Second Life in 3D

just stumbled across the following news:

The University of Michigan 3D Lab has brought Second Life one step closer to real life by developing stereoscopic support for the Second Life viewer. This recent addition allows visitors wearing special glasses to see the objects of Second Life pop out of the screen similar to watching a 3D movie.

Using the recently released source code by Linden Labs, Gabriel Cirio and Eric Maslowski have developed a stereoscopic version of the Second Life viewer that works with a large-screen stereo projection system. This low-cost system uses passive stereo based on polarizing filters and was built from off-the-shelf components.

The University of Michigan 3D Lab is continuing development of their Second Life viewer, as well as other projects related to Second Life and Virtual Reality. For more information contact “um3d-secondlife[at]umich.edu” or visit http://um3d.dc.umich.edu/.

spotted the news on http://www.nmc.org/sl/2007/01/30/3d-viewer/

Democracy, Nietzsche and Higher Education

I have expressed my disillusion and mounting disrespect for what has become of democracy in our days. On various occasions I have argued that a meritocracy (wikipedia entry), or what Plato described as the wise philosophy king, would be a more rational and sustainable system. That is because a meritocratic leadership or wise king would not be as prone to populist opportunism and short term thinking (as is the case in our current state of affairs).

I lately come to revise this believe as I am (literally) listening to Nietzsche (sitting in the train with a recording of Zarathustra [german mp3 auf anfrage] on my iPod). Nietzsche, who detests the weak, declares that the übermensch, who is ‘beyond good and evil’ [english public domain audio-book], should engage in a constant good war, turns out to be the true ideological architect behind the Nazis. Nietzsche has reminded me about the superior power of the primeval human condition – self interest.

The rule of the majority - democracy - is the only cure (proven to work) against the egomaniac drives of all individuals. I still see all the flaws of the democratic rule we have, and I still believe that the weighting of influence according merit makes a lot of sense (and is actually already present to a certain imperfect degree), but the issue really is to have interested, educated and participating citizens in a democracy. And this is where I want to put the emphasis of this text and elaborate the argument for more ‘cultural citizenship’ (Delanty, 2001) education.

The phenomenon I want to critique is, that the trend to streamline education to the point where it is (only) effective vocational training, preparing people to perform a market demanded job, has gone so far as to cut and rationalize away most ‘cultural citizenship’ education. Because the programs are shorter, while having to transmit the same amount of disciplinary knowledge, there is arguably very little time for the students to engage in citizens education (developing informed opinion about political/axiological issues) and participation (organize and participate in constructive critical discourse).

If we follow the late capitalist tendency to have universities (and after that schools) serve the demands of the (free) market (ever faster training of oven-ready workers), while neglecting the demands of democracy, we will end up in a system where the most charismatic (read entertaining) and populist (read doing most for the majority instead of the smart) politician will win elections.

I believe that education must be a free public good implemented by autonomous institutions, which (next to delivering vocational training) engage citizens in learning about today’s pressing problems and foster their active participation in tackling them. Hence the implicit opinion that a) the WTO should not succeed in making education a globally tradable service just like any other but that b) it is the any nation states best investment to ensure good education and research. May they cut on military and police surveillance budgets for a change!

Highly recommended:

Delanty, G. (2001). Challenging knowledge : the university in the knowledge society. Buckingham [England] ; Phildelphia, PA: Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press.

starting a business in your Second Life

I just found a nice & short article by Laura Tiffany on entrepreneur.com, which introduces the virtual environment Second Life and reflects a bit about the abundant entrepreneurial opportunities present in this new business environment where people spend about 1’000’000 $ per day!

I especially agree on the importance of the following and question Laura poses: “But the bottom line for entrepreneurs is, will Second Life really pan out? Or is it just hype, since the majority of people have never ventured virtually or even heard of it?” Laura at least answers positively: “Your mom may never understand exactly what a 3D world is, or the point of an avatar. But enough other people do that a whole new class of entrepreneurs has been born to serve their needs.”

