that thinking of Second Life as a culture, just like thinking about the “Facebook culture” is useful, because the role of anthropology is to give us a lens to understand communities of people and to extrapolate that understanding to the broader human condition.
Is Linden Lab More Like Apple?
Ari concludes that the shifts at Linden Lab are equivalent to Second Life becoming more like Apple and less like Adobe:
Linden Lab wants (needs) more main-stream end consumers in order to grow and remain relevant, not just to be a geeky playground. They must convert their current Adobe paradigm into the Apple paradigm and appeal directly to the end consumer: the average grid-surfer. This means simplifying the viewer to appeal to those average people who don’t want complicated things. (I have been an I.T. professional since 1987 – and I love the iPad for it’s basic simplicity. I just don’t have to even think about anything in order to use it.)
This means they must create a compelling product – like Apple does – that will draw the masses at large. Simplify and beautify. It’s really that simple. The developers must come secondarily. And they will come. They will flock to the grid to cater to those end consumers. It is a simple mechanical shift in how the economy works.
The idea is to influence choice.
And this strategic shift makes sense, in a way, although I hardly think it’s binary.
But saying that Linden Lab is now like Apple reminds me of this:
I grew up with Apple. I own an Apple laptop. (I also own a PC). I own an iPhone. We’re an iPad Developer.
And Second Life: you’re no Apple.
Which was really the point of my last post about design thinking. Because I hold Apple up as an example of true design thinking: the ability to imagine ecosystems and products in ways which could not have been predicated simply through analysis of past data. Design thinking is the process of inventing new future paradigms that, although you might not be able to PROVE they would become successful, held an intuitive logic and elegance that arises not because you parse the past, but because you parse the past PLUS imagine a completely new way of solving a problem.
Unexpected Futures
I can PROVE that people stay in Second Life if they buy something. I can extrapolate from this data to design a solution that makes shopping easier. I have arrived at a design solution extrapolated from past data, and I can then move on to the challenges of interface design and execution based on this design strategy.
Design thinking would take stock of the past but would also move us towards an unexpected future. Instead of cobbling together communities, and social media, and shopping, and land purchase, it would imagine new ecosystems for imagination, and it would extrapolate ways in which social media (by which I mean the media definition that usually encompasses Twitter and Facebook and all that) or content creation DON’T satisfy users, and would create new industry-changing paradigms that take us off of our current trajectory.
That’s what Apple does.
And while I applaud the notion that an intense focus on the user experience is THE best way to create value, there are dozens of strategic choices within this decision set that you need to get right. You can decide, for example, between investing in robust engineering (like, say, Google) and investing in interface/ecosystem (Apple) although again, the choice is not binary.
But I haven’t yet seen evidence that the strategic choices are based on anything approaching the “Apple Way” in which the design of the system incorporates an understanding of past data and patterns with a broadly strategic re-imagining of the future beyond tactical execution.
Apple succeeds not because it’s a great software or hardware maker, but because it brings to bear all of the tools of interface, hardware, partnerships, closed versus open APIs and systems, economics and monetization, and engineering to the task of creating compelling user experiences that change the game for EVERYONE.
In that way, Linden Lab has become MORE like Adobe than ever before, and less like Apple:
- Like Adobe, the Lab needs users in order to sell its software (and servers). Just as Flash spent years working toward ubiquity in the browser, the Lab is now trying to bump up the number of users in order to facilitate the selling of more SOFTWARE.
- Like Adobe, the Lab is now organized as a software company, a point made by Tom when he appeared on Metanomics (read the transcript).
“I think interestingly enough today’s announcements are as much about Linden Lab as they are about Second Life.”
“So in some sense, and I don’t know if this is going too far, but I think this kind of announcement represents us a little bit taking Linden Lab out of Beta. We’ve really evolved our process for developing software, our approach to doing it. We’ve evolved the tools and techniques that we use, and I think we feel like this is a big leap forward for Linden Lab and not just for Second Life. ”
- This reorganization isn’t towards community management or a focus on user experiences, but rather upon releasing software. The shift to quarterly “releases” is evidence of a shift towards predictability and management, towards features and improvements.
There’s isn’t inherently wrong with any of this. But we’re still a long way off from Linden Lab and Second Life becoming anything like Adobe OR Apple.
Steve Jobs proved that you can have a second act. That you can change the game not once but many times.
Maybe once, Rosedale seemed like he might be the next Steve Jobs. And maybe once we saw Second Life as the same kind of game-changer as the iPhone. But we still wait to see if there’s a true second act for Second Life, or whether we’re beholden now to a culture of release dates.
Does Facebook have a “community” of people who are bound by their culture? Are Apple users such a “community”? No. The internet has a culture too and yet it does not have such a “community” either.
