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Saturday, 23 June 2007 |
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Sponsored by: This week in Second Life, I swam with a dolphin, line-danced with six other women at a saloon and test-rode a horsie that I am considering buying. I also received an offer to "have the sex" with a young man who was wearing his penis outside his pants.
One of the great joys of a virtual world like Second Life is the ability to indulge in fantasy limited only by your own patience and skill with the tools. But there's nothing virtual about the anxiety felt by Second Life residents these days. Some are even saying it's the beginning of the end of the true Second Life.
Linden Lab has come under fire recently on a number of fronts. German police reportedly found real child pornography in-world; a group in France is demanding that Second Life be banned in its entirety to protect the children; several European countries are cracking down on residents' ability to create childlike avatars and wear them in Mature areas of the game.
And then director of community affairs Daniel Linden set a match to an already smoldering pile when he "clarified" the Second Life policies around Mature content in the official Linden Lab blog:
READ IT ALL HERE:
http://www.wired.com/...
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Written by Enniv Zarf
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Friday, 22 June 2007 |
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Sponsored by:  By Bonnie Ruberg
Over the past few weeks, we’ve talked a bunch about cybersex in virtual worlds, but we've mostly talked about Second Life. In fact, Second Life seems to be in the news all the time these days—often because of its sexy content. It’s true, cybersex of all kinds runs rampant in the game. But what a lot of new players are finding (and critics are overlooking) is that, contrary to popular perception, it’s actually be pretty hard to get started cybering in Second Life. Social customs and technical set-up alike are confusing, especially for newcomers. Things can get awkward fast.
READ IT ALL HERE:
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Friday, 22 June 2007 |
Supernova kicked off yesterday -- it's the Wharton School's West Coast mindmeld for techies, investors, cogitators and publicists. I'm hovering (twittering? flickring? jaikuing?) my way about the proceedings seeing who's in town, what social networking apps they're using and what widgets the rest of us will probably be engrossed in figuring out next week.
Those of you who follow this space know I've got an inordinately long attention span for all things massively multiplayer, so I couldn't miss the Virtual Life or Virtual Hype? panel with ITP cerebellum-in-residence Clay Shirky, Second Lifesploitation entrepreneur Rueben Steiger and fun theorist Raph Koster. Everyone who's followed the Shirky-led second guessing of Second Life was expecting fireworks, but the panel was thoughtfully civil. Love SL or hate it, the platform does get people excited about what games are, where they're headed, and whether or not people in bunny suits can be taken seriously.
Shirky's into games but is still a skeptic about SL: "I've never gone wrong betting against users."
READ AND WATCH THE REST HERE:
http://www.sfgate.com...
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Friday, 22 June 2007 |
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Video: Richard Dawkins: my Second Life obsession
The internet-based virtual world Second Life may have a serious impact on people's real life relationships, one of Britain's best-known scientists warned yesterday.
Second Life: scene from the virtual event staged for a presentation by Prof Richard Dawkins
Baroness Susan Greenfield, director of the Royal Institution, said she feared users of the popular simulation could abandon the messy intimacy of "real-life" human relations for two-dimensional liaisons in the virtual world.
Second Life was started in San Francisco in 1999 and now has seven million players who can create their own characters, known as avatars, buy goods, throw parties and build their own homes.
However, Baroness Greenfield says the implications have not been thought through. "People who dismiss it as a game will be in for a rude awakening," she said. "This will have a huge impact on society.
"Offering people the chance to have a permanent soap opera going on, in which they can participate, will be even more pervasive than reality TV such as Big Brother.
READ IT ALL HERE:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk...
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Written by Enniv Zarf
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Wednesday, 20 June 2007 |
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Sponsored by:  By Peter Griffin
It's the place where virtual friendships are made and digital real estate is bought and sold, but educators say the fast-growing Second Life community is also a powerful tool for collaborative learning. On first appearances it doesn't seem very productive: a group of digital avatars - the online creations of real people - sit around a campfire in a pleasant park, chatting away. "This experience can be a lot of fun," says Leigh Blackall, an education development manager for Otago Polytechnic. READ IT ALL HERE: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic...
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Written by Enniv Zarf
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Wednesday, 20 June 2007 |
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Sponsored by: By Peter Griffin
It was with great anticipation that I settled into a seat at the Paramount Theatre in Wellington this week to listen to a bunch of internet experts debate a very live topic - whether the new wave of websites gathered under the Web 2.0 banner is "all fizz and no substance". The debate could have gone anywhere and indeed it ranged widely. "People just aren't that technology savvy," argued Radio New Zealand producer and head of the "fizz" team, Mark Cubey. READ IT ALL HERE: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category...
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