Reading Radar

Ok, so that’s not quite what they said, but walls do abound in Second Life, and Pandora Wrigglesworth has noticed.

Very cool. There’s no end to the interesting ideas she comes up with!

On the podcast sometime in the past, the topic of lightweight or mobile SL clients for portable devices such as cellphones came up, and Torley shows that this is no longer a wish, but a “now is.”

Vollee has an sl client, complete with windlight sky and water visuals, running on several cellphones. While it’s not ready for the iphone yet, it will soon be, making me wonder if it will work with the ipod touch and wifi or not. It does say 3G or wifi enabled phone in the faq…

When their iphone version is ready, i’ll definitely load it on the ipod touch and find out.

Avatars live forever. People don’t. Yet.

There’s no doubt that one of the things science and medicine are working towards is immortality. People don’t want to die. But in the rush for endless life, they forgo thoughts of the rightness or wrongness of this, of what it means to be human, and whether or not we’re built for this. And why we clearly are “rezzed” with an endpoint built in.

One podcast I’ve recently started listening to is the Big Ideas podcast. This is the audio from a tv show that has as its premise lectures delivered by notable thinkers speaking on some topic of expertise. Sounds boring, right? It’s not, at least none of the lectures I’ve listened to. These are perfect for biking to work, btw, because I find I can get them about half done on the way in and finish them up on the way home.

Anyway, one episode featured Leon Kass talking about immortality. And death. And dying. Asking questions about whether or not extending life significantly or even eternally is really the right goal that science and medicine should pursue. He brings up points about the effect life has on us psychologically, and the selfishness of wanting to keep life for ourselves possibly at the expense of the natural way of keeping life intact, which is to say, procreation and continuation of the species through subsequent generations.

It’s an interesting topic. We live in a society that flees from death with its arms and legs pumping as hard as they can. We worship youth with a reverence unmatched by that of devotees to almost any religion. Plastic surgery is rapidly becoming a “have/have not” divider, and the emphasis on appearance and youthful attitude has never been greater. In my mind, we’ve over legitimized the importance of it to the point where parents are so desperate to be their child’s best friend, they no longer want to be parents in terms of discipline, structure, and any of the other adult supervision constructs that teach kids they can’t just do whatever, whenever.

It certainly must be a topic that SL’ers have considered. Your avatar does not die. It does not grow old. It does not gain weight and lose its eyesight. And no doubt the avatars are a standing testimonial to our every living desire to be beautiful, overly idealized, strong, youthful, eternally young creatures. How many guys log into SL and immediately go into steroid mode? A lot. How many women want a waist you could put one hand around but want enormous breasts that curiously have never heard about gravity? A lot. It goes back what I see as a problem with humanity. We refuse to shake our mental constructs even in a place where we could shake off every last one of them if we wanted. Even in a virtual world, we’ve chosen the same thing we can’t let go of in the real one. The thing that can literally crack some people if they think they have to give up. Perfection. Eternal youth. Idealization.

I know I pick on face lights a lot, but they are really to me a symbol of this. We’re so obsessed with perfection, that having shadows on our faces is called unnatural? No. It’s not. Not unless you live in a photography studio. And if you do, and you think that’s how everyone should look, please. Stay there. Don’t come outside.

If the virtual world has ever brought stark contrast in your mind to your RL plight of heading towards the eventual inevitable, listen to this lecture. It’s an important topic, aimed at an increasingly myopic society willing to trade the interests of future generations for their own selfish ones now.

I couldn’t find a link to the audio for this episode on their website, but if you go to the itunes store page for the podcast, it’s listed second from the top in the show listings. Grab it there (http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=129166905). Or directly from their rss feed, the link to the file is show as http://www.tvo.org/podcasts/bi/audio/BI_Full_20030321_LeonKass_0×0_40k.mp3 and the rss feed link is http://www.tvo.org/TVOspecial3/WebObjects/TVOMedia.woa?bigideasfeed .

I’m not sure how long that episode will be around, as the web site and the date shown for the show in itunes differ (2005 and 2003, respectively) and the web site didn’t have an apparent audio link to the Leon Kass lecture.

Cheers, old timer. And be advised: we are going to die someday. It’s how we’re built.

A couple episodes ago on the podcast I played a song by Antiqcool called “My Avatar.” One of the lines of the song is something to the effect of “It’s easy to get lost without a trace in cyberspace” or something like that. I don’t recall the exact words, but they were close to that.

The reality of the matter is that getting lost in cyberspace isn’t easy. It takes work, and it’s undoubtedly getting harder all the time as more powerful monitoring systems are set up by those with a vested interest in knowing who you are and what you’re doing.