You fail to see the trees for the forest. The SL “community” matters very little, even if the users matter. There has to be customer focus, not community focus. Facebook got to be where it is now by creating platform uses, not by cultivating a “community”. So did Apple. The platform uses are for users, not for the “community”.
I still fail to see what is the importance of “culture” and “community” here. Sorry, but I don’t understand what “an affordance for shared symbology” means, let alone how that may be useful to me. You say that “the role of anthropology is to give us a lens to understand communities of people and to extrapolate that understanding to the broader human condition”. That’s all good and LL’s (bogus, IMO) mission statement may be about advancing the human condition, but the human condition is not about studying the human condition. Introspection is good but it’s only for a very few and it’s useless without something to be introspective about in the first place. Let SL be a platform first and then let a few people like Tom Boellstorff do the introspection. Don’t make introspection and “community” be the purposes
of SL, make its uses as a platform be its purposes and let’s focus on those uses.
As a reasonably long term member of Secondlife (tomorrow will be my third “rezz” day) I believe that one can be an augmentalist and an immersionist at the same time.
There is the history of Secondlife, IE:Steller Sunshine and her beanstalk, and that kind of thing should be preserved as the “footprint” of those that brought us this far. Without those people…there is nothing to buy.
“bound by their culture”, Lem? You’ve got it the wrong way around.
Cultures are bound by people, not people by cultures. Culture is an expression of what is, not a constraint of what should be.
Society, though, is another matter.
Software company my ass, I don’t know any other software in the world where I got to buy it for 1200US and then charge me 295 in monthly fees.
They need to stop thinking its this crazy interface that is keeping people away. People will learn the interface if they have a reason to!
Fix the damn grid, the loading times, the sim lag, the fact that you really cant play an action game on there that’s anything more than scripted playing cards or whatever.
Set up guest accounts to easily get in. I remember active worlds had that, I said what is this, oh I can sign in as a guest and walk around, and I came, and I left well because active worlds stunk, but thats another story. Second Life doesn’t stink, it needs its improvements and it also needs economy. Making money is what drives many, and when the cold reality is that Linden sucks the economy dry in this little pyramid scheme they got going which they are trying to make worse (Linden Homes, buying Xstreet) I have news for them they are not going survive if this economy keeps hitting the shitter. People come because there will be content for them, worlds of unlimited customization for their avatars etc, but the way the Lab is currently operating they will spend all their time looking for new users, ignore the old, and then the place will be baron and dead and the economy will be non existent. Remember the old days when gambling was legal, and tier wasn’t so expensive, the economy was ripe and people were coming in, in droves, there were more success stories. Now, not so much, M Linden sites a “few people who make it full time” Thats not good enough. The Lab is dragging in millions in profit, and I’d like to know where they are spending it? Where’s the marketing campaign, wheres efforts to help the economy? Sorry for this long rant, but it’s not so damn scientific why people are not in Second Life. Fix the product, Fix the economy, stop sucking the users dry for everything you can.
I “was” one of the first Designers giving the “design thinking-process” evangelism at Apple NY in the last 80s.
Part of those monthly seminars to just about every designer in NY who had an interst in 3d design/visualization/interface/macs etc lead to all of this today.
From my POV.. Apple was never the Apple youre enamored by under JOBS–(maybe for a while under scully) Jobs wants to make the world in his image. the obly designers, brunner/ ivy that GET work are ones who do basically what he wants….thats pretty limited -and why Apple will always shrink to the edges when the mass wants the tools they offer. Its not BAD- just like A Ferrari isnt bad -that its not for everyone— by design — but when these designs- agendas- are not examined fully– and with real evidence of expereince–they create the “green mists” of religion that i keep reading here. SO i comment.
from my pov – Adobe – WAS a tool based biz-like most software makers were– Until the the web2.0 attempt to claim web based apps AND the works made in them as the ONLY way to monetize and BE a google–or nothing–sound LL familar.? IT IS BINARY thinking- but today thats the “primary” thinking in technology biz culture.
Adobe failed after outrage over the mew TOS from the many 10 year Adobe tool buying-working with- designers( middle men as you call them— but the professional design industry- as I call
them. ans fnally- the everyday –web citizen who now fights TOSs like it from LL and facebook everday.. and as we now see the GOV 1.0 is now gonna regualte it all-IF its not too late and they are not in thetech corpoarte money pockets– as they are with the banks… TOUGH to be a indie banker today aint it?lol
But Adobe like facebook will TRY again to control works built with their tools, as Apple has begun to heavily in this 1990 turn back- pipe dream- and as LL NEVER did anything but.-I was there too giving the seminars about 3d design and “middle men”..-sigh.
frankly– over 20 years its BEEN THE SAME ACT.the act of technology biz culture— its WHAT it IS..its nature.
