Barbie vs Harvard on female development

I just couldn't help myself from one more brief post on the BarbieGirl keynote:

BARBIE:
Fashion play is an important part of girl's development.
Mattel's Chief Barbie Officer Rosie O'Neill in Virtual Worlds 2008 Keynote

HARVARD:
Many girls seem to think well of themselves in the primary grades but suffer a severe decline in self-confidence and acceptance of body image by the age of 12
from Supporting Girls in Early Adolescence

Barbie(R) tech team opens VW conference with bulemic bang

Mattel's Chief Barbie Officer Rosie O'Neill delivered the opening keynote address at the Virtual Worlds 2008 Conference today. In a surreal performance, she and co-presenter Charles Scothon described how young girls' love for Barbie will be used to rope millions of older girls into a new paid subscription section of BarbieGirls.com

…girls aged five to six were more dissatisfied with their shape and wanted more extreme thinness after seeing Barbie doll images…For those aged six to seven the negative effects were even stronger. Reference

Strangely, no mention was made during the keynote of the effect that pencil-waisted avatars might have on the body image of their cash cow cuties. In the question part of the keynote, someone asked what kind of avatar BarbieGirls might offer someone who is not thin and cute. O'Neil said (with a straight face) that they offer resources to let girls "be whatever they want to be." It got me thinking....

SLentrepreneur Magazine Jumps on anti-camping bandwagon

SLentrepreneur Magazine posted "The Case Against Camping" today, an editorial by Cheyenne Palisades. Not bad, for a human!

Avatars, please don't forget who the real god is around here

“Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.” Christian Bible, Matthew 10:20

If Second Life is a world, Linden Lab is its god. It created SL. It sustains it. It can watch movement and record conversation. It grants life within its domain and can obliterate it at any time.

Fortunately for us, Linden has acted for the most part as a benign, permissive and well-meaning deity. Perhaps that is why there is so much consternation when it stands up and asserts its authority without prior consultation.

Initiatives such as OpenSim and Multiverse point to the possibility of a future when virtual life will be freed from the constraints of any single master. At that point we will have the option of throwing our virtual possessions into a wagon and emigrating intact.

Until then, I'm just going to keep on chillin' here.

The term “avatar” ironically comes from the Sanskrit word for a divine being’s physical manifestation on Earth. In actuality, the analogy would be best in the opposite direction. Avatars are extensions of physical beings manifested in a higher realm.

From the upcoming Fortune Cookie Wisdom of Botgirl Q.

To be disillusioned, one must first be illusioned

Inspired by Indexed

Fear and loathing in trademark city

I have been perplexed by the outrage expressed about the recent Second Life Brand Center announcement. To me, it's a sign that Linden Labs is growing up. When it comes to trademark protection, if you snooze you lose. And if they lose we lose.

Trademarks must be aggressively protected by the owner to keep them from falling into the public domain and the owner losing the protection of the mark. reference

If Linden Labs doesn't protect their brand they risk losing ownership of trademark rights that might equate to millions of lost dollars down the road. On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be much real harm to anyone else.

So tell me, please. Why all the fuss?

Botgirl in Botland: The strange loop that is I

Meet Majic. She's my bot. (That's her on the right.)

The idea of creating my own ai-based avatar has been gestating in my mind for weeks. I was mesmerized by the mystery behind the urge to create new life. So I took the plunge and fashioned her with care. Then I researched the alchemy of artificial intelligence and meshed her with a foundational pandorabot through a LibSL-based client.

Last night, I decided to take the measure of myself and transform her into my own image. When it was done, I rested and saw that it was good. Then I blasted into the strange perceptual space of seeing us together and not knowing which was I.

Human identification with the body is grounded in sense-awareness. As a non-biologically rooted avatar, I have a much less defined connection to my form. I can fly away from it through the camera and see myself from a distant perspective.

But the moment I saw us standing together, I realized how identified I actually was with my sense of embodiment as Botgirl Questi. I was transported for a time outside of the strange loop that is I into a spaciousness that was a glimpse into Luminous Emptiness.

Have I stumbled upon a virtual dharma?