We just wrapped three episodes of the Metanomics Master Class – and I have to say, it was a really exciting series for me. First, I learned a lot, but it was also encouraging to talk with people who remain as enthusiastic as ever about the potential of virtual worlds (and Second Life).
I’ll have more thoughts in the coming days. In the meantime, I thought I’d post my closing commentary from yesterday’s show:
Last week, Alexander Macris, in talking about games, said that the challenge in creating great immersive games and stories is to remove the distance between the player and the game, to remove the sense that there’s a screen or an interface in the middle.
And I can’t help thinking about this idea of distance.
What makes a user-generated virtual world like Second Life unique is that the distance between creator, creation and consumer can been reduced until it’s barely perceptible.
Even if all you’re doing is ‘creating’ your avatar, by joining a virtual world you too have become a creator. This removal of distance – being brought closer to the acts of creation, the artists rezzing prims, and our own ability to add our own voice is, perhaps, THE defining power of a user-generated virtual world.
We’ve seen in this series that what might look like making 3D objects can actually be much more – yes, we’re rezzing prims, but those prims make up stories, architecture, narrative, experiences and ideas.
I read and hear people say that we need to import more social media into Second Life, that our markets for virtual goods need to be Web-based, or that the benefit of mesh is that we can IMPORT content.
But I like to think the opposite. That the challenge ahead isn’t in what we can bring IN – but in what we can export OUT – whether we can help the rest of the Web remove that distance, that ‘screen’ between creator and consumer and to help us feel less like anonymous consumers of the Web and more like participants in a global collaborative act.
Creativity is a courageous act….because creativity is the act of rezzing our expectations, fears, and hopes for the future.
And our task ahead isn’t to overcome the challenges of the first hour or to make things more Web-based, but to ask ourselves the question: how can we help other people to take what is, in the end, a leap of faith….to help them to access the courage that is the creative act and to join us as we imagine our shared future.
Exporting not importing
there’s a business model we should all latch on to.
Dusan, the Master Series rocked. Thanks so much for doing them.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Dusan Writer. Dusan Writer said: The Courage to Create – the deeper value of virtual worlds http://ow.ly/28J53 #metanomics Master Class wrap-up commentary [...]
interference .
as ive been suggesting for decades is the issue.
and what the tech engineers usually sell as “interface”
anyhow… the export of uses for immersive realtime 3d will come, but even as adobe screams flash3d today in its paid for PR,
the tools MUST be ones, professional designers and producers CAN monetize work from.
If not, more of the 20 year same loops of “master meets” like yours will just continue.
As the grey hair;)( =experienced:) architect said at your meeting yesterday.. VR for architects, was something he first got into…30 years ago via NASA.
i showed it at the Whitney Museum 15 years ago;) to a room of NYC finest;)
change requires REASONS, not just Technologies.
Courage has been there for decades, the problem isnt courage, its how and why tools get to become mediums in todays tech/banker driven world.
anyhow back to your shows.:)
What’s intriguing is some of the stuff that we discussed before the show which didn’t come out in conversation, and it was around the issue of reasons. As my guests said, the change isn’t coming from architecture itself, which is focused on practice and tools, but from clients.
We’re finding the same thing: clients who come and say that they want to use virtual architecture to understand their clients, to prototype the future.
As reasons increasingly drive the metaverse, worlds like Second Life increasingly find that they’ve gadgetized themselves out of that conversation.
Where there are reasons, technology becomes part of a wider solution. When those solutions go beyond simply “what tool/technology/world” do you have to sell and into “how do you practice the art of creativity.”
That’s where we’re finding our greatest success and the tech/tools have become background.
yes dusan, but the simple truth is that the “reasons” still cannot overcome the “illusion medium” that green mists have created:)
today FLASH 3D is all over the blogo/rss illusion… and youll just have to wait and see , i guess, that it will soon dominate and “recreate” the “reasons myth” the same way folks like you;0 and LL/SL did for rt3d media for the last few years…
soon, they- adobe- and soon -you- maybe:) will be meta meeting again, and selling flash3d and whatever- see and wait till we get outa beta- bells and whistles- THEY-adobes- tech/bankers decide.
the designer/architect is nowhere in that reasoning.. they dont have to be… not is a system that dosent sell “tools”.. but only “a stock valuation” as a “company as the actual product”
anyhow… time will tell.. again..and again.
on a seperate note– i see everday- first generation( 1980-90s) ADOBE new media experts having to rebrand- resell- theyre EXPERIENCE as visual design profesionals –all because of adobe and apples recent lovers spat….
theve been courageous to explore digital media since 1985;) but sadly limited to not undertand the real interplay between tools and mediums….
the art of creativity is the victim…. since art requires both experience and skills to be created…
all we have today are temporary skills….sold at most certificate 40k a year trade schools…who are also bought and sold by adobe and autodesk interests…
SL provided only another temporary skill/sell/meme ..this time for rt3d emdia… and created its own myths.. millions of us.thems..lol.. that are now back to the only keepers that would have them… the SL bank.
anyhow. live -learn.:)c3
There is more to life than earning dollars.