Interface IS the only NEEDED MIDDLE MAN..- and hey- we can code that… and more-we OWN it..
Not new- slaves were once owned– they made great middle men… so silent, so easy to motivate– UNTIL they figured out who really did the work;)
so any readers who desire to be anything more than “middle men” or wage slaves for the only ones who own the pencils and paper… well Dusans offered you the path…. and the myth…and your tech heroes…
follow your yellow brick road.:)
the man behind the curtain has always been the same. The wizard wasnt the hero… Dorothy and her pals were… heart brains courage… the THINGS the wizard could NOT REALLY give.
Dusan… tech systems from APPLE/ADOBE/LL are mediums not tools… They are not tools in any of the traditional sence of tools once we allowed them to also be classified as licenses- not property, and as such -virtual systems- always maluable at the “owners” desier… and after 20 years and 20 billion in lawyers and graft- we ARE that system…ALMOST unable to see it another way..
THAT is what I tried to tell those thousands of designers in 1990 in NY as they got theri first CIs and photoshop– and here via my comments- for the last 2-3 years as you “bought” your first rt3d systems for your design biz via LL-
anyhow–
thinking – good
design process – good
technology culture — OZ… a hollow green city- that were better off leaving for home.;)
and so it goes…
i gotta say… i read aris piece. since it was the one that got you to make some grok…
ugh.. it came from so far up the machines ass.
totally binary… both ari and dusan appear to be truly “avatars” of the machine.
avatar ari seems a lost cause;(…. hes so immerssed that he sees choice as only from the machines menu….
avatar dusan— still processing.;)
Tateru, I’m with you but my point was exactly about other people who think that it IS the other way around, that where there’s a culture there’s a community and you have to tend to the culture to cultivate the community. And I meant “bind” in the sense of connecting, not constraining.
You mean there’s hope yet Cube? HAHA
Metacam – don’t disagree, tired of writing what you just wrote…have been doing it for close to 3 years and I get tired of repeating myself.
Brinda – happy rez day.
Yes, I think there is a culture of Facebook, which then informs the broader culture. It’s all words really but it’s a form of language that I think is one of the many appropriate lenses through which to view our lives, and by extension our lives online.
If we end at study we’re just navel gazing. I’d like to think we can think about these things and take action because we did.
Dusan, I did not question the Facebook “culture”, I asked if there is a Facebook “community” that is connected by that culture.
And I disagree with you. This is not study, this is already navel gazing.
Point taken. Blogging is always navel gazing, I suppose Lem. I guess it depends what we do with the rest of our lives that determines whether we’re navel gazing about these issues or not.
Ah! I see what you mean, Lem. Good point.
last night on the last bill moyers journal-(will be missed) his last guest spoke a moment of a myth he liked.. a story..
Zeus to Prometheus…
ok. you took fire (technology) and you think yourll all that….:)-
but their are 2 other things you need to go with it, that youll need, or it’ll mean nothing.do nothing…
prometheus– what are they?
Zeus — justice and reverence.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04302010/transcript3.html
when you find the machine-or AVATAR ARI or dusan:)- who “groks” has the other two– theyll stop offering the free pass for the shiny Jobs offered only to slaves.
culture: The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought.
community: a. A group of people living in the same locality and under the same government. b. The district or locality in which such a group lives.
I am stuck on a few comments and I think it has to do with words. So before I navel gaze or step in it inadvertantly, do these definitions seem sound and are they do reflect what you (Lem, Tateru, Dusan, et al) mean by “culture” and “community”?
Speaking of trouble with words …that last bit should read “do these definitions seem sound and do they reflect what you mean ..”
Grace, your definition is incomplete. [ http://www.thefreedictionary.com/culture ]
a. The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought.
b. These patterns, traits, and products considered as the expression of a particular period, class, community, or population.
c. These patterns, traits, and products considered with respect to a particular category, such as a field, subject, or mode of expression.
d. The predominating attitudes and behavior that characterize the functioning of a group or organization.
The meaning of culture is deeply tied with a community (see b and d above). You have been connecting the two together yourself in your post. And I think that everyone else does, including Dusan. As I Said, I still fail to clearly understand what either one of you is trying to achieve here with the “study of culture”. I can only guess and what I see is a line from culture to community and an attempt to cultivate the concept of “SL community” as a connected group.
Fine, go ahead and “study” this culture. I’m a navel gazer just like anyone else (what else are these comments?) and I find the debate interesting. But I am convinced that where this is all going is making the SL “community” (the concept, not the actual people in it) a purpose for SL. I’m not even worried that it will happen but I am worried that it creates a waste of effort that could be better used elsewhere.
