The physical, the meta-physical, and the virtual. Tertium datur est.

Since Descartes the dualism between mind and body had been framed in laws of physics on the one hand, and the reason of the mind on the other. This distinction stays in large terms true, but there is a shift to make an even finer distinction between what is going on in the conscious (meta-physical) part of the equation. One prominent modern representative of this new understanding is Habermas. He develops his concept of the life-world in contrast to traditional rationality with its logical mechanics of reason (Luh). Habermas’ life-world can be related to philosophic notions of liberalism and individualism; schools that focus on the non-rational causality of interest or pleasure. The distinction is based on the observation that one can not argue for the pleasure or interest of others. One can only know by oneself whether one enjoys or is interested in something. This is different from objective reason and leads us to the notions of inter-subjective reason. The life-world concept thereby splits the Cartesian mind into a subjective-reason and inter-subjective-reason. Both valid and relevant.

Similarly the virtual space created by the internet creates a middle form between constructed reality and existence, which has been dubed “society frozen” (Sassen), alluring to the fluidity of the continuous emergence of the human/social condition and the fact that in a virtual scenario all states are recorded as fixed (frozen). In many ways this is simply a development from earlier forms of meta-physical virtuality – as in books or newspapers – but the technical virtual representation of realities (ideas) has a certain co-relation with Habermas’ life-world as there is no rational why someone chooses to represent himself in a certain way in a virtual environment but through the virtualisation the choice becomes existence (facts) thereby the Cartesian dualism is transformed into a trinity: The physical, the meta-physical, and the virtual. Tertium datur est.

Microsoft and revolutionary user interfaces?

I just read an interview with a spanish researcher who works for M$ and mentioned MS Seadragon as a revolution in user interfaces. So I went and checked it out: The idea is to have frictionless zooming in and out of interfaces so that you can have a really big desktop and zoom in and out of the various tasks you have running, or a big document and jump pages without need for reload. The promises is really big:
1. Speed of navigation is independent of the size or number of objects.
2. Performance depends only on the ratio of bandwidth to pixels on the screen.
3. Transitions are smooth as butter.
4. Scaling is near perfect and rapid for screens of any resolution.

and the performance of the beta viewer still very buggy. At least on my mashine it dod not produce good results neither with Firefox nor with Explorer.

Nevertheless i will keep an eye on it as the idea is really powerfull.

Optimism for Open Metaverse

There is much discussion about the fact that most virtual worlds - including the flag-ship second life - run on proprietary non-standardized code. The netizen community is of course horrified by the fact that single companies have despotic power over their metaverses, but are we really doomed to remain in proprietary virtual worlds?

I don’t think so. There are open source efforts to create virtual worlds - e.g. croquet and the very Linden Labs (after already having open-sourced the client) are now openly supporting a roadmap for open source development of their server code base. I quote:

8<----snippet from a dialoge on SL Edu list>

Actually, if you want to work with Linden Lab, the best place to go is here: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Open_Source_Portal

OpenMetaverse uses Linden Lab technology, but is not affiliated with
Linden Lab. .. but LL control the roadmap and want to determine the protocols,

We control the roadmap in a way not unlike Linus Torvalds controls the Linux kernel, Mozilla Foundation controls Firefox, and MySQL AB controls MySQL. We're still relatively new at this, so it's going to take time for us to get good at it, but we'll get there.
8<--------snippet from a dialoge on SL Edu list>
https://lists.secondlife.com/pipermail/educators/2007-March/007555.html

Unfortunately i don’t have the reference at hand, but i remember reading about an interview with Linden Chief Mr. Rosedale (the man who we will probably have to remember as causing the huge media hype and capitalist hoax about SL which gave SL the critical user mass to flourish), where he stated that Lindens mid/long-term plan is to turn their business into top-notch consultancy regarding the creation and maintenance of virtual worlds run by other enterprises. I believe all they do is build up their brand value (reputation) and intend to position themselves as the Linus Torvals of the VR code (see post referenced above).

In conclusion, (and I sincerely hope i am not being proven wrong but) i perceive Linden as a smart crew, open sourcing their creation, while still intending to steer it to a certain degree; thereby they might be able to develop a solid business model for large-scale open source projects (with leadership).(1)

(1) Linux to a certain degree represents the only proven business model () and the fact that it still hasn’t made it to more than 5% market share even though they have really substantial cost advantage, tells me that there is still something not-convincing about that model.

Other open source community based projects like moodle are of course really ethical efforts and their output is amazing, but one has to see that they only work because they are in-directly (and in fact un-consciously) subsidized by the state through professors (and students their students) who invest their work time in them. Nevertheless this model is IMHO completely feasible for many applications. (But for better or worse outside the capitalist market and therefore constrained by other variables.)