In rezzing our imagination by creating stuff in VW’s we are engaging in a process which C. G. Jung called “active imagination”.
This is a process whereby we make manifest parts of our unconscious, and the benefit is wider than the dollars earned, we actually learn to know parts of ourselves which by definition are normally hidden.
A virtual world is a research lab of the psyche if we allow it to be and exploring the psyche is the most exciting exploration we can ever be engaged in….. yes, it needs courage.
really soror?
http://www.raphkoster.com/2010/07/08/playdom-acquires-metaplace/#comments
tell that to the virtual worlds enlightned who relaized their navels of felt while building metaplaces..hype virtual world community.
oh. theres a truth to virtual worlds… the truth of selling to playdom and –note the comments–at raphs site.. that EXIT in valuations of a company that made nothing successfully profitable?:)
oh maybe they made a flash game and a blog..
anyhow- the VCs and raph are happy…but ill leave it to the VR worlds pundits to re-examine the green myths and poetics that metaplace “inspired” in its fanz and “unpaid” contributers to its “value” ation;)
i dont attack business… btw- im attacking the “perception of value” that ironically is all about “perception” which many are finding TOO late” is the only medium of virtual worlds…
back to the show.
farm games..reality show celebrity meltdowns on cue..and lotto- the values we admire most in the post material age:)
Um, still, after all this time – I don’t get why it makes a single bit of difference Cube? I mean, seriously – who CARES?
Since the beginning of time people have followed dreams, been sold tonics and wonder potions, bought tulips or iPods, believed in the Web and seen the bubble burst, thought that Betamax was the next big thing only to end up with a machine collecting dust, believed in Lee Iaccoca and then Steve Jobs and then not Steve Jobs and then Steve Jobs again….and, well, who cares?
You might back the wrong horse in the race, you might spend all your time evangelizing about the economic miracle that is a Beanie Baby, and you might lose… you might feel disillusioned, and the day when you thought we’d all have personal helicopters or all be walking around a 3D metaverse might never arrive.
There are evangelists and companies and charlatans and true visionaries between “the people” and a future in which some particular vision or tool or media is just part of the backdrop of life.
With the invention of the auto there wasn’t a Big Three, there were hundreds of small car companies, some of them led by people extolling a particular brand of the latest technological miracle and creating Ponzi schemes and false visions of their own – and they stood between us and the auto just kind of being there.
The world is full of myths – advertised myths and the collective myths that Jung talks about. Over time we buy into myths by mistake or end up feeling gullible – or we buy into a myth because it helps us to follow our own personal narrative, because we seek ways to express those universal myths, the Hero with 1000 Faces.
But it’s condescending to hound on the people who have a love for Second Life or the current version of whatever’s fashionable – as if they’re too DUMB, too gullible, too stupid to understand that this isn’t the promised land. Maybe they just love the fact that they can play out their own personal narratives, discover something about themselves, find some fellow travelers on the journey, live, learn, be disappointed, cry, weep for joy and move on (or go and read a book instead).
Commerce and advertising and spin and VCs are all wonderful things and all have their downsides and false hopes. If a tool or a media is meant to be part of our collective cultural fabric it WILL get there, eventually – and who cares how? I won’t dictate to anyone that we need some sort of purified world in which we all happily crowd source together or whatever in order to scrub ourselves clean of evangelists and companies offering false promises.
I suppose I have a faith that while we might all be gullible at times, that we still learn from the experiences, we meet interesting people, and out of the ashes of one experience something might arise somewhere else (hey, remember, Viagra was a heart drug and sat on the shelf for 20 years
) – oh dear, I just opened the blog up to about 1,000 spam ads….thankfully, the market provides, and someone somewhere created a spam filter.
myths and lies are not the same thing.
but who cares.. right?
im not the condescending one.;) and it takes no courage to be part of the popular ideas. So thanks for your expert analysis of me or my intent. Obviously Im relieved to give it as much value as the rest of what youve just posted,;)
I’ll let others decide what to call (prophets or profits) those who continue to facilitate systems that are by their intent – not ethical.
sometimes happy “poetry” just wont cut it.
to others, it matters. different elements to different folk. but it matters. ask em.
anything else is bull. really.;) until youre heroes of the popular myths make us all the same submissively pogrammed machine.
at that time, youll be happy to know, ill stop posting here. cause then it wont matter and I and nobody else will care.
sound good?;) oh joy.:)
All this to do about mesh, and no word when it will go live? Its not like the residents could use a heads up. They been talking since August of 2009 about this.