Everything you do in cyberspace is able to be traced rather easily. For sure in second life, your IP is logged and it’s easy to correlate all your accounts back to you. While the Lindens can probably be trusted as well as anyone not to give out this kind of information, you can gain someone’s IP address rather easily in second life if you know how with a small amount of unwitting participation on their part.

Just as you can keep track of what your own computer is doing in terms of inbound and outbound connections, others can too. The strengths of a lot of how the internet works are also some of its weaknesses as far as privacy goes.

If you ever like considering such topics, you might enjoy reading “Little Brother” by Cory Doctorow. It’s aimed at teens, but it’s not a bad read for adults either. I found some of the situations a little hard to believe, namely the outcome of the book. You’ll know what I mean when you read it, but it has to do with a state standing up to the Dept. of Homeland Security. Most of the technology in the book is plausible, if not currently available, and it’s not hard to imagine that a reaction to another terrorist event in the country would result in even more monitoring of US citizens than already exists.

In my opinion, it’s extremely important to never take what the government says about homeland security and surveillance of its citizens at face value. Whatever the motives or the consequences of these actions, well meaning people screw up and people who aren’t so well meaning gain power that they wield inappropriately. At the very least, people need to pay attention and decide for themselves what level of privacy they are willing to sacrifice for attempts at security. Note that I say attempts at security, as one thing I definitely did agree with in this book is that we really aren’t all that much safer now, but we have lost a great deal of privacy to get to roughly the same point.

So have fun out there in cyberspace! And remember, if you’ve come visited me in SL, I just might have your IP address, so be nice. It’s certainly possible to have a little fun with an IP address and the type of lax security measures most people implement at home. Not that I would advocate such games.

What makes a second life redneck cry? Umm. Second Stress?

It’s interesting the number of comments I’ve seen lately by people on the various social networks about wanting to get away from SL, having so many commitments they are just overwhelmed by them, and really sounding like the whole thing has just become a huge obligation instead of any kind of fun at all.

At the risk of being misunderstood here, I have to say that the only cure for this is to meet whatever responsibilities you’ve set up for yourself in SL, just like you would any other, but as far as social obligations go, do things on your own time table. What I mean is, log in when you want. Don’t log in when you don’t want, aside from having a script or a build or something for a client that needs done. But don’t feel like you HAVE to be in second life otherwise. Your real friends will understand, you do have a life with things to do, and nobody is well rounded as an individual if all their energy and time goes into one thing. It’s just not possible. It’s not healthy mentally or emotionally either.

I think the people with the least stress in SL are those who log in when they want to or need to get something done, and then get back out again without having to worry about a huge stack of social obligations. I think of Airsafety as one of these individuals. He’s got stuff he wants to get done in SL, but he’s got a full life and he’s beholden to none as far as feeling forced to try to make it in. All of his friends understand. Sure, we’re glad when he’s around, and when I do see him on, I try to say “hi” and get caught up before he has to log off. But I’m not going to get upset that he’s doing things he needs to and things he enjoys that keep him out of SL.

I get the impression that some of the people with this stress don’t have that situation. That they feel obligated to log in. All I can say is that you have to get that off of yourself and be allowed to feel like you’re logging in by choice, whether it’s to accomplish something for an SL business or project, or just to be with friends. It has to be fun or worthwhile, or you aren’t going to do it. Second Life social situations cannot always be handled like real life ones, because everything you do in second life is on top of all the things you want or need to do in real life. Anyone really involved in SL has to grok that and have understanding towards those seeking balance as a result. It’s just not fair or healthy to have any other attitude.

I realize for a lot of people, this is their relaxation and fun. But when you’re online in SL, you’re often getting hammered with IM’s, reminded of things you meant to do, but haven’t had time, and generally driven to distraction. Is that really relaxing after a long day at work? If it is, great. If sometimes, it’s really NOT… hey. Stop. Log off. Get some sleep. Get some alone time without 39 people in your ear. If you’re like me, you need that downtime from having to respond to people. You need some thinking time without the world piling stuff at your doorstep. Giving that up every day for months and years on end without balance is immensely draining and stressful. And I’m convinced that’s what these people are going through.

So, really… the next time you’re in SL, and you find yourself getting sidetracked to the point of frustration at not getting something done you set out to do, log out. Say goodbye to whoever or whatever is sidetracking you, and go. Get out. Go ride your bike up a steep hill and then back down again as fast as you can. Go get some coffee. Take the dog on a walk. Read a book, shoot at the neighbor’s garage, whatever gets you feeling mentally refreshed again.

PS. More on the redneck thing later. Hehe.

One of the things everyone keeps harping about (rightfully) is that interoperability of virtual worlds is going to be key moving forward, and something second life needs to be geared for in order to maintain success in the future.