Not sure I buy the definition, Grace.
Culture: the symbolic, linguistic and meaningful aspects of human collectivities. (Which also differentiates it from “totality”).
Overly vague maybe, but differentiates it from what we think of as ‘society’.
Communities I’ll take a stab at saying are groups that share common interactive and material aspects of social life: everything people do – with themselves, with objects and with each other.
This also means that the concept of ‘tools’ might as easily be left to the concept of community, although meaning, symbol and language (“you getting lag?”) (“rez a prim”) can also arise because of the tools used within a community.
Lem –
Great points. In my view, there is no single Second Life community – there are many, and their experiences of SL have a broad range. I’ll agree with Tom on that point.
I don’t care if there’s “one culture” or “one community”, I really don’t.
However, when I think about technology, I think about it as something which influences a lot of things. We can think about it as a problem to be solved – increase retention, increase the economic output. Or we can ALSO think of the ‘cultural significance of change’.
The shift from text to voice chat in SL is a great example. If we pretend that it’s “all about choice” (which is the Lab’s new mantra – social media? It’s all about choice! Viewer? It’s all about choice! Anonymity vs real names? It’s all about choice!!!) and ignore the cultural ramifications, both within SL proper and its possible wider cultural influence, then we’re limiting our imagination about what a “place” like SL can do.
Not unlike Zuckerberg saying “I don’t believe in privacy” – I mean, that’s fine, at least he’s taking a stand, but I don’t have to agree with it – and I can do so not by arguing that it’s not logical, or that the tech doesn’t support the claim, but rather by making a wider cultural argument.
Similarly, the Lab can say: “shopping increases retention” and it’s hard to argue with it.
But I CAN argue that the decision to focus on shopping or Linden Homes negates the culture (the symbolic, linguistic and meaningful activities of the collectivity of SL users) of Second Life.
And I can argue that the absence of discussion about those “meanings” is a negation of the more profound possibilities of SL as a place which, I thought, could provide models for our lives online, and for our wider experiences, societies and cultures.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20003880-1.html?tag=newsFeaturedBlogArea.0
no comment.. but here it is.
@Lem Thanks, that helps me understand your feedback. I think they *can* be tied together but I don’t think that they *must* be (which is probably why the definition is multi-part?)
I won’t speak for Dusan, but for me the stimulus for thinking about the distinctions of culture are driven from a product development perspective. In my experience understanding native human behavior, beliefs, etc is a good way to inform development.
“I’m not even worried that it will happen but I am worried that it creates a waste of effort that could be better used elsewhere.”
Do you have a few suggestions of elsewheres?
“I’m not even worried that it will happen but I am worried that it creates a waste of effort that could be better used elsewhere.”
exactly…. and for virtual3d media (beyond simple entertainment-or design simulations/modeleing)-that waste of time has been repeated over and over since 1992.
and dusan. i think you thunk right- it COULD provide a model…. but it should have only taken you 5 minutes in 2006 to realize it (SL as LL designed-praticed) would be an unjust and harmful model for human societies and culture.
the rear view mirror was there on version 1.0
ari pegged the the unjust..prok attempted to reform it…
but what we got? aboves BIG babies….large. but unlike Aris babies, these are programmed without any free will….robot. not human.
That exhibit was built to ..
“represent Spain’s proposals for improving our cities: such as recycling and clean energies, new means of transport, solidarity, equality or education”
…because the artist says
“our actions have direct consequences on our children’s future and that we have to react to this” …
and the idea was developed because …
“the passion for children shared by both the Chinese and the Spanish culture. “We have given this many thoughts. I have investigated along with Chinese assessors, friends and artists I know and both countries share this worship for children”.
From here: http://www.expo-int.com/en/content/spain_pavilion_unvelis_contents_exhibition_rooms_created_basilio_mart%C3%ADn_patino_and_isabel_co
So, yes it’s a giant baby robot built to make a point about the future, informed by culture. Makes sense to me.
culture..smulture…;)
its a giant frakking baby robot!
i guess at this size theyre korean gamerz proof…-) boo hiss goes the monkey pool.
LOL
Yes, I think at the moment we are free from the terror of Babyville or Happy Babies.
or the robot babies are free from the terror of korean couples out for a 48 hr gamerz fix:)
*blinks*
Giant robot babies? The future has arrived!
Or maybe it arrived with Elvis but I can’t remember the difference between culture and kitsch anymore, you folks confuddle me.