Linden – Second Life’s producers – also maintain a page listing business opportunities: http://secondlife.com/whatis/businesses.php

Xmax mail 2006

I have the tradition of sending out a xmas mail to everybody i like to stay in touch with. It contains info about projects and brainfood i believe are really good. Here are the recommendations:

Open Educational Resources (OER)

I guess most of us agree that knowledge is the key to development. Open Educational Resources (OER) is a movement (supported e.g. by the UNESCO) that attempts to cooperate in a global alliance to provide teaching materials of all levels on an open source (no copyright) basis. Not only can everybody freely access e.g. video lectures but the idea is also to collaboratively continually improve e-learning materials. Amazingly even eminent universities especially the MIT (Open Courseware Project) but also e.g. Harvard have already bought in and have opened big chuncks of their content. If this really takes off it will be a good weapon against the global knowledge divide. My supervisor is the head of the UNESCO chair for e-learning at my university and we are actively trying to spread awareness and support these efforts, I’d be happy to get you involved.

It’s hype – but I like my Second life

When Second Life (SL) started it was a virtual world (a green floor, gravity and lighting) where you could walk around with a little avatar but there was nothing to see or do. But that changed. The clue is that the responsible Californian company allows you to create (/program) more or less everything you can think of. And people have created a fantastic world with flying islands, hip hop clubs, the US Congress (including virtual clones of some ‘I-was-there-first’ politicians who really show up to take their vote catching to the next level). I tell you I hardly ever touch any computer games but that is not a game, that is a virtual REALITY. Being the radical constructivist that I am, the real creative possibilities seem truly amazing. If you are not curious, no pasa nada! It is quite slow, the graphics are still very basic, and many (including me) are very cautious regarding the importance of commercialisation (the Reuters and the German Telecom just produced the first commercial Tabloid) and consumption present in this Second Life. But hey – does anybody still remember Mosaic or Netscape these were the first platforms that allowed for a completely new experience of the web and that is what I believe SL is. Hyped or not I had some fun hours in there and I will happily meet up with you and go on some excursions. User accounts are free and I recommend this Wired Travel Guide: Second Life

MakeZine & SocialEdge, AfriGadget and Kiva

Here come a number of InfoSpaces: MakeZine makes me dream of a better world in which people use their creativity and the other three show me that this world does actually already exist:

MakeZine’s slogan is IF YOU CAN’T OPEN IT YOU DON’T OWN IT. It is a great tinker & hacker magazine, complete with construction plans and sometimes with ‘do it your self’ packages and even beginner sets. I got a couple of the easy treats for xmas and it was great fun soldering and put to unintended use ;-) As nicely put on the SocialEdge blog: MakeZine is a blog full of things that I will probably never make, but that being said, it's nice to know that if I ever did need a personal submarine, I could make one out of a pig trough (no, I'm not joking).

@iPod owners: You have to check the iPod hacks page – there are do it yourself solarpanel chargers, software replacements that make you independent from Apple’s awful digital rights management… and the list goes on and on.

SocialEdge & AfriGadget are two blogs that implement the creative MakeZine spirit to sustainability and development. Both sites collect instances of social entrepreneurship & innovative technology application at its best. Here is one I liked best: One project that particularly caught my eye on the site was the "Playground Pump" ... a water pump that's generated from a children's playground merry-go-round

Last but not least there is Kiva (Loans that change lives) – an NGO started by some techies, who droped out of yahoo and the like, in order to setup an online service that allows you to choose one individual person in Africa, Asia or Latin-America who’s entrepreneurial project you want to support by lending him or her some dollars. (I’d call that personalised micro-finance.) I have become a lender to Marie Bikope in Togo who wants to open a cosmetics shop and to grandpa Nadjaf MardanovI in Azerbaijan, who wants to expand his little ale house, and I can only tell you it feels pretty good to know what is happening with the money and has it – not to speak of how happy I will be when I (most likely) get all of it back in 12 months ;-) (Here I wrote a more rational analysis of Kiva)

Lastly I’d like to recommend you some movies that I saw and really liked:

The Fountain

Big Fish

Volver

Vendetta

Sin City

Frida

Campain for a Parlament at the United Nations

to facilitate the final preparations of the launch of the campaign for the establishment of a UN Parliamentary Assembly in April 2007 we have posted some *initial* information on the net. In particular, the text of the UNPA appeal is now publicly available in over 20 languages and may be signed online.

Please visit
http://www.uno-komitee.de/unpa/

Feedback and comments to improve the initial campaign pages are very welcome.