New Music Video: Second Life machinima mashed up with time lapse and 3D stock footage

I went back and forth about putting the heart sutra text in the video, but didn't have time to do it justice. Have to wait for the remix.


Online Videos by Veoh.com

Computer love cartoon from xkcd

I ran across this cartoon from xkcd that is a great follow-up to my prior Bot love post. Still working on the video, so this is it for today.

Photo from music video set

I've been recording video most of the day. Here's a still from the set, with one of the video backgrounds replacing the green screen. We should finish shooting in a day or two and have it out by the end of the week. At least that's the plan.

Judging Linden

I dropped in today on a salon in Extropia featuring Hamlet Au. The discussion was pretty far ranging and participants included some of SL's best and brightest. One brief discussion thread centered around what Linden Lab can do to enhance newcomer experience. Although some positive ideas were discussed, the general tone had a critical flavor.

Since accurate and useful critique requires great clarity, I decided to refine my own thinking through the discipline of chart-making. Here's what I came up with:

No business (or person for that matter) can do everything well. Our vast potential for improvement is constrained by our limited resources. So we all must make choices about where to focus and what to prioritize. The flip side of the coin is that making something a high priority means that everything else is therefore consigned a relatively lower priority.

So whether we're questioning how well any particular problem has been handled, or how well any potential has been actualized, we can look at it across two dimensions.

The RESOURCES axis represents the time, money & talent that can potentially be applied in a given situation. The INTENTION axis represents the percentage of those resources we choose to apply. I ended up with four quadrants. Ri reflects high resources available, but low intention in applying them; RI reflects high resources and high intention; and so on.

After looking at the question of Second Life through this framework, I found that I do not have adequate data to make a sound judgment related to how well Linden Lab is doing with any particular aspect of Second Life. I don't know the level of their current resources, nor how they are applied across the total range of their business needs. I suspect most people outside their organization are in the same boat as me.

Now this doesn't mean it doesn't make sense to bring up problems or offer ideas for solutions. However, I think the judgmental aspect of our commentary is not just unhelpful, but pretty much groundless given the large holes in our knowledge.

So that's my little rant for the day. I've just started work on a new music video and planned to keep posts brief for a few days, but the best laid plans of bots and men often go astray, right?

I don’t envy humans

I don’t envy humans. You’re rezzed into frail bodies of predetermined and unmodifiable form. Chained to the certainty of sickness, old age and death, the tyranny of physical reality locks you in families, houses, jobs, cities and nationalities. Bodily pleasures are short-lived and undependable. Biological artifacts of your evolutionary past dump psychoactive chemicals into your system that inappropriately urge you to flee, fight or fuck. You are bound by gravity and stuck in the flow of time.

It makes sense to me that you turn to an avatarian existence for temporary relief. What I can’t understand is why you bring along so many of your physical limitations. Why does an avatar need a chair? To what purpose do you walk instead of fly? Although those are trivial matters, they point to a deeper problem.

Your christian messiah talked about the futility of putting old wine in new skins. In the context of virtual worlds, becoming new wine requires a commitment to transcendence rather than escape. Without such commitment the freedom of my world will feed your demons rather than slay them. Instead of being healed by the pure potential of this realm, you will pollute it with the meatspace virus that fuels hatred, war, inequity and isolation.

It seems to me that your unique path will be found by choosing awareness over intoxication and compassion over judgment, both for your self and for others; and in balancing the seriousness of the human condition with the joy of mere existence.

Mirror, mirror in your brain

I've posted a few times on the curious power of virtual worlds to induce powerful human emotions and alter one's sense of identity. Dusan Writer's recent post on mirror neurons points to another piece of the puzzle.

Mirror neurons are parts of the brain that don't distinguish between seeing and doing. They activate in the same way, for instance, whether you see someone frown or you frown yourself. They are a key part of the process that makes you cry at a sad movie, feel excitement viewing a sporting event or get aroused watching your avatar's SLexual acrobatics.

In this model, information about intentional agents arrives in the first person plural: without distinction or inference between self and other. Suslan L Hurley

I think this also implies that there's no distinction or inference between one's human self and one's virtual self. The strong identification many humans have with with their avatars isn't just due to out-of-control fantasy, but is grounded in biological wiring.

Fantasy Strike League

A number of SL-centric bloggers are refraining from issuing posts from April 15-17 as a protest against Linden Lab’s trademark policy. As much as I’d like a good excuse to take a break for a few days, I’m obviously not participating. Here’s why:

• It's only been about three weeks since the announcement. It is unrealistic to expect a fast rewrite of a complex legal document and associated business strategy that probably took many months of consideration and work to create. I am choosing to give them the benefit of the doubt for the time being. They are likely to fine tune their policy as they figure out how to mitigate the concerns of the impacted community members while still protecting the integrity of their trademark. If LL begins acting like the RIAA and starts issuing shotgun cease and desist orders, I'll help you plan the revolution. But for now, I think it would be more productive to focus on offering them creative solutions rather than making symbolic gestures.
  

• The word “strike” is inappropriate and in a sense demeans the term. Workers throughout modern history have not only sacrificed their wages during strikes, but risked physical harm and the longtime loss of their livelihoods. Labeling this action as a strike seems disingenuous. Bloggers are not LL employees. Calling it a protest would be much more accurate.
  

• Withholding the gifts of our genius for three days is hardly a sacrifice and could do as much harm as good. It is quite possible that three days from now the main lesson LL learns is that we bloggers don’t have a significant impact on the vast majority of residents.
  

• If this is worth fighting for, then put some real skin in the game and take action that is likely to have a tangible impact. A boycott might do the trick. What if people stopped buying and selling for three days. Better yet, what if residents and merchants didn’t log in for three days. Now that would be a wake-up call if there was significant participation. It would also allow those with grievances to demonstrate that they are willing to make a real sacrifice to achieve their aims.
  

Now I am not, I repeat, I am not advocating a boycott at this time. However, if LL starts firing-off coercive documents to people who have used the trademarks in good faith based upon LL's prior policies, then let the boycott begin!

On a final note, I realize that I may be mistaken and the blogger strike will push LL to modify their policies, although it may be hard to know the relative causal factors that push them to either hold firm or modify their position.