Few pictures from 2nd life, the “game”/virtual universe that puzzles me more and more. The pictures are….. well ugly! This is due in part because the environment does not load completely but also because the graphics are quite dated. Nevertheless we can see sometimes true creative works in 2nd life. I think this game is a way too ambitious project for the technology used to run it. I bet that in a decade, immersion will be more complete. We could think about how new coming technologies such as 3d image or movement recognition would embetter the experience.

So I’m gonna have to agree with the rest of the class and say that Second Life pretty much blows. It’s like a slower, lonelier, and more boring version of the Sims. The fact of the matter is that while I was on Second Life I think I ran into a total number of 3 people. Also you can’t really do all that much without any money, and we all only have $500. Anyways, here are some pictures of my time in the world of Second Life, while some of the locations are pretty interesting to look at graphically, I would still say that the ability to visit different exotic landmarks is not enough of a factor to entice me to use Second Life. Also I don’t understand why sometimes I have hair and sometimes I’m bald on Second Life.

This is me at the Welcome to Second Life sign it’s on the far right. This is me at the space museum. On the Middlebury Island I took a Picture in front of a sign that reserved the area for Spanish speakers only, which I though was kind of funny.

Here is me in Australia.

Here is me in at the Space Museum.

Here is me in front of a religious park, random I know.

Here is me at the Moulin Rouge.

Here is me in Morocco, which looked pretty cool actually.

Reading everyone’s posts, I think it’s hilarious how uninterested in it we all are so far.  And I agree completely.  It was a relief to exit the world after having to mess around on it for a while last night.  Maybe my pictures will help to express my distaste.

So I went to hang out at the bookstore (whose fonts/banners look like they’re straight out of a Geocities page ca. 1996, btw), and I tried to sit in this chill lounge chair.  It automatically put me in this pose, which I thought was kinda funny.

Unfortunately, when I teleported to the orientation place, I remained stuck in this position.  Though I could still “walk around”, I could not stand up.

The same was true at the space flight center.  Even when I flew around.  Also, couldn’t really figure out what to do here, except……look at the rockets.

Eventually, I had to quit the program and reopen it so my avatar wouldn’t be trapped in that ridiculous position.  Flaws and glitches like this, at a very basic level of a game (or…virtual…thing), bother me quite a bit.  Why should I spend my time using a program that can even do such a simple thing right?  Anyway, when I came back, I went to the Middlebury island.  Was something supposed to be related to politics here?  I couldn’t figure it out.  So I watched the creepy movie.

IT WAS HILARIOUS

I checked out the Colorado Tech campus.  YEEHAW

Virtual Morocco!!  That’ll be cool!  Or, it won’t.  Maybe it’ll just look like this for 10 minutes until it loads…

Chillin in virtual Paris in a buggy.  I gave it some time to load until it was actually complete.  Still, just a bunch of fake buildings…many video games could plunge me into much more visually stimulating environments.  I dunno.  I’m trying to keep an open mind, and I’m ready to be convinced of the magic of Second Life, but I’m unimpressed as of now.

Not into second life.  Nothing about it makes sense to me…why do I want to be in these virtual worlds alone?  I don’t find the “escapism” that it offers very relieving, rather, it just feels weird.  I was approached by two guys at one point and wasn’t sure what to do, whether they were real, what they wanted, what was appropriate…I just walked away.  They were definitely flirting with my avatar.  It was really confusing.  I don’t know how to go to the places that we were invited as a class (yet another confusing aspect of this bizarre game) so I went to some easter egg hunt that I didn’t know how to participate in and also to Faery Land or something and finally to Atlantis…

I don’t know how to post pictures to the blog…stay tuned.

So, here are my 7 snapshots. I really don’t like how slow some of the worlds load…it’s like waiting for something to unfold. I am also not a fan of when random people came up to talk to me when I was trying to get this done. However, it is really cool that people create these virtual worlds where you can meet up virtually. I just wish that everything was a little faster. My favorite place that I visited was the Spaceflight Museum. Paris, was okay, too.