Today LL kicked off their Open Grid Public Beta program to help virtual world developers get their virtual worlds interoperate with SL. At the moment, it’s teleport and login interoperability only, no assets or cash money will be able to make the quantum leap.

It’s based on the Open Grid Protocol, which, I guess if I were a virtual world developer, I’d know what the technical details meant. Or maybe if I just had an IQ north of 32.

It’s definitely interesting times, and the prospect of world hopping is very cool. Obviously for SL residents, the prospect of hopping in as a ruth somewhere will be less appealing than it might, and I suspect the problem of inventory, attachments, and money transferring over won’t be the easiest of issues to iron out, but it’ll happen eventually. There’s really no choice. Right now it’s a lot like saying we can only email other people using the same ISP, or call people on the same cell carrier. Fortunately, people are working on changing all that.

Read two good posts (one linking to the other) today reminding us yet again of how SL residents always come totally unhinged anytime something changes and then in a few weeks don’t even remember it anymore.

Voice.
Trademarks.
Windlight.
Dazzle.
Gambling ban, although this one definitely did affect some people who ran businesses who I’m sure still definitely do remember this one.

What else? What next?

People bitched about how, in flycam mode, the word “flycam” appeared at the lower right of the screen but would not disappear with the UI toggled off. This was not aesthetically pleasing for machinima and other such activities.

LL fixed this in the new 1.20 release – they got rid of the word flycam altogether. So now when you DO have the UI on and DO want to know when you are in flycam mode, you don’t.  Normally this is not a huge deal at all, but it is if you are editing objects. Anyone with a spacenavigator knows what happens if you go into edit mode and start using the spacenavigator while not in flycam mode. Bad things, my friend. Bad things.

You can disable the ability for this to happen accidentally by going into the Advanced menu -> Debug settings and finding an option for JoystickBuild or something like that (I’m not near my puter atm).  Set this value to false. This means that, when using the spacenavigator it won’t matter if you are in flycam mode or not, if you are editing objects, they can’t be moved by the spacenavigator inputs.

Why they couldn’t just leave it in and have it toggle off with the UI is uncertain.  If anyone knows a setting that makes this happen, please let us know! Thanks.

UPDATE : Stuart Warf points out that you can disable joystick build in the input/joystick controls preferences. Apparently I found the debug settings option first because I was already in there anyway. Sorry. /me hangs head in shame. Now that I’m home from work, I can not only verify this, but give you a screenshot. Here’s where that option is:

Yay Stuart. Enjoy that tidbit from the founder of the SLPN himself.

Podcast Island has taken its share of shots by people in the past. Sometimes it’s about the fact that Gary’s not around much (and he’s not at the moment, he’s dealing with RL work), sometimes it’s about the fact that it’s often empty (which it is to a large degree, atm).  The funny thing is that a lot of the people who say it’s empty are the same ones who didn’t want to stick around and help make it not empty.  I heard on another podcast this week that we are boring and stuffy there. My immediate mental response was “how would you know?”

Recently I was told by someone that they didn’t want to live on podcaster island because of all the weirdos. What weirdos? That’s either me, Arri, Rob, Itazura, or Chug, and now Stuart, a lot of times. There is no one else there, remember?  Sure, there are some shops and some presences set up, but I rarely see any of those people.  I’m paying rent on the SW corner and I’ve never been bothered by anyone.  Then again, I’m personally not looking for privacy and seclusion. So maybe I just don’t care if people blunder in. That’s part of the fun.

I guess where I’m going with this is that I stand by my answer to Crap on his “Podcasting in SL” series of interviews.  My answer to the question of is there a podcasting community in SL is no. There are several communities, and people move between them, collaboration takes place between them, sometimes verbal potshots and comments are issued towards the other communities in them, but they are definitely distinct and (for the most part) fairly fluid.

Everyone has their ideas on how things should be run. I have mine. Certainly if I wanted to I could lob a few cheap shots back at people without even having to strain, but I’d rather not. I know people are all limited on time and energy, and I don’t mind if people aren’t coming running offering to help build community on podcast and podcaster islands. Certainly there’s areas where those of us who are there could do a lot better. So that doesn’t bother me. But you’ll have to forgive me if my enthusiasm for helping your communities sometimes dampens for a little while after another snarky remark or a stupid statement. I’m only human.

Update: I appreciated Crap’s response to this post.

Sitting here with an iPod touch, posting to my blog from it, it occurs to me once again, people need to create. It’s in our DNA.

SL is full of examples of it. Builders, scripters, artists, bloggers, podcasters, teachers, community developers… all working to build things of lasting value. To DO something.

I’m going to be exploring this in more detail, but not from my iPod!