One of the things about Apple is that they do make quite a lot of effort to do two things: one, provide developers with new tools and APIs with each OS release, and two, provide users with a structure to learn about and use these tools and APIs – thus we have Automator and Applescript and Xcode all shipping with OS X for No Extra Cost, as well as Python and Perl and PHP and Ruby and probably many others installed as standard.
On that basis I would be very happy if Linden Lab was to be more like Apple. That would mean that they were regularly providing not only new tools for creators but also providing them in a graded way to encourage new developers. It seems, at the moment, that even the new tools that we are being promised (and have been promised for X years) are going to be limited and create an even greater divide between “user” and “developer”.
Dusan, I will get to you later. SL is exactly like Apple. Tons of API engineers. Same thing, exactly.
But first, NO Grace:
culture: The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought.
NO NO NO. You don’t get to wrap up the diversity of cultures, the plurality of cultures, from some faux meta perspective, and put a bow on it, and call it “the totality of…”. You don’t. No one needs *you* to do that. Leave culture alone, Grace!
>community: a. A group of people living in the same locality and under the same government. b. The district or locality in which such a group lives.
Absolutely not. A zip code is not a community. A geographical location is not a community. Such things also have multiplicities of community. The zip code doesn’t force me to shop in the same store or go to the same bar or vote for the same assemblyman.
“Commmuuuuuunity” has a long and sordid history in SL, with first this gang of junkyard dogs on the forum, then that pack of wolves on the forums, tugging the blanket back and forth. No!
If LL wants to be like Apple they need to lift their game a little. At the moment LL’s game-changing ability is at infinitesimal levels approaching zero. The software simply does not work well enough. I believe the company is working on that, and has a number of problems to solve because of the software’s history (poor documentation, poor coding practices, etc, etc) and those improvements will take time. The problem is that LL is not a start-up. LL was founded in 1999. After 11 years Apple, Adobe and Microsoft had all achieved a somewhat greater impact on the world than LL has managed.
My head is spinning from this discussion. But strangely, I keep coming back to this:
“…Apple was never the Apple youre enamored by under JOBS–(maybe for a while under scully)…”
What? Cube thinks that the dark, boring, near-death days of Apple under Scully were the “golden age”??
I must be asleep and dreaming all this.
I’m increasingly inclined to go with Grace’s working definitions for the purposes of discussion. A community is a group of people who have something in common, whether that be locality or interests or political alignment or whatever.
That’s how the term is used most commonly. Any given community, of course, can be subdivided. It’s also important to note that it doesn’t seem to be a requirement that community members are necessarily in contact with each-other – not the way the term is most commonly used today.
Of course, any community has sub-communities. The community of Second Life users (all people who have the use of Second Life in common) are divided into many sub-communities, some of which may be based around social relations and direct social interactions and some which are based around some commonality of interest, alignment or understanding. Stamp collectors are a community, for example. Even if you’ve never met other stamp-collectors, you’re likely (but not guaranteed, life being what it is) have more in common with them than just an interest in the act of collecting stamps.
When you look at a community (the set of people who have a particular thing in common) and then list out what *else* these people have in common over and above the thing that groups them into the set, then you have culture – tastes in art, food, architecture, world-view, mores, and so on.
When you look at a community, culture is what you see. If I ask you to think of the football community for example, the odds are that a list of traits and commonalities of culture come immediately to mind.
It isn’t reversible, though. People define cultures; cultures don’t define people. It’s foolish to attempt to assess an individual based on religion, race, creed, political ideology, community or culture. People are vastly more complex and interesting than that.
Culture doesn’t tell you about individuals. Individuals tell you about culture. That said, culture, as any stereotype can be a useful tool – but only en masse. It’s useless for informing you about the individual.
Sure there’s an SL community. It’s the set of people who use SL. Sure there’s an SL culture, which is what you get when you look at that community. It probably includes a propensity to proffer conflicting advice.
And that community and culture is further sub-dividable into a myriad of communities and cultures. That’s part of what makes it interesting. You just need to make sure you’re slicing things at the right level.
It may sound like we’re saying something similar but I’m not with crazy.
yes…
Those “dark days” were the best times for us. When Apple aspired and acted “only” like a company wanting to sell tools first. and toss in a little bit of philosphy as a bonus.
The ecosystem at that time for new media/ creative uses of tech by designers/ artists/ etc. was never higher and more fair and easy.
Again, NO to Tateru, who is another would-be cultural maven and purveyor of cultural diktat.
Another imagined culture, by another imaginary meta-viewer of the virtuality — as if all likeminded meta-viewers of the virtuality get to set the cultural tone and declare “there is a culture.”
But they don’t.
No one pays the slightest attention to them; they are hooked up to nothing. Having hundreds of fans of your singing or thousands of readers on the bully pulpit a gaming magazine has given you out of lack of a better idea doesn’t mean you define or run culture. You don’t.