Dublin

Library

Middlebury College

NMC Orientation

Paris

Space Flight Museum

Well my title pretty much explains everything that I have to say about Second Life as of now.  Now granted I am making this very bold statement based on only one experience using Second Life, but regardless this was is my first impression…

I did not like Second Life.  The concept of a giant not-real world is scary to me.  I can’t possibly imagine myself spending the hours and hours and hours that people do in S.L. adjusting their appearance, purchasing items, and flying around and talking to people.  I have a lot of trouble wrapping my head around the idea of it.  I don’t know why people would care about how a poor-graphics avatar looks instead of how they actually look.  I don’t get why you would worry about how many fake Second Life dollars you have instead of worrying about how many actual dollars you have.  I simply cannot comprehend any of it.  And the fact that so many people exist in this world, and the fact that the world is so huge and infinite completely (to repeat myself) FREAKED ME OUT.

All of that said, what I gather from class is that we are going to be examining S.L some more, and I will probably have to use it and figure out what the appeal is.  While I fear the unknown now, perhaps learning more about it will change.  To be honest I was hesitant about picking up twitter, and now after trying it I kind of like it, so maybe S.L will be the same.  But for now, it scares me and I don’t understand it… and that’s my preliminary analysis.

All of these new things that I am being introduced to, now Second Life, I can barely handle first life!  It is so much to take in for someone that thought I knew ALOT about the internet.  From Twitter and Blogging to creating Avatars and SecondLife.  I spent a little longer then I realized this afternoon browsing around on Second Life and visiting the sites that we were assigned to, and much to my surprise found some pretty neat stuff.  The first place that I went was the Library that was recommended to us.

While walking around I didn’t really see anyone then noticed all of the computers with little titles over them.  People created a virtual library with links to just about everything.  It intrigues me in that it is a way of filtering through the internet.  As Lessig talked about, a great example of collaborative action.  Every contributes their links for the greater good of the virtual library.  This process works especially well with REAL librarians all over the world making sure that everything checks out (pun intended).  I clicked on the Cowboy Adventures computer and found myself lost, browsing through places on the web I would have never seen.  Next stop was the NMC Information Mall.

I found this to be quite helpful because of the lack of knowledge I have about how the Second Life world works or even really what it is.  I watched the “Advanced Camera Techniques” video that was literally posted on a wall in the mall(http://tinyurl.com/m8o98r) Definitely watch it.  It has proven to be very helpful for helping me take these pictures and manipulate the camera the way that I want to.  Thinking about it, this could also be a really cool way to do some “pre-visualizations” for shooting a real movie.  Other then the camera flying away, most of the moves that the camera does are completely replicable.  If someone were to build a house in Second Life that was like the movie set, they could essentially block out all of their shots before hand or have a pretty good idea of what looks good and what they like.  Just a thought.  Moving on, I went to the Space Station.

Taking a few pictures and browsing around just as if I were a real tourist, I then set up in the air and flew around to peek at the models of space ships that had been created for the island.  A nice stop on my world tour, it really went to show that people really are building ANYTHING in this world.  A few more teleports, and I found myself at the Middlebury College Terra Project.

Not only do they only speak spanish in this “building” but they say it outside on big billboards that plaster the walls.  Just like the article about “Second Life rape”, anyone could just as easily violate the rules here and run in speaking English without anything stopping them and without a voodoo doll.  It really just comes down to respecting what people ask for and ask you not to do because to the best of my knowledge there are no Second Life police yet!  I stopped in and admired the artwork on display in the gallery here and then headed out to catch sunset in Dublin.

One of the glitches about a program like this is the speed at which a “world” loads.  I had a lot of trouble here because of how long it took to load everything (buildings, posters, modeling, textures, music playing in the streets etc.)  That did not stop me from doing some wandering though.  Dublin had some cool stores and buildings.  In one, I found the “Dublin Literary Pub Crawl” which apparently was a quest I could set out on to combine finding great literary works and great Dublin bars.  I did not indulge because of all the literary works I have to deal with tonight in First Life but I am sure that it would have been an interesting journey to go on.

I ended my adventure flying around Dublin and admiring the sunset that reflected off of the endless ocean, separating this island from the next.  Though time consuming with all of the loading, I enjoyed the sharing and community that this online world has to offer.  It can be used in many ways and I’m sure that as time goes on, they will only keep expanding.

So I was reading an article online about red band movie trailers, and the very first line compared red band movie trailers to the former cigarette cartoon Joe Camel.  The idea being that showing graphic scenes in the red band trailers online is appealing to kids to go out and see graphic movies.  Now I’m not sure how much of this argument I agree with.  While I get the argument I just don’t think that seeing violent movies and becoming addicted to cigarettes are comparable, and I’m not sure how much the presence of online red band trailers is drastically affecting the amount of violence seen by our youth.

