powers-of-ten
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Second Life and the powers of ten
So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure, how amazingly unlikely is your birthAnd pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space, 'cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!- From Monty Python's The Meaning of LifeIn 1977 Charles and Ray Eames created a documentary called the Powers of 10 which gave viewers a mind-changing perspective on just how small we are in comparison to our universe. In the spirit of this film, I thought I would take you all on a quick photographic journey of Second Life, starting with the smallest objects possible and ending with a view of everything, all that there is. I will be adjusting scale for aesthetics rather than using an exponential scale, which is particularly handy since Second Life is not QUITE as large as the real-world universe. But I think you will be surprised to see just how big it is.So let the journey begin!
Sunday NY Times says Spore is special
Steven Johnson, Colbert Report guest and author of Everything Bad is Good for You, wrote a thoughtful piece on Will Wright's Spore in yesterday's widely read New York Times Magazine entitled, "The Long Zoom." Like any writeup of Wright's simeverything, Johnson's includes equal parts hagiography, history, and hype, imbuing Wright's unreleased masterpiece with transcendental potential.Johnson's title refers to Spore's ability to zoom from the microscopic level all the way out to the galactic level, recalling the Eames' influential Powers of Ten (video embedded above). Wright's collaborative presentation with musician Brian Eno on "generative art," arranged by the long-term thinkers at the Long Now Foundation, also suggested a more cerebral sophistication than we're used to seeing, and reading about, in video games. If you think the hype for Gears of War may be hard to live up to, consider Spore, a game that is beginning to more resemble a panacea for all the gaming industry's myriad ills than a clever expansion of the Sim- series.[A faux pas, and a personal pet peeve: Charles and Ray Eames were not, in fact, "brothers" as Johnson writes, but an enormously successful husband-and-wife design team, responsible for everything from the aforementioned Powers of Ten film, to their famous molded plywood Eames Lounge Chair.]See also: Spore figurines!
