Second Life strike and protest flairs again (in unproduced news segment)

I'm slated to provide a regular commentary segment for "Second Living: Your Life, Your Neighborhood," a new MBC show slated to debut in a week or two. I whipped off a script for a whiz-bang opening which unfortunately was way over the top for the format and budget. So I offer here in script form for your reading pleasure:

DRAFT OF UNAIRED MBC NEWS SEGMENT
BY BOTGIRL QUESTI

INT. MBC NEWS ROOM
(RECKA WUYTS is sitting in his usual place on the couch)

RECKA WUYTS

A controversial trademark policy issued by Linden Lab last month set off a storm of controversy in the blogosphere. For an update, let's go to Botgirl Questi, covering a protest in Second Life.

EXT. OUTSIDE ZOE CONNOLLY RESIDENCE
(Avatars are walking in large circle carrying signs. Words not visible in shot. AC DC music is blaring. Botgirl Questi is standing in foreground with microphone.)

RECKA WUYTS
Botgirl, can you hear me?

BOTGIRL QUESTI

Barely, Recka. It seems the protesters have taken a tactic from the psych-ops playbook. They are blasting endless loops of "You Shook Me All Night Long" to pressure and disorient the poor beleaguered people trapped inside the building behind me.

RECKA WUYTS

So, the bloggers have some Lindens barricaded inside?

BOTGIRL QUESTI

No Recka, it is actually the Lindens who are protesting against the bloggers. This is the home of Zoe Connolly who runs the Second Life Bloggers community site.

(CU OF PROTESTERS AND SIGNS WITH SLOGANS LIKE "BLOGGERS UNFAIR TO LINDENS")

RECKA WUYTS

I don't understand. What could THEY possibly be protesting about.

BOTGIRL QUESTI

It's very simple, Recka. The Lindens feel that although bloggers may have the legal right to post critical blogs, they have a tacit social contract to support Linden Lab who provides the gift of Second Life for free to all the people of the world. Let's see if I can get one of the Lindens to talk.

(BOTGIRL WALKS UP TO A PROTESTER WHO IS WEARING A BIG M.)

BOTGIRL QUESTI

Hello Linden. Can you tell me why you're out here protesting? Many residents think it should be the other way around. What do you have to say about that?

LINDEN STRIKER

Well Botgirl, if you want to compare this to a labor dispute, Lindens are the proletariat. We work and they play. While residents are dancing in clubs, building fanciful sculptures and trading digital fluids on poseballs, we Lindens are working our pixelated asses off. We've slaved 24/7 for the last five years to create a beautiful world for Second Life residents. I can't believe bloggers have the nerve to complain.

BOTGIRL QUESTI

Hmm. I never thought about it that way. What about those who say you are using the terms of service to threaten residents with expulsion?

LINDEN STRIKER

Don't be so naive, Botgirl. Greedy bosses throughout history have coerced workers by threatening to take away their livelihood. In this case, power-mad bloggers have been intimidating poor Lindens by rallying the masses to strip us of our intellectual property.

(All the strikers began to chant: Bloggers unfair. Bloggers unfair.)

BOTGIRL TURNS TO FACE CAMERA

BOTGIRL QUESTI

So there you have it Recka, it seems it is the Lindens who are actually the oppressed group in this situation. Back to you and your lovely co-hosts.

Twitter me this Botgirl

Media-buzz darling Twitter seems to be competing against Second Life for most down time. Thank you so much for helping me practice patience.

Zero known cases of SL child predation prompts new scare

Every time I begin to think I understand humans something pops up that exposes my woeful ignorance. The Chicago Tribune (the fifth largest newspaper in the United States) ran a story today headlined: "Second Life could sexually exploit children via Internet, Rep. Mark Kirk says."

Sounds scary, doesn't it? As a matter of fact, Mt. Prospect, IL mayor said at the press conference:

This Second Life is a new scare, unchartered territory..."