This however got me thinking about our youth and the internet, and keeping our recent discussions in mind, I am somewhat concerned about our youth.  Before I describe why I am concerned I will acknowledge the irony of this post that I am talking about how “technology of today is destroying our youth!” when I am in fact a youth that grew up in much of this technology (you can’t be a grumpy old “back in my day” guy when you are only 21, but who cares I’m doing it).  First, I would like to agree with Lessig when he says that much of the illegal activity that occurs on the internet affects the morality of our society and specifically the young.  While maybe this is not the internet’s fault, but rather a faulty legal system surrounding it is not important.  What I do think is important is many young people growing up breaking the law every day, and the effect that this has on their moral compass.  This came to my attention when I discussed online downloading with my mother a few weeks ago, and something that seemed horribly wrong to her seemed totally fine to me.  That concerned me.  My other concern for kids is the the things that they are being exposed to on the internet.  Now this does include things like, violent/sexual images, and sexual predators, but also  corporate influence.  After discussing facebook ads, and other forms of advertising and information collecting by big companies, I started to get scared for a generation that does not know how to maintain their privacy and protect themselves in the online realm.  I am not sure how much of a problem this is or what the solutions are, but I do know that I would like to consider myself somewhat of a smart, private, online user and I am sure that I am being totally ignorant and giving out way more than I think.  This just makes me fear for the people who aren’t as intelligent as me about these things (as little as that may be).

Anyway, this has been my “save our youth” rant.

The idea of virtual subjectivity to me is kind of like an oxymoron. I mean how can these virtual experiences be deemed as real when, the whole foundation behind them is the fact that these experiences are happening in virtual reality and not actual reality? Is it too old school for me to think that interactions in virtual realities such as second life are not real because it’s not actually real reality?

You can have conversations, “visit” exotic locations, and do much more in a virtual reality. However, none of these experiences in my mind are real because they lack the physical relevance of real life. For example, the rapes that were described in “A Rape in Cyberspace” were disturbing, but at the end of the day for the victims it was their avatar that was raped, and not their actual self. They might have been temporarily disturbed by the events, but ultimately they would get over it; the same would not be said had the rape occurred in real life. Similarly, if you got stabbed online, would you bleed in real life, obviously not. This argument might go in one ear and out the other to adamant users of virtual realities because the fact is they are adamant users because of the fact that virtual realities are an escape from the real world.

Online, one can control what they look like, the world that they live in, and the experiences they have. But the fact that all of this is predetermined makes it artificial and contrived. Instead of living out your life online in a virtual world, people should instead go outside and experience the actual one for themselves. This idea is taken to an extreme by the recent movie Surrogates.

The movie describes the world in 2017, in which everyone on the planet has a surrogate android by which they live their lives. Their real self lives at home, while they live life through these physically perfect Surrogates. While the plot of the movie takes the idea of having an avatar online to a much more intense extreme, its ideas are not so farfetched. I mean is it a stretch to assume that people would want to take the chance to be able to experience life though a perfect body that they could design. *Spoiler alert* the movie ends with the protagonist destroying all surrogates and forcing the population to interact once again with their actual bodies. This pretty much summarizes my point about virtual realities; they are okay to visit every once in a while, but once you start to prefer your second life to your first one you have a problem and need to bring yourself back to reality, pun intended, pronto.

As I was looking at my contacts on my msn’s window, I started to think about the capacity that new technologies have to help us create secondary identities. Internet in particular has a huge role to play in this process. Indeed, on websites that propose to the user to create a profile they offer tools that help people to create a virtual avatar. Profile’s picture, personal description, shape the person’s identity on internet. As internet makes people from all over the world interacting with each other, the need to differentiate a user from an other is important and without it, social networks could not be.

I am particularly interested in avatar creation that does not necessarily try to render acurately the person’s identity in real life, because it involves the concept of escapism. Who has never dreamt about incarnating someone or something else than himself? This (sometimes) strong appeal is expressed more than ever on internet. This form of escapism is to be questioned because of its effects on our real self. As I said earlier, we are given tools to create our virtual self. We can be impressed by the possibilities they give to perform such an act but compared to our natural capacity that is imagination, they are actually full of limits. And here is my first point: internet is a system that was invented in the western world. It is, despite its amazing diversity, part of a larger specific cultural pattern and if we control (by giving specific tools, in specific contexts) the way people escape from their everyday life in creating a virtual self, do we shape their imagination? And thanks to this, what control can we have on them?