Ordinal, you’re usually pretty good about conceding that the platform, if it is to be “social” and “for the people” (in keeping with your own leftist ideals) has to have openness of the tools for amateur as well as professional content.
Now I see you creeping into the tools notion of worlds where the platform providers are a) supposed to solve everything with “tools” (about which Malaby has written and about which I wrote about long before Malaby on the group tools) and b) are supposed to keep making the betterment of tools their priority, even if it means making the platform less usable for everyone else.
The Lindens achieved an improvement of tools with Viewer 2, so you should be happy. They made what has been called by one “solutions provider” the “table stakes” that used to be “the deal breaker” — the ability to easily and quickly upload Powerpoints, which are the heart of the business and university communications system. That’s all that’s about. This isn’t about delight of the entertainment users — for them, youtube is broken now for other reasons. This is about pleasing the enterprise and university clients who need Powerpoint and other media and who now have it, to the satisfaction of those who wield tools, the avant-garde of the workers, Ordinal.
You should be happier than you are.
A thoughtful and interesting post Dusan.
I don’t think LL wants to be either Adobe or Apple. Not only is the choice not binary, but it’s probably more of a question of the DNA and models we want to draw on for various parts of the SL experience.
One clarifying comment, and maybe a bit of an apology, Dusan. My specious comment (sorry if it came off as snarky) was really that a SL is a patchwork, not a monoculture with some dominant set of values. Shoppers are a culture in SL, just as builders, and educators and .
Cultures (in SL and otherwhere) live, breathe, evolve, morph, adapt, die and are born anew. Cultures coexist, conflict and influence each other. And what Linden Lab does plays a role in that patchwork. What I found specious was that there was some kind of overarching culture, some single set of values, that Linden was working night and day to overturn.
The tools / creator culture is one side of the SL experience. And it’s economically bound with the consumer/fashion culture of Second Life. But not all creators are fashionistas, and not all fashionistas are creators. They are different cultures, and they want different things, value different things. Even with in a culture (of creators, for whom the creation tools are the dominant value and feature of the SL experience) there are distinctions – the creator of a beautiful art installation in SL has a different goal and values than the person who crafts exquisite shoes with an eye to cornering a market.
My mental model (and for some others at the Lab) for SL is an ecosystem – burgeoning with life, rapidly evolving, and with a great diversity of organisms, and a changing environment. We all have an important role to play in the ecosystem. Culture is far too limiting a concept.
Hope that clarifies what I meant by specious, Dusan, and my apologies if it stung.
Edit:
Shoppers, are a culture in SL, just as builder, and educators and [insert your favorite SL culture here]…
T-
product head – correct?
An economy based on nature.
An economy based on human virtualizations.
A economy based on machine virtualization
culture comes after economy…after transactions.
There IS a cultural meme runnning the SL experience as directed by people like you and LL… But its not the one the majority of SL users believe they want to be a part of once they experience it enough to truly get it.
And yes, Dusan, that Cultural meme gets reflected in all levels of “Interface” even if its those of seconf level value, like that designed for the humans in the system.;)
@T In my experience, monocultures only exist in agriculture.
In that sense, the idea that any grouping of humans might present as a monoculture is absurd, yes, whether that grouping is Second Life users, Linden Lab staffers or New Yorkers.
While I think of it… correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t awareness of cultures (users, consumers, staff, and so on) a key consideration in the discipline of product management?
Thanks T –
OK, so what you’re saying is: apologies (for being snarky). But you’re still wrong. And not only wrong, but the idea of ‘culture’ isn’t “big enough”. So my thinking isn’t specious, it’s just too small.
HAHAHAHA.
Naw, I get it. But I really think you’re missing the larger point I’m making….forget the word culture entirely – what I’m referring to are the characteristics of virtual worlds and Second Life that bind it to a larger purpose or possibility, whether you call that culture, goal, vision or anything else….the affordances of avatar identity or 3D immersive spaces are commonalities between all of these things you call cultures.
Those affordances used to have a sense of priority against that larger design thinking/mission.
If I get rid of the word culture and say that the ‘design interfaces’ for Second Life (which provide an experience for individual user communities) maybe that’s language we can agree on – but what hasn’t become clear is whether those design interfaces are prioritizing merely shopping and the first hour, growth and economics, or some larger vision (which I choose to call culture, but which you might call ‘growth’ or ‘delight’ or ‘community’).
I use the word culture as short form to say that the Second Life I experienced as a user, accessing it through the interfaces I had, communicated to me certain things which I then shared with other users – rezzing a prim, the frustration of lag, the way that groups were organized, anonymity, prim hair.