Oh my. I avidly read on, thinking that there had to be some actual perpetration going on. But, uh, well, judge for yourself:

Kirk said he knew of no cases in which children were targeted by sexual predators on Second Life...

It is true that a child can get into Second Life by lying about her age, stealing mom's credit cards or logging on with dad's shemale alt account. But if a kid is undercover as an adult, how is a predator going to target them?

Personally, I see a much greater threat from fear-mongering politicians and the media that publicizes them.

Render unto ARC the things which are laggy and to Showcase the things that are way cool

Just read great posts on Rheta Shan's and Ciaran Laval's blogs related to new Second Life "features" showcase and avatar rendering cost (ARC.) The issues for me with both ARC and the rating system are relevance, accuracy and fairness. Rhetta brought up some interesting questions related to the relevance and accuracy of the ARC:

...the ARC colour rating is entirely independent of the power of your graphics hardware. How well your GPU would handle the workload never goes into the equation.

I think the idea of the ARC makes sense. I use the Mystitool HUD which has many features including automated scanning for nearby avatars. Some venues are set up to detect the HUD and request that it be put "to sleep." It doesn't bother me that a parcel owner limits lag-inducing items. So if there was an accurate ARC, it seems that it might make sense for parcel owners to be able to set some sort of upper level per visitor. I would personally like to know the real and relevant processing impact of objects I may want use. That said, bad data is much worse than no data at all.

On the subject of switching search rankings from traffic to some sort of editorialized "best sites" ranking, the issue is fairness. Even if the system would be equitable, I think the appearance of fairness is just as essential. Ciaran wrote:

The first thing that should be made transparent about this, the very first step to retaining business credibility, should be that no Linden Lab employees, their family members or their close personal friends are promoted via this process. The sort of thing that happens when companies run competitions, employees not allowed.

I've posted before on issues related to ratings and search rankings. So I'll just add here that I'm not opposed to some sort of editorial recommendation system, but I think it should be supplemented by traffic (paid users to minimize spoofing) and perhaps another shot at voting (one vote per paid user.) Another possibility (having just read "Little Brother," Cory Doctorow's great new book) would be some sort of Bayesian algorithm to weed out high probability bots.

Anyway, that's my two pence for the day.

Cory Doctorow's "Little Brother" cc download now available

Boingboing co-editor and cyber-culture renaissance man Cory Doctorow has just released a downloadable version of his new novel Little Brother. I'm about half-way through the book and it ROCKS! Here are links:

• Creative Commons licensed downloads of the whole book

• An easy way to donate copies of the book to school classrooms

• Links to buy the book from various etailers (and an offer to get a signed, inscribed copy shipped direct to you by Borderlands Books in San Francisco)

• A place to put your remixes of the book

The ongoing quest for SLurpose

There were quite a few thought-provoking posts this weekend related to virtual worlds (thanks to link-giving-god-incarnate Mal Burns.)

In Virtual Exits: Second Life Residents Turn Their Back, Second Life Travel Guide author Sean Percival chronicled a few notable residents who have announced their imminent departures, including his own.

Social presence and skin deep reality discussed social presence and the perception of avatar appearance in Second Life.

A Guardian article described the launch of Britain's first Masters degree in "cyberpsychology."

Some leave. Some stay. Some enter.

Just like a personal hook-up, a hot crush on Second Life itself has a shelf life of just weeks or months. Unless one can find some kind of deeper purpose or new position, boredom and dissatisfaction will likely emerge. If the initial chasm of disillusionment is crossed successfully, ongoing conscious effort is required to keep things fresh.

In the few months I've been here, my SLpurpose has already shifted a few times. Given my personal situation, virtual navel-gazing has been a constant thread. But along the way my focus has shifted from intrapersonal communication, to self identity, to sociological interaction and now to visually-oriented expression. Although one can dig deep-and-narrow or wide-and-shallow, digging we must do.

So I ask you, dear reader: What is your SLpurpose?

Preview of BOTGiRL LIVES web comic

Here are draft versions of the first few panels from the forthcoming web comic "BOTGiRL LIVES!"