My second point comes from the danger in having a virtual identity. Because if one starts to exist more in the virtual world, one can be led to self-destruction reducing his actual life to its minimum. Here also, we could think about it as another threat to people’s freedom as they could be too busy leading their virtual life to care about their real one (second life and world of warcraft are good examples).

Of course my reflexion is uncomplete and still quite vague but I would be interested to debate about these issues, so tell me what you think!

While watching March Madness on TV, there are a million commercials that say something about American culture and what we “consume” and buy into. Everything from energy drink ads to airline commercials, we are a fast and busy culture. But really… how fast and busy do we need to be? AT&T is now advertising that they are the only carrier that allows you to “talk and download from the web at the same time” on you phone. For some serious people who don’t even have a spare minute in the work day I guess it might be a nice feature but really… how many of us need to be able to stream videos and talk on the phone at the same time? Are our attention spans evens even capable of multi tasking and taking in either if we had a friend on the phone and were streaming a basketball game at the same time? The ad shows three friends on the phone, two are watching a basketball game and one is stuck in traffic in a taxi. They put him in a taxi in traffic to show his network as being slow and “stuck”. They are all talking about the game and then say “Hey ____ did you see that shot?”, he of course answers no and looks like the loser. Phone companies are really doing whatever they can to one up each other and this is a prime example. And knowing AT&T, it’s probably an extra $25.00 per month for that capability. What is the use for this and do we really need it or does everybody just want to have the phone that can do the most possible and the most simultaneously? I mean what’s next… an IMAX screen and a 3D keypad?

While watching March Madness on TV, there are a million commercials that say something about American culture and what we “consume” and buy into. Everything from energy drink ads to airline commercials, we are a fast and busy culture. But really… how fast and busy do we need to be? AT&T is now advertising that they are the only carrier that allows you to “talk and download from the web at the same time” on you phone. For some serious people who don’t even have a spare minute in the work day I guess it might be a nice feature but really… how many of us need to be able to stream videos and talk on the phone at the same time? Are our attention spans evens even capable of multi tasking and taking in either if we had a friend on the phone and were streaming a basketball game at the same time? The ad shows three friends on the phone, two are watching a basketball game and one is stuck in traffic in a taxi. They put him in a taxi in traffic to show his network as being slow and “stuck”. They are all talking about the game and then say “Hey ____ did you see that shot?”, he of course answers no and looks like the loser. Phone companies are really doing whatever they can to one up each other and this is a prime example. And knowing AT&T, it’s probably an extra $25.00 per month for that capability. What is the use for this and do we really need it or does everybody just want to have the phone that can do the most possible and the most simultaneously? I mean what’s next… an IMAX screen and a 3D keypad?

When Mark and I met to go over a few ideas we had about the Remix video project, Mark described the idea to piece together movie clips that included dialogue in which the character said the name of the movie.  He showed me what he meant by this, and my skepticism quickly disappeared.  I found myself laughing as Jim Carey ran down the hallway yelling, “CAABBLLEEE GUYYY,” and giving myself a pat on the back for recognizing the characters and lines that Mark showed me.  We pieced the project together and the final product made me feel nostalgic for these classic movies and proud that I felt a connection to each of these films and characters–I knew them.  I think my reaction to this final project has to do with the phenomenon of fan recognition–everyone will give themselves a pat on the back when they recognize a movie line.  The humor in this video comes from the irony of Matt Damon saying “the Departed” and when Christopher Llyod shouts, “Back to the Future!”  This video is a comment on fan culture and the satisfaction of recognition and also the poignant magic of Hollywood.

Mark, Molly, and Shane’s video remixing project.  A compilation of movie titles quoted in the actual movie.  This project acted as a means of getting inside the heads of the web “geeks” who compile lots of clips in order to make their fan videos.  By using a variety of different film clips we were able to illustrate both how easy it is for fans to get their hands on large amounts of content to play with, while also simply commentating on films in general and how certain dialogue can seem quite comical or cliche when taken in a certain context.