Press

[#1]

There's been quite a bit of Second Life coverage in the press over the past couple of weeks, so we wanted to share a few highlights.

• The LA Times wrote a great article about live music inworld. Titled, "Second Life's Thriving Music Scene," the article focuses largely on Craig Lyons, a professional musician who performs inworld as well as offline.
• Flavorwire also covered music inworld, looking at the indie rock scene and suggesting some clubs to check out.
• In the UK, The Guardian carried an article about the Open University, following the writer's visit to Second Life.
• The Colorado Springs Gazette reported on a Colorado Technical University professor's award for his entry in the Federal Virtual Worlds Challenge - an expedition to Mars, via Second Life.
• CNN Money published a video interview with Philip Rosedale, as part of a series on innovators.

As always, you can find more Second Life press highlights in the archive, and by following @SLBallyhoo on Twitter. If you'd like to be kept in the loop on our calls for press sources, please also join the Second Life Press Sources group inworld or on Avatars United.

[#2]

Well, it does confirm that Philip (with all respect) didn't really has had a vision. He just wanted to make the world's largest lego kit. It's fun sure. I love building and creating, however does it stand for a vision? No. I did see this vid earlier (is it new??). And it explains why LL struggles to find a relevance in RL for SL. But there really isn't other than entertainment and the fact that building can be cool... I did see a simulation of the Dutch rail road company earlier in SL. Maybe simulation can have relevance, and maybe tourist companies.

Maybe this vid does set back SL to it's original perspective, and to boot... hummm someone with the first letter starts with M (no it's not a lucky chair).

[#3]

One article that was broadcast around the world by AFP and picked up by news services in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australasia is shown here being reported in an Australian newspaper (it was repeated word for word in several media outlets) - http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-technology/second-life-creator-linden-lab-laying-off-staff-2...

[#4]

And it explains why LL struggles to find a relevance in RL for SL. But there really isn't other than entertainment and the fact that building can be cool... 

I disagree.

The uncontrollable, even explosive intensity of human relationships that form in SL shows how much RL relevance this medium can have.  It goes way beyond entertainment in many cases.

This is a new kind of connection between human beings who are not physically present with one another, and it is relevant to real life.

[#5]

SL has the potential to be many things, yes.  But at this moment, entertainment and community are the only ones of them that are being successfully used -- the tech just isn't there for the other things to be considered successful as of this writing.  And while I have no doubt the tech will one day get there, I have my doubts that the current "throw entertainment out of SL" command staff are able or willing to make it happen.  Companies that fire 1/3 of their staff and fail to fix critical problems over half a decade aren't capable of innovating anymore and are just treading water while they hope no competitors appear before the water level drops enough that they can stand again.

As for new...  Hey, we were playing on Mucks and Muds and Mushes a decade before the first MMO ever appeared.  The new connection you talk about was new back in 1992.

[#6]

Mucks and Muds and Mushes?  I haven't heard of that.  Seems if it had a wedding industry anything like Second Life's it would be better known.

Virtual worlds can have deep psychological impact that I would bet is unprecedented.  You are keenly aware of being present with other people in real time in Second Life.  All the same emotions of real world encounters crackle and are intensified by the dream-like atmosphere. It is being used mainly for entertainment now, but a lot more could be done with it.

Education that benefits from intense emotional involvement, like immersive language learning.

Political activism.

Counciling for mental health and drug treatment.

Religious services.

Many kinds of activities that benefit from a dose of passion could put virtual worlds to good use.

[#7]

"Mucks and  Muds and Mushes?  I haven't heard of that.  Seems if it had a wedding  industry anything like Second Life's it would be better known."

LOL!!

Oh dear. Where to start?  Mucks were simple (by today's standards) multi-user shared areas.  Builders added rooms with the DIG command and which direction the Digging would take place.  All the new rooms were simply added to the database.  It was possible to move one room and traverse millions of miles, or create palaces with thousands of rooms.  Since it was VR, anything was possible.

It was text only, of course.  Remember this was back in the modem days when having 36Kbps made you special.  A single 286 with a 100Meg hard drive was all it took.  The biggest mucks were connected via ethernet to the backbone and supported literally thousands of people at the same time -- on a single 286.  When you were in a room, you heard and saw the actions of everyone else in that room with you.  Scripting was possible, although MUF was rather cumbersome to learn as it was based on Pascal with stack based models.  But not-as-clever-as-today novices (like moi) could build multi-room starships (re:  Wolfsbane) and fly all about Furryspace with (ahem) occasional reckless abandon.  (Vehicles were rooms that moved -- exits to a room was a simple linked list that was easily added and subtracted to.  If you knew the assetID of the vehicle room, you could do all kinds of things.)

Of COURSE there were weddings in Mucks.  Some even led to RL weddings.  There were deaths of the players, which the wizards would oftentimes officiate funerals muckside (what we called inworld then).  There were groups forged and failed.  There were birthdays (both real and rez).  There were parties.  In the days before Youtube, convention goers would record what members of the group gathered and post a greeting card in RealMedia format on a server we controlled somewhere for the rest to see and smile at.  And sometimes, we as a group dealt with tragedy, such as the suicide which caused the breakup of the Technicolor Wolfpack so many years ago.  Incidently, the VR experience you find so laudable is what caused said suicide -- he became despondant that none of the things he loved so much could ever be real and quit life itself because it couldn't measure up.

SL is a wonderful place.  I don't dispute that.  But it was hardly the first place where virtual communities formed and people interacted in meaningful and silly ways.  We used text, descriptions of ourselves and our rooms, and our imaginations to draw the pictures for us.  Today, the graphics are superior and the vision you impart can be very specific.  But do not think SL is the first social interactive multiuser system out there because it was easily 15 years too late to claim that crown.

[#8]

Thanks for the history lesson : )