Whether the “culture” thus presented was good or bad it was still a set of “things” which were shared and common among users.
But what are the shared and common things of the future, what are the priorities, and what are the common values or experiences that you think all Second Life users will share, regardless of what tribe or community they’re in, and what is the philosophical (or more pragmatically, what are the value-drivers) for those shared symbologies?
Anyways – I really need to drop the word culture, I guess. It’s overloaded with unintended meanings now, although I do feel it’s an important lens through which to view future development and evangelism.
ah. so we’re finally at “interface” again..
and we “have a ? product manager”.
great…. reality 101. found.
Now HOW about just admiting that the constantly hacked at-remade- version updated “product-code on a disk” is the VALUE. And that all “us” human generators where just the parts of the money machine, that would be phased out, as soon as one could reach a “virtual consensus” to a buyer of such “green mists”. or vaporous systems…:)
oh wait? did i just let the secret sauce out?;)
Cube, it’s such a tired meme really and nothing new. Consumers AND creators enter ecosystems in which there is one party or platform owner or interface ‘controller’ who has hands on the levers and can adjust those levers in a way which benefits THEM far more than the ecosystem. And so the ecosystem accepts it or moves on.
If you want to be a human generator in the ecosystem of Apple, you should do so knowing that Apple can move towards extracting more value and leave you behind as a disposable asset if it’s in their interests.
If you want to work on Android instead you can do so, but the rules are less visible and the value proposition might not suit your temperament or the end user market.
I suppose we can imagine a Marxist state in which each contributes according to their ability and is compensated according to their need, remove the ‘state actors’ who have motivations that often differ from their constituencies, and live in libertarian bliss because the tools are ours and ours alone.
But there are efficiencies created by those ‘state actors’ whether Linden Lab, Apple or Google which, while often mitigated by the down-sides, nonetheless create value.
I’m OK with capitalism. I’m OK with companies who treat consumers, creators or users as part of a value-generating system which can be tracked on P&L statements…and I’m OK with making my own decisions as to whether the value I personally extract is worth the price I pay in risk.
I’m also OK with Marxist ecosystems where appropriate, insofar as they often offer a response to too much aggregation of power….while also accepting that the flow of value is often invisible in those ecosystems, the tribal codes and rules aren’t always published, and power is aggregated in unseen places.
What I certainly agree with is that no one should imagine that any of these systems, platforms or ecosystems is perfect and they need tenacious commentators and thoughtful participants to shed light on the pros and cons, the traps and rewards, while acknowledging that there is progress and not perfection, and that stasis alone would be insufficient to the dynamic of the idea.
you really dont get it….
its not that its new— ist that its ACCEPTED as POSITIVE thats the ironic evil.
i guess you never really were a commerical designer before the computer. you have no history of tools beyond Apple Inc. and you just wont allow the “possiblity” that “progress ” isnt the defacto “outcome of process”.
an independent commecial industry never “had to worry about” staedler/letraset/bainbridge/magic marker/ etc moving on and leaving them with no “carreer” every 3-5 years… tool providers where PART of the economy- NOT the ENTIRE economy .
no fools ever gave them such “power” – until the religion of the mac…and those who couldnt really see what technology really is, not what some guru on a junket tells you what it is.
and yes its an old meme, but one you keep failing to grok. or worse- you actaully think youll be at the kings table for every meal….
well, looks like reuben maybe back, feeding at the kingdon. but dont kid yourself and ill post not to allow you to kid others, the system youre OK with… ISNT JUST.
and in the face of the obvious – much that you promote offers the blue pill that others /or yourself keep painting over red.
i guess that IS one sort of commercial “design thinking” — but not the type I find of any “progressive ” value… but as others note– i only live in the past…or so they are being told to think.
sorry- im being unfair.
figure it out at youre own rate. Others should too.
enjoy the ride.
haha.. “its like terminator” machines taking over”!
from an unknown stock broker today on ABC nightly news..
the APPLE Broadcasting Corp…. proven by the amount of ipad ouff pieces aired all month…
dont say you werent warned…;)
@tateru – LOL on monoculture. Yes, it’s primarily an agricultural term. But it is often borrowed to describe systems that do not have diversity. And SL has lots of diversity.
@Dusan – I think understand where you are coming from now. There are two elements to your idea of culture – vision (eg, a shared purpose, mission, sense of importance, high mindedness etc) and the implicit prioritization that is made explicit by the affordances/UI of the software.
IMHO, our vision really has not changed. SL is a big dream of an open ended, creative, diverse, “place” (that lives inside the computer) and is as rich, challenging, rewarding, frustrating, mundane, sublime, and economic as the real world – except that you can do/imagine things that are not possible.