Second Life: critique and tolerance

Below you find some short arguments which I just wrote in a critical email to a friend who sent me his euphoric sales pitch for Second Life (SL). Subsequently i delve into a short cultural reflection about how important tolerance is for bootstrapping thus taking up the cudgels for Second Life and paying respect to their accomplishments.

1) Don't lure them into developing an island by using inflated numbers: I would be very cautious to present the user growth rate with 30% for the 2007 forecast. I don’t think it will continue at that speed. It was a nice media-virus for some month now, but as 'real SL development' with 'real benefits' is much slower I believe it will stabilize and turn to an organic growth.

SL and virtual worlds in general have some very potent value propositions but right now the biggest benefit to create a subsidiary is: marketing/branding: to communicate a) that the organization is a pioneer and b) whatever the SL offer potentially is. I say potentially because it is almost impossible to really fulfill the expectations.

Allow me to elaborate: Take the case of a car-maker who sets up an SL race-course to allow users to "try" a new model. Everybody who actually tries the car in SL will be disappointed because we are used to high-end racing games (need-for-speed, etc.) and in comparison the SL experience is really devastatingly bad. However i believe it is only a matter of time until the 3D web will be able to have people test-drive really good simulations of cars (potentially through the virtual representation of their own neighborhoods). Before that happens at least two conditions have to change: server-infrastructure (connection and resulting graphic) problems have to be taken care of and the know-how of racing-game specialists has to be incorporated. Once we are there i believe it is quite realistic that virtual-world-car-selling becomes a decisive aspect of marketing and selling cars. Will the company that has developed a long term experience in using virtual worlds have an advantage against its competitor who neglected the new medium? Without a doubt.

2) do not forget that in this moment only 40 people can be at an island simultaneously so SL internal out-reach is quite limited. (Of course the solution is to really market the SL footage in traditional media). Another important point seems to me that an entity that runs an island should plan for in-world-representative(s) (and the additional monthly cost). Given that SL is accessed by people from around the world a representative would ideally need to be there 24/7 and speak at least the organizations 'normal' languages. There is technology that communicates to Real Life (through messaging) when someone comes to your island. However this does not solve the 24/7 issue.

Having communicated what IMHO is the current infancy conditions for setting up an SL island (or other venture), while i believe I also outlined the immediate and potential benefits, I feel obliged to pay my respect to the Linden Labs team and everybody who is participating in the realization of the potential by creating this fascinating new world.

Virtual reality is a theme in science fiction for many many years and first attempts to realize this vision have been conducted with various success since the creation of the internet. Hence SL is nothing new as such. BUT SL is the best 3-dimensional cyberspace i have come across so far, AND maybe more important. they have managed to create such a media fuzz around their project that it seems there is a critical mass of users and enough interest from investors and organizations that invest in SL presences that there is enough capital to really boost development and hopefully solve many of the technological problems now present.

So in conclusion it is always difficult to do the splits (find the equilibrium) between being critical (as in enlightened or not-naïve) while tolerating some flaws, and SL surely needs a good dose of both. Whether Second Life as a virtual world developed and run by Linden Labs has a promising future i am critical; That the 3D web is there to stay and that it is very valuable to invest time and money in understanding and exploiting it I am even more convinced.

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Thomas Praus, Peter Bihr and myself (a.k.a. MaPeTo) are lately exploring and discussing about SL and virtual worlds. Peter has published his evaluation of the current opportunities and limitations of SL and Thomas will shurely do so very soon.

Machinima (in Second Life)

"Machinima a portmanteau of machine cinema or machine animation" is the art of making movies recording activities within a game or other virtual environment.

There is a portal with hundreds of recordings www.machinima.com. One example of what this results in is "Out of my skin" the first entry of a second life series/diary:

Simpsons on the tube

Last night I was introducing the kid of a friend of mine to the wonders of the net. His first google question was "cool online games" ;-)

After some funkey jump & run we looked at how homer and his folks broadcast themselves and we found some really innovative footage:

Live action Simpsons

and then later on that night i ran into this one which i also enjoyed

smokin homer simpson

digital ethnography & cutting edge sixties

Text is linear by Prof Wesch
is really a great visualization of the change from physical-analog-linear to virtual-digitally-hyperlinked
http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=78



Prof Wesch is working on digital ethnography and in my opinion this is an excellent marketing piece, communicating the relevance and triggering the interest of potential students. Here are some more videos of that course - http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?cat=4

Powers of Ten
A film dealing with the relative size of things in the universe - and the effect of adding another zero. I dont remember where i read it but i think this movie was shot by IBM in the sixties and that makes it a truly cutting edge piece
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6945724039283018435