Second Life® residents all log in to Second Life for different reasons, and Soren Ferlinghetti is launching another survey to find out a bit more about the residents’ view of religion in Second Life.

The intriguing aspects of Soren’s survey is how exactly Second Life, as an “alternative” environment — there is good reason why we have “avatars”, manifestations of our selves in a virtual environment — relate to “physical” religions.

Thanks to Jade Lily, there was an event on “Immersionism vs. Augmentism” on SL’s Orange Island, moderated by Tom Bukowski, our “resident anthropologist”. The discussion was lively — even if necessarily “short”, a lot remained to be said about the subject, as always But several bloggers (many of which attended the event) talked about the issue all over again; it’s clear that Henrik Bennetsen’s essay on the subject is still being read and discussed and that there is still a lot to be said about the two philosophies.

I used to be an “Immersionist” way before I knew what that meant. There were good reasons for me not to reveal my real identity back in 2004 (I had been stalked in RL through the Internet before, as people looked me up on blogs and forums I participated). I wished to continue the joy of participating on a vibrant online community that allowed me both to elude eventual stalkers, and a place where I could have some freedom of expression without fear. Second Life allowed all that — nay, back in 2004, it was even mandatory to keep quiet about your RL! — so I was immediately attracted to it. More to the point, I found out several hundreds (or thousands perhaps) of residents that had the same view. These were collectively labeled “Immersionists” later on.

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It’s time to give voice to Extropia DaSilva again — and she’s back with an earlier topic, which she has expanded quite neatly on this latest essay of hers. Enjoy! — Gwyn

IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID.

The ability to replicate the means of production themselves from cheaply available elements is what underlies most of the utopian expectations of a society with molecular nanotechnology. One commentator on an online forum asked ‘why the hell would anyone pay for something nano makes with no effort?’. Second Life, though, suggests such an argument holds no water. After all, this is a world whose content is built from resources instantly available wherever you happen to be at negligible cost, and which can be duplicated with no effort. But most reporting on Second Life does not describe a world where products are given away free. Instead, it’s all about the money. ‘Non-existant’ objects being bought and sold for real cash, land barons earning fortunes from virtual property. Also, Gwyneth Llewelyn wrote about the socio-political beliefs that SL residents subscribe to (‘Anarcho-syndicalists’, ‘Anarcho-capitalists’, ‘libertarian/neoliberalists’). Of these groups, only the first ‘idealise a SL where money, land and prim limits are unnecessary’. I don’t know how many residents consider themselves to be anarcho-syndicalists, but common sense dictates that the group believing money is unnecessary are in a minority compared to the many groups who consider it necessary, for the simple reason that the latter are many and the former is one. (more…)

This is the actual title of a white paper released by Proximity London, a well-known creative marketing agency in the UK. Last September, they have concluded a research on virtual worlds, and the purpose of their lead in-house researcher, John Urpeth, was to dispel the myths spread around by the media about virtual worlds.

I came across John Urpeth’s paper, presented on a conference where Justin Bovington a.k.a. fizik Baskerville, CEO of Rivers Run Red, Britain’s (and probably Europe’s) largest Metaverse Development Company, also was a speaker. Sadly, this conference seemed to have been totally ignored by the media; I just happened across the actual paper presented by Urpeth today, through a marketing & advertising feed that I subscribe (and often ignore!).
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In part one of this essay, we examined that most infamous of dystopian nanotech outcomes, the ‘grey goo’ of self-replicating machines. In this second part the view shall be widened as we examine how molecular manufacturing might affect society as a whole. I am obviously not the first person to attempt such a thing. In fact, ever since Drexler established the field with his books ‘Engines Of Creation’, ‘Unbounding The Future’ and ‘Nanosystems’, there have been no end of speculations regarding how society will adapt to this paradigm shift in engineering. Some of these speculations are decidedly dystopian, others defiantly utopian but if there’s anything their authors share in common it’s the fact that none of them have had first-hand experience of a society built on widespread access to molecular manufacturing. This is simply because the technology is still very much in the theoretical stage of development and no practical nanosystems currently exist. (more…)

The Mind Child is back with another essay Enjoy — Gwyn

Does the name Mitch Kapor sound familiar? If you are interested in the history of SL, the answer may well be yes, because he was one if LL’s earliest investors. “Mitch Kapor was the only person who got it”, said Rosedale in an interview with Inc. Magazine.

Personally, Mitch Kapor first came to my attention through an essay of his, published in 2002 on Kurzweilai.net. As with LL and SL, Kapor was putting money forward in anticipation of a future outcome, but this time the money was riding on a failure, not success. The bet centred on a question: Will the Turing Test be passed by a machine by 2029? Ray Kurzweil said ‘yes’, Kapor said ‘No’ and whoever loses will donate $20,000 to a charity selected by the winner.