On the software UI front, or as you so elegantly put it, the “affordances of avatar identity,” I don’t think we really changed it that much in viewer 2 (not to say we didn’t change a lot, we did) but modulo pushing 500 floaters into tabs at the right hand panel and introducing a browser based navigation metaphor, the paradigm is the same.
We didn’t, for example, launch you into a blank space 40% of the UI is the av in a non-space and 60% of the UI is tiles of items to buy, which you can try/buy. We didn’t force the act of creating a profile or linking your facebook page front and center. We didn’t remove the build tools altogether.
Culture, community, whatever – choose your word – is created by shared, common experience. And so in that sense, we are making changes that will ripple across that shared experience. But on the whole – a) we believe in choice and b) we are adding, not removing.
Hope that helps!
Sorry – just to check – it isn’t just me that thinks “what on earth are you talking about? oh hold on, I don’t really care” when reading “c3″/”cube inada”‘s posts, is it? Because it’s just guff really.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hcoyG-Ck3-VwZB7fqpUFXbffoObg
seem’s I’m in good company.
Guff? well. ill leave that for “ordinary” robots.
[...] want to get labeled again as one of the Cultural Establishment. Suffice to say that Tom Hale and I seem to circle around the language on this one as in his comment on a previous post: Cultures (in SL and otherwhere) live, breathe, evolve, morph, [...]
I have to wonder at T’s comment that nothing about the paradigm changed with Viewer 2. I think it most certainly did.
I’ve been in SL since beta. I’ve seen a lot of changes. None of them screamed “grab for money” quite so much as Viewer 2. Everything about it was changed, in order to make the ‘first hour’ easier. Not a bit of it was changed to make the 1000th hour easier.
Viewer 2 was designed from the ground up, by LL’s own words, to make things easier for new users, to make it more like a social browsing experience, and bring in more eyeballs.
Little has been done in quite a while to make building, scripting, or designing any easier, or safer. There haven’t been any noticeable improvements in grid stability, content security (some of this added recently, but why such a long wait?), or improvements in the day to day experience.
What do we do with these new people we lure in with a ‘social network/browser’ look? Apologize to them for not being able to move or rez the clothing they just bought? Apologize again when it disappears from their inventory?
What I see happening with most of the new changes is an emphasis pulled away from content creation, especially on an individual basis, and more emphasis placed on large sellers, the so-called “top 20″ XStreet vendors. LL isn’t the new Adobe, or the new Apple, its the new eBay, shoving aside the individuals that made it what it is, in favor of institutionalized, industrial, ‘store based’ transactions.
I still keep hearing about how Mono will support development in other languages like C#. I keep hearing about Mesh. I keep hearing about stability improvements, bug fixes, and so on. We haven’t seen any of those. What we have seen is a complete redesign of the UI to help Facebook users find their way to the nearest huge fashion designer to buy prim shoes.
Second Life wouldn’t even exist without individual content creators. SL was a blank slate, until those creators came in and made something interesting to see. You want more eyeballs in? You want more paid accounts, and more XStreet commerce? How about working on the tools that allow content creators to actually CREATE something interesting and of value? There haven’t been any innovations in that area in some time. All the focus has been on the ‘new user experience’, which is great.
I just wonder what all those new people are going to have to look at, since it will be the ‘same old things’ we’ve been looking at for a while now.
the large difference between ebay and SL, which will no doubt -eventually- come around to bite LL in a major lawsuit, Is that the top 20 sellers of any genre in Ebay all(assumption but one should hope) have the IP rights to sell what they do. In SL I think anyone can see that in many of the top 20 categories, the IP IS NOT the legal property of the users selling it, or LL which is profiting from it.
SL has been a “gallery” for content developers. The only “ethical” business plan to expand is to find more ethical developers, and take more in “percentage” of sales..(plus any server rentals biz-etc) you find more developers by balancing with more users..
For LL to transform into an “advertising-info-demographic reseller” platform (based on more free users-facebook) and focus on top 20 sellers, many selling (while LL hides behind fake DCMA ethics-slowly eroding in just about every court case that takes place) non licensed commercial IP of others, is not only blantently unethical, but possibly very soon to be determinded illegal if LL gets its “wish” –to be as visible as Facebook. or youtube….
Youtube and Facebbok – both born of web2.0 “visions” have yet to be “monetized” beyond speculative ways.. plus neither seems to be free of looming lawsuits that could bankrupt either in a very short time.
better world? based on corporate visions of pure unregulated avarice?- only anonymous Roleplay “avatars” and realife “thieves” could find this “visionary and valueble”
but keep showing us, green misty machinimas that tell us “money” for crop growers is bad, while money for the land owers is good.—
geez.
c3