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The Archives
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02.24.08Leaving Second LifeVirtual worlds grow, the number of users increase, the number of platforms expand, and in the competition for attention single-purpose virtual spaces position themselves for business, privacy, or specific functions. This increase of users entering environments that are in many ways unique from other Web-based applications in their ability to embed actual economic value and production is an exodus that thinkers like Ted Castranova say may reshape society. While I disagree with how we should port lessons from virtual worlds to government policy, I agree with Castranova that the exodus may be profoundly dislocating. A friend considers leaving Second Life - ...
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01.25.08Alts, Virtual Worlds, and TribesIs our emerging virtual world literacy facilitating freedom, or quasi-religious indoctrination? On the heels of my previous post about alts, and the insightful commentary that followed from others, I ran across an intriguing post (design note: one which would be far better if they'd change the background wallpaper that almost makes the site illegible) on the inter-subjectivity between real and virtual spaces. First, the poster notes: Virtual worlds thrive on the content of the communication that is crafted meaningfully through the imagery of friendship. It is crafted to deal with individual users through an inter-face of choice and freedom, as a world ...
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01.22.08The Place of Alts in Virtual Worlds and Second Life: Possession or ExpressionIs having an 'alt' in Second Life a moral failing? Where does "Your World, Your Imagination" begin, and "Our World, Our Imaginations" take over? In an environment with purposeful fluidity of identity construction, open-ended opportunities for exploration and immersion, and as many prims as your land can handle - does assuming a secondary identity constitute a moral failing, or is it maximizing the promise of the platform? The issue of alts (setting up a second, separate account which thus constitutes a "second you" within the Second Life world) is not just intriguing, but also a hint at the challenges related to ...
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11.30.07Avatars Living Past DeathI've written at length on how we deal with death in virtual worlds, and the implications of the technology for the future, where the question of who will "own" an avatar will become increasingly complex. An interesting post and discussion at Massively as to whether avatars should live on once the real person behind them has passed on, picking up previous discussions and postings of my own that speak to how strange the issues of identity will truly become, especially as avatars themselves increasingly become repositories of deeper value. Once an avatar's typist is gone, the avatar should be removed after a ...
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11.15.07Avatars and Identity: Conference on Orange IslandHot topic of the week it seems - avatars and identity, meaning, the "brand you". Orange Island presents a series of talks and discussions with what seems to include a robust lineup, including: Avatar as a Personal Brand Persona and Identity Transparency in Business Details here. Very much in line with my post of yesterday on virtual worlds and identity.
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11.13.07Virtual Worlds & IdentityIs an avatar us, who owns it, and if our avatars are simply code on a server somewhere does the owner of the server own the rights to that representation? Or in granting a license to be "present" does the use of that license grant us ownership of what we create from that license (including identity). A much longer posting to follow on thought of identity based on a recent death which impacted a virtual world, but first a quicker response to a posting by Taran over on KnowProse. He first points out an article covering the theft of an avatar on ...
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10.18.07Real Life/Second Life/Facebook Mash-UpWell, we get closer and closer to our Facebook profiles and mySpaces having all sorts of little annexes, bedrooms, studies, virtual houses with our cross-platform avatars wandering from room to room from friend to friend a great virtual migration of our digital selves. Now, with the Facebook ability to add mini apps, two initiatives allow you to append your Facebook profile with your SL profile. One reviewer looks at two applications. For purists, this will not come as good news - the concept of the magic circle survives. And the choice to connect a RL identity with a virtual avatar should not ...
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10.12.07IBM/Linden GoalsDetails on the goals of the IBM and Second Life partnership: - "Universal" Avatars: "Users could maintain the same "avatar" name, appearance and other important attributes (digital assets, identity certificates, and more) for multiple worlds." - Security-rich Transactions that allow users to exchange assets both more securely in individual virtual worlds, but also across multiple worlds. - Platform stability: As a part of this goal, IBM also announced that Kaneva would be standardizing across IBM servers. More generally the goal is to "accelerate user adoption, deliver faster response times for real-world interactions, and provide for high-volume business use." - Integration with existing Web ...
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10.12.07The Future is a Barbie DollFor all my talk of immersive, virtual and mirror worlds, the future is in some combination of the quadrants outlined in the Metaverse Roadmap: "True" virtual worlds are primarily games - intimate simulations of a space, with intimate defined as meaning that users are agents "either through the use of an avatar/digital profile or through direct appearance as an actor in the system." But even games are starting to slip into augmentation - the ability to port ecomomies and group/social information into the wider world. Emerging products are building social sites that mimic the success of mySpace or Facebook - only this ...
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10.02.07Virtual vs Artificial Property in Virtual/Synthetic Worlds, (and what to do with real houses on artificial lakes)I've only been here a few weeks, blogging away, and have only been in virtual worlds a few months - I admit it, I'm a newbie. So I've been back-tracking a bit and reading through past posts such as a thoughtful post by Nobody Fugazi on the value and definition of "property" (as in real estate) in virtual worlds. Nobody observes that if we swap out the word virtual for artificial, we might not get so easily confused by notions of "property". We tend to think real estate, tangible items, a closet full of frito lays. If I was to talk ...
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