In his essay, Kapor explained why he was sceptical of the possibility that a machine will ever pass the test. ‘To pass the test, a computer would have to be able of communicating via this medium (text) at least as competently as a person. There is no restriction on the subject matter…It is such a broad canvas, in my view, that it is impossible to forsee when, or even if, a machine intelligence will be able to paint a picture which can fool a human judge’. Kapor further elaborated on why a computer can never mimic a person, but what struck me as I reread this essay recently was this: Just possibly, SL may prove to be a crucial link in the enabling technologies of human-like intelligence.
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PART ONE: SL AND THE GRAY GOO PROBLEM.

When Second Life launched in May 2003, it attracted a citizenship not unlike the Internet’s Usenet group of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Toward the end of 2006, a software tool known as Copybot went on sale, and for a brief while our metaverse reflected the web of the late ‘90s with its Napster-related controversy of peer-to-peer and open source versus IP theft.

2003-2006. Three years, condensed into which were events that defined the growth of the web over more than a decade. I wrote in a previous essay (‘The Metaverse Reloaded’) ‘the pace of change is quickening’ and you might take this as further proof. But I want to talk about something else the Copybot controversy highlights: Namely, the fact that history repeats itself; it rhymes.
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AN ESSAY BY EXTROPIA DaSILVA.

Extropia’s back with more delightful reading — Gwyn

It is a fair bet that any company releasing a 3D social space to be inhabited by customisable avatars, who shop for virtual furniture with which to furnish their similarly virtual houses is going to find itself compared to Second Life. And that is what has happened to Sony’s new online service for the PlayStation3, which it calls ‘Home’. Not everybody agrees that such comparisons are applicable, and among those who think they are not is Sony’s Phil Harrison: “The approach that Second Life takes is that they provide the tools, and they are entirely server-based. It’s a very different approach, and it’s really inappropriate to make any direct comparison”.

Wise words. After all, in Home, you can customise your avatar and place whatever furniture you deem desirable wherever you want in your virtual private living space, but you cannot make your own furniture in the way that SL allows you to. The fact that SL is continually created by the collaborative efforts of its residents is, strange though it may seem, simultaneously its greatest strength and biggest weakness. The strength obviously lies in the fact that it never stands still and seems to be beyond easy classification. Is SL a ‘game’? Yes, if you want it to be. Is SL a 3D MySpace? Again, if that is what you want, that is what it is. In fact, Linden Lab have done user-generated content so brilliantly well that SL is both nothing and everything. It is almost as flexible as your imagination. A few limitations aside, it is a metaverse that adapts itself to be what you want it to be.
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Extropia DaSilva is back with another essay, and this time, she’ll be “going quantic” on Second Life. Explaining complex science using Second Life as an example, she’ll take you through a voyage through time and space, making you realise that “common sense” and “quantum mechanics” cannot be employed in the same sentence together. I hope you enjoy Extropia’s musings. Have fun! — Gwyn
Have you ever stopped to consider how the impossibility of logging off from SL might ultimately reveal the quantum physical nature of time?

Probably not. Quite a few people, though, have contemplated the relationship between the abstract space of SL and the physical world in which they live. In other words, SL challenges some people to consider the nature of reality. But in ignoring the concept of time, such speculations cannot help but be impoverished. Reality is, after all, comprised of space AND time.

Perhaps the reason why time goes unnoticed is because the way we experience it in SL does not differ from our experience of time in RL. Therefore, we are not challenged to define reality in a temporal sense in quite the same way that the different experiences offered by SL questions the spatial dimension. But that is a shame, because our everyday concepts of time appear to be quite contrary to the laws of classical physics, but the quantum cosmological concept of time appears to have interesting analogies with the metaverse.

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Once more, I welcome Extropia DaSilva’s insight and her most excellent newest essay, that she so kindly allows me to reprint here. Enjoy her fascinating thoughts - Gwyn

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that the pace of technological change is quickening. One of the surest signs of this is the tendency for useful analogies and metaphores to become defunct with almost alarming swiftness. A company releases a virtual world and it easily fits into the catagory MMOG. But another company releases an MMOG, does away with the end user license agreement and the notion that all content belongs to the company, putting creativity in the hands of the users, and we find our old analogies no longer hold.

Still, while those lured into these metaverses might consider it vital to understand what this brave new world represents, others might consider it an ivory-tower debate quite unconnected from everyday concerns. Fair enough. But let’s consider another technology that has become rather more integrated into our everyday lives, namely: The Web. For here we have another example of sweeping change making metaphores and analogies redundant.

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