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Linden Lab explanation alienates educators
When news broke about Linden Lab sending a takedown notice to the core Second Life education community Web-site, our colleagues over at the Metaverse Journal put a number of questions about the matter to Linden Lab. The Linden Lab response to those questions yesterday seems to have generated a reaction among educators akin to pouring gasoline on a blaze, coupled with a vigorous fish-slapping. While there's a undeniably a spectrum of reaction to the Lab's response, most of what we've seen seems to cluster around the livid end.
Second Life publicizes din of inequity
Week after week, year after year, Australia's police-men and -women put their lives on the line for us. Even when we're ungrateful and unpleasant about it. They see the best and the worst of us, and they keep on going. The Western Australia police force have a recruiting center newly established in the virtual environment Second Life -- and there's some interesting stories being told there. You see, there's a peculiar issue with the police force in Western Australia which has long been under the radar for local print-media. It took Second Life and the Metaverse Journal's Feldspar Epstein to bring it to light, and now the Western Australian print-media is buzzing with it. Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.
"Second Life is my wheelchair"
That's the money-quote from Seshat Czeret in Feldspar Epstein's piece on disability and accessibility at The Metaverse Journal this week. Really, those five words condense thousands of written words on the empowering properties of a collaborative virtual environment, and not just for the differently-abled, but for the regularly able as well. It is interesting to note that those with physical limitations and disablements tend to view their own physical bodies as a physical, fleshy avatar far more frequently than those who have no such impairment. To the physically handicapped, the body may not function as it ought, but their minds and persons are as whole and complete as any. Many view their bodies as simply a malfunctioning vehicle, and their step into online avatars in a 3D environment is as slight a transition as getting into a car and driving. To many such physically impaired users, the body is no more nor less a tool than an online avatar, and the latter (despite lag, occasional inventory loss, network problems and all the other hurly-burly of a virtual environment) is the more reliable, expressive and liberating, allowing more ability to contribute, work, play and socialize. Why then, do the able-bodied among us tend to see so much more distinction between our bodies in the physical world and our digital representations? Is that distinction merely an artificial one, a handicap brought about by our able-bodied perspective? Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.
Second Life's generation gap
By now, if you've been keeping track of the metrics, it should come as no surprise to you that Linden Lab's virtual environment Second Life is dominated by Generation X and Baby Boomers. Generation Y (also popularly called Millennials) don't make much of a mark on the landscape of Second Life at all. While the boxing and labeling of generations in this fashion seems a little arbitrary, it is commonly done as demographers identify various key socio-cultural differences between the groups, though the edge-cases between them, of course, tend to be a bit blurry -- and everyone, of course, is an individual. The Metaverse Journal's Feldspar Epstein looks at assorted issues with the use of Second Life and education as it pertains to Millenials. In a broader social context, however, the generation gap between the Boomers/GenXers and the Millennials is starkly apparent. Millennials consistently number among the least active users of Second Life. The Baby Boomers dominate the virtual environment's usage landscape, followed closely by the Generation Xers. Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.
ABC Island anniversary tonight!
That's the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and not that other ABC in the United States of America. Partner and counterpart to the United Kingdom's BBC, "Aunty" ABC occupies a special place in the hearts of Australians. Oh, she gets some teasing sometimes -- but she's been with us since 1929 with Radio, Television, and the Web and has always excelled at embracing new media and finding ways to integrate old and new media together in new and compelling ways. As public broadcasters go, the ABC sports an impressive catalogue of high-quality educational programs, news, music and entertainment, and isn't shy about finding new ways to deliver them, with an increasing amount of content available on the Web or via Second Life.
An interview with Open Life's Steve Sima
The Metaverse Journal's Lowell Cremorne landed an interview with Steve Sima (aka Sakai Openlife), the founder of Australian-based Open Life grid - which, we note, is still apparently not quite working for new registrations - certainly, we've had no luck here - you can register, but not actually log in with it. Open Life currently operates on Open Simulator 0.5. Sima's plans involve full offline content creation (in fact, you can get a downloadable simulator from the website - though we don't believe the means exist to readily send that data anywhere as yet), and he is hotly anticipating the new viewer from RealXTend.
Vandeverre says: WSE not real. Not an investment. [updated]
The Metaverse Journal has an unedited interview with LukeConnell Vandeverre, owner of the - as he puts it - fictional World Stock Exchange. In it, Vandeverre asserts repeatedly and firmly that the WSE is a game, and nothing more, and that no real profit is available through the WSE. "[I]t is not real, holds no real value and it is not an investment and does not provide investment opportunities." - Vandeverre. The interview is full of contradictions. Vandeverre appears to claim that the 'fictional' currencies have value in the real world, albeit indirectly, and then reverses course and appears to claim that they don't.
Intellectual Trash
Malcolm King, former media advisor to the ALP and the Australian Democrats has a piece on Online Opinion (Australia's e-journal of social and political debate) this month about virtual worlds. It's tantalizingly entitled "Virtual Worlds - it's time to take out the intellectual trash." All in all, the title is ... surprisingly apt.
