Filed under: Virtual Worlds — mike @ 7:15 am
Lately, I have grown disillusioned with Clay Shirky’s and other’s posts about Second Life on Valleywag. The tone of these seems to have shifted largely from objective criticism to an obsessive pursuit that demeans Second Life’s accomplishments by attempting to make it synonymous with “sex.” For those who regularly use Second Life for purposes other than sex, these rants sound too absurd for rational consideration. But, I suspect this should be expected from a publication that calls itself “Silicon Valley’s Gossip Blog.”
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Filed under: Digital Information — mike @ 12:19 pm
Yesterday, I attended an excellent symposium sponsored by the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive called “New Media and Social Memory.” CNet published an article yesterday that covers some of the topics discussed. I thoroughly enjoyed most of the speakers, but was most impressed by Bruce Sterling’s keynote presentation on the Dead Media Project. Not only was the subject matter exceptionally thoughtful and detailed, but his presentation style was highly engaging, to the point of itself being performance art.
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Filed under: Virtual Worlds — mike @ 12:16 pm
Linden Labs has opened the source code of their viewer application (or client/browser), and announced intentions to work with the public to develop white papers for their protocols. LL plans to focus development on a Second Life Grid with “clients and servers published and managed by different groups.”
Since many of the components that will make up this network are not yet done, we are not publishing long white papers or RFCs at this time — instead, we are giving everyone what we have along with a goal of producing those open standards with the input and assistance of the community that has brought Second Life to where it is now.
This is a huge win for the virtual worlds community, and for Linden Labs.
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