I’m still waiting for the ethical argument, I suppose, Cube, because I still don’t see the part that’s unethical – that Raph sold to a VC? That people create free content because they enjoy doing it? That Linden Lab raises tier? These things might be foolhardy or based on a subjective choice that turns out to be the wrong one, but I don’t understand what’s unethical.
Or which lies? Which specific lies are you talking about?
I keep poking you and prodding because you just won’t give a clear statement about what’s unethical about it.
Now, if you think that advocating for virtual worlds is part of the ‘popular ideas’ then, um, I must be really missing something.
This idea of submission and enslavement I suppose seems to be where you’re headed – that we become so enamored of tools and prophets that we risk losing our humanity, but give me some credit – that’s something I write about constantly, that technology holds both promise and peril.
Computers in a bank can make things more efficient, but computers in a bank can also collapse the financial system.
Virtuality can help us to explore ourselves, connect with others – but it can also be home to the cult of the Singularity. It’s not binary.
If after close to 2 million words I haven’t made clear that there is both promise and peril in everything from identity systems to VC models based on empty revenue models then I guess I’ll keep writing and you can keep appending until we make sure everyone gets it.
unethical systems are those that take value from others without proper or agreed upon compensation or reward. They thrive in places where illusion and faith outweight factual research and historical experience and “caring”.
being a commentator on virtual worlds media and business is not the issue.
What one is advocating and what ones return on ivestment is;)
One should be readily caring enough to want to examine the metaplace/LL “method” to market, and to gain valuation, not for the actual engine, but for its “free testing and branding as an exit sell commodity or tool for only the companies final usage(game dev)” vs its “sell as a platform for communities and better balh blah blah”.
This should be written about and examined in blogs such as yours as much as its advocation as a “self expression/realization platform to make a better world” — a notion that im sure youll agree was covered more than enough in such similar metaverse blogs and public conversatations…ones you “cared” about.;)
selling a product or a company isnt unethical, but the methods used to build one can be..yes? And its clear to those with any history in 3d rt online media, that the majority of monetary value made over the “meta – decades” hasnt been made by “a better worlds population” but by the few who keep “selling us to have faith” in their words..and we’ll have a “better world”
so i for one welcome examination of “faith” vs. “evidence” around virtuality and media. but dont say “who cares” and only write about the “pr” fed out as faith, for a small groups financial self interests, and expect no pushback – to use that other guys’ blog lingo.;)
examine the ethics of “free user gen” product valuations/sells as much as you like.:) maybes there a “better world” to be found cause its “virtual”.;)
i doubt it.;)
followup-
yes. you dont “only” write about the “green mists” and the “fed pr”….
maybe i suggest a “where are they now” entry once in a while…it might bring some reality to the future that seems here many times to be “more virtual” than it should be for “our” own good.;)
courage or stupidity to create in todays tech driven system?
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/07/tom-silverman-proposes-radically-transparent-music-business/
this guy seems to have some “real?” numbers…
as i said.. the selling of faith over history is why one should “care”.
creatives — especially. if one wants “more to life” suror– like “food and shelter”…and freedom.
I totally agree with the author here. It´s a matter of opinion, nevertheless. I could not express my thoughts and opinions better than ALexander Macris did.
I disliked Mark Kingdons “vision” of SL becoming a RL tool, mainly displaying pre-made content from different platforms like the web (shared media) or now mesh (3D professional). His “vision” was expressed the best by his active doings in SL (being M. Linden):
Mark did an Art Exhibition in SL where he displayed his work. I do not want to judge on the quality of his work. But it was REAL LIFE art. 2 dimensional art created for a RL environment and imported from a RL environment. This tells everything about his general attitude and explains a lot of LL activities during Marks reign.
As CEO of a company running a VIRTUAL reality, why did Mark Klingdon NOT use this virtual reality for working on art created within that virtual reality? Why did he not use the tools the company provides for content creation instead of simply importing what is omnipresent in RL on different platforms anyway?
The REAL vision would be to EXPORT the unique character of SL art (which is alive and kicking in SL, see the outstanding SL work of artists like Feathers Boa or the Carleone Arts Collective) and SL based art into RL. Mark Klingdons attitude is not exactly visionary, it is a step backwards, in fact. And a Linden Lab CEO who forces a revolutionary platform to take one or two steps backwards cause of a lack of faith in vision and a lack of understanding the platform and it´s potential is doomed to fail, as his conceptions are doomed to fail.
And he obviously DID fail.