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ALT! Who Goes There? – Part 4 – by Extropia DaSilva
THINGS WE THINK WITH. Try this exercise. Stop reading for a minute and take a look at the objects around you. Think about how they influence your life and your thinking. In the previous essay, we concentrated mostly on how other people play a part in shaping one’s developing personality. But humans are not just social animals, they are also prolific toolmakers. The cultural artefacts we have created enter into…
A for Apologies?
Ok, I admit it, this year’s April Fools’ “joke” was probably in bad taste and definitely went out of control… and I guess that multiple apologies are in order. However, the end result was curiously quite positive, so bear with me for a moment… My problem is that I’m not famous for my sense of humour, so it’s often not easy to find a theme to blog about on April 1….
ALT! Who Goes There? Part Three by Extropia DaSilva
In the previous essay, we saw how philosophy embarked on a failed quest to find the core self. Something else that has occupied philosophers’ minds through the ages is the nature of reality. What is it, in and of itself? Are we in a position to know? In concepts and thought experiments like ‘the veil of Maya’, ‘Plato’s Cave’, ‘Descartes’ evil deceiver’ and ‘Nozik’s Experience Machine’, we are invited to…
Speculative Splitting
Well, drama aside, I just wanted to refresh a suggestion for the Road Ahead for Linden Lab®. It is deeply buried inside the long list of comments on my recent post. I cannot take credit from the overall concept, because I saw it suggested somewhere else — and sadly forgot to keep a link for it, because I didn’t think it was worth considering at that time. A couple of…
Being in Shape
No, this is truly not about how to take your avatar out to a gym and work it out Fortunately, in Second Life, getting a trim and fit shape is just… one click away. It is also not a resource to help you out among the millions of shapes out there to find the one that looks the nicest. However, it’s related to both — and to three other things…
What fun :)
Today I decided I was allowed a free hour to remember my good old days in Second Life®, when all I had to worry about was… to chat with friends and look for exciting new things While consulting my balance on XStreetSL, I came across daiz Papp’s ORACUL-Girl Xstar AO. I was not aware of daiz’s most excellent work, mixing mocap animations and hand-made ones, but I thought that at…
Alt! Who Goes There? (Part 2) An Essay by Extropia DaSilva
TWO: THE BIRTH OF THE SOUL AND THE DEATH OF THE SELF. In philosophy, investigations into the nature of self-consciousness can be divided into two main theories. ‘Theories of self’ attempt to determine what kind of thing the self is, or attempt to show that it is not a ‘thing’ at all. ‘Theories of personal identity’ are primarily concerned with personal identity over time. In other words, they set out…
Alt! Who Goes There? An Essay by Extropia DaSilva
ONE: DOLLS AND ACTIVES. In ‘Virals And Definitives In SL’ and other essays, I discussed the concept of the ‘Pairson’: A character in an online world that is controlled by two or more people in RL. This lead to various questions, not least of which was ‘to what extent does the character remain the same, if the person behind it has changed’? A more common challenge to personal identity is…
SL 2.0 Beta still running too slowly on your Mac? No worries!
If, like me, you’re not the kind of person that subscribes to ATI’s or nVidia’s RSS feeds and immediately jump to the nearest computer shop as soon as the latest graphics card is released, and spend thousands of dollars every year purchasing the latest and greatest to squeeze more performance out of your computer, read on. A few simple tricks might give you that extra bit of performance that might…
The new possibilities of the XStreetSL “money API”?
I have to confess, I’m quite excited by the tremendous possibilities of the recent announcement by Linden Lab that XStreetSL now allows easy L$ transfer between the website and the avatar L$ account, without a fuss, and not requiring in-world ATMs at all. And it’s not just because a lot of more people will start to shop at XStreetSL from now on; no, it’s really because of the underlying technology,…
Fake Avatars and the Duplicates Paradox: An Essay by Extropia DaSilva
In ‘A Tale Of Two Avatars’, Wagner James Au reports on the discovery that there are two ‘Hamlet Aus’ on the social networking site ‘Avatars United’. Like many things to do with life on the screen, a superficial consideration of this discovery leads to a clear-cut and simple conclusion: There is the real Hamlet Au, and then there is a fake Hamlet Au. However, again like so many things to…
Some fun evolution on skins over the years…
One skin designer (Namssor Daguerre) and 6 years of the history of skins, on my other blog Watch never-released-pictures of Awful Gwyn in BSSE (Before Second Skin Era) [UPDATE] My interview with Namssor Daguerre on Ana Lutetia’s blog, which is the #10 most read blog in Second Life. Thanks for letting me publish it there, Ana
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