Sunday linkfest and some breakfast conversation
Posted by Burgess
Ever have days like this? That was me a week or so ago when my network went down. I have no idea where the club went. Down into the water 50 meters below me? The void? I could “stand” there no problem, spin my camera around, look out over the hot August haze in the blistering Topgol afternoon, but I could not move. Why things in the distance stayed in the cache and not the objects immediately around me, I have no idea. In any case, I got it fixed and things have been humming along great since.
Sunday morning is a good time for a cheese danish and conversation. (Okay, almost any time is a good time for coffee and a cheese danish.) So pull up a seat, pour yourself some java and jump in whenever you’ve got something to say, be it well-dressed man facting or the naked truth, it’s all welcome.
I figured I’d take a moment and go back through my de.licio.us tags and see what caught my eye recently.
dandellion has had a couple of thoughtful posts recently on the OpenSim project, here and here. If you wonder about the future of 3D virtual space, this is a must read. If there is ever to be any real “freedom” it depends on developing cooperative decentralized servers that can communicate effectively and the OpenSim project is working toward that.
Aenea blogged about John Tierney’s piece in the New York Times in which he talks about Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom’s assertion that there is a 20 percent chance we’re living in a computer simulation, and being a lawyer and a United States congressman, Tierney says he has a “gut feeling” the odds are higher than that. Talk about some heavy bullshit–but at the core of Bostrom’s arguments are some worthwhile concepts and more rigorous logic than Tierney brings to the table.
I came across this piece by Irving Berger that has his take on the Always On Summit in Stanford. Berger makes a case that the real value of virtual spaces like Second Life is that it removes the problem of physical distance from meetings and teaching in a way that no other Internet application has yet–and this education potential is what will drive it in the end. Corporations probably don’t find this very sexy, but that’s only because the marketing wonks haven’t quite figured it out yet. Actually, it will probably be someone else who figures it out and then the marketing wonks will chase the tail of that creativity for all the Lindens they can.
Looker posted a heads-up for machinimists about the Tube2SL contest. The deadline is September 14. Don’t say you didn’t hear about it. If you don’t win, it’s because someone else is the machinima auteur and you’re just a hack with fraps.
I don’t think I posted this yet: someone using a treadmill and a Wii controller to jog through Second Life. Now if I you could design a room where the walls, floor and ceiling were display screens. . .
The monthly blogger party is today at JellyBean and Hawks’ place at 4 pm SL time. The theme is superheros. Always the contrarian, I’m going as a supervillain. Hope I don’t get psychofragulated.
