Mecha Innis

You can reply here: http://telexlr8.net/2012/12/23/snow-crashed-in-second-life-end-2012/

It would be good if users of Second Life could respond to his article here: http://telexlr8.net/2012/12/23/snow-crashed-in-second-life-end-2012/ "These days I have the impression that Second Life (SL) is a dead alien world populated by the ghosts of a few former inhabitants who refuse to go." Snow Crash (ed) in Second Life Giulio Prisco, December 24, 2012, IEET http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/prisco I fell totally in love with Second Life one minute after joining in 2005. A few weeks later I left a very boring but very well paid senior management post in the public sector to became a technology entrepreneur. **Only uploaded images may be used in postings**://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse" target="_blank">Metaverse would soon become a reality, and I wanted to be part of it. As we all know, Snow Crash crashed in only a few years. In August 2007, as CEO of a Second Life development company in Spain with some high profile clients, I was interviewed by the national TV to comment on why companies were wasting millions on desert corporate VR spaces without visitors. The “desert Second Life” meme, started by an article on Wired, propagated very fast, and Second Life started to fade out. These days I have the impression that Second Life (SL) is a dead alien world populated by the ghosts of a few former inhabitants who refuse to go. A couple of weeks ago I helped to organize a very good SL conference with many good speakers and interesting talks… and less than 10 people came. Looking back, I see several reasons for the demise of SL: 1. The interface is far, far too difficult for today’s casual users who think that the Internet is that little box with lights that flicker when you are on Facebook. Many users, including many who use the Internet daily for work, do not know how to copy and paste, or the difference between left and right click. Add to this a terminal attention deficit, and you see how the Second Life interface is too difficult for mass adoption. Today, you need to design one-click user interfaces, because two clicks is too many. 2. Related to 1, SL is too heavy for most user computers. Those with powerful gaming systems and modern graphic cards never realize it, but Second Life is just not usable on low-performance computers, including new computers of users who don’t know how to switch off resource-hungry antivirus software, firewalls, background tasks and all the useless crap installed by manufacturers. 3. A 3D interface that imitates reality can be a great and intuitive user interface (if you see a door, you should go through, if you see a chair, you should sit down, etc.), but 3D on a flat 2D screen is not really 3D, and may make things difficult for the user, especially when combined with 1 and 2. 4. Many early users of SL were very jealous and protective of the early SL culture, strongly centered on pseudonymity and non-disclosure of real life information, and vocally resisted all technical innovations that could facilitate the intrusion of reality into their “magic circle” (see for example the very heated debates that followed the introduction of voice in SL in 2007). Most of them were “immersionists,” mainly interested in SL as “another world” where they could live “another life” entirely separated from their “first life” (FL) and strongly resisted the “invasion” of “augmentationists” interested in SL as a communication tool for telepresence applications related to FL. I think the tension between these two communities played a significant role in the demise of SL. Henrik Bennetsen’s essay on the subject is not available anymore at its original URL but a backup is still on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. 5. In my (and many others’) opinion Linden Lab, the company behind SL, made one disastrous decision after another, alienating existing users without attracting new users. For example, first they alienated immersionists by promoting SL as a platform for business and education, then they changed their mind, then they changed their mind again, then they changed their mind some more times until everyone stopped caring. I wonder whether SL and other immersive virtual worlds still have a future, and whether Stephenson’s Metaverse can still become a reality. I am interested in online communication tools, and I have no interest in an building an alternative life in another world. My ideal avatar is a simple geometrical primitive with realtime webcam video streaming on a face (like the default avatars in OpenQwaq). This is easy to do in SL since version 2 of the viewer, and it is easy to set up videoconferencing in SL with free video streaming services, but these things don’t seem too interesting for the remaining SL users. Perhaps they will catch on in the future in SL or (more likely) in next generation platforms. There are, in fact, interesting next generation Metaverse platforms that run natively in modern browsers without requiring a dedicated viewer or plugin. See for example Cloud Party, or the awesome Virtual World Framework demos. These systems seem much lighter and easier to use than SL, and (hopefully) able to address points 1 and 2 above. Concerning point 3, consumer VR glasses like Vuzix Wrap, Oculus Rift and future version of Google Glasses will permit real 3D interfaces to 3D scenes, and may wake up the sleeping Metaverse. In summary, I am cautiously hopeful in a Metaverse renaissance. Giulio Prisco is a physicist and computer scientist, and former senior manager in the European space administration. Giulio works as a consultant and contributes to several science and technology magazines. In 2002-2008 he served on the Board of Directors of Humanity Plus, of which he was Executive Director, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Italian Transhumanist Association. He is often in Hungary, Italy and Spain. You can find more about Giulio at his blog and home page.

Hi, Does anyone know how to prevent your second life profile from showing on the internet? Mecha

Sold!

Homestead sim for sale in the Wastelands for 60,000 Lindens. Tier due to estate owner on purchase.

Hi, I am interested in renting a homestead sim or parcel that is part of an educational/activist/Art Estate.

Aaah, so that's whay. Thanks a lot. They should really increase the number.

Hi, How do I add picks in the new SL viewer? When I go to the picks tab and click the + button at the bottom, the picks selection does not highlight and there is no way to select it. Only "New Classified" highlights.

A lot of people don't realize that the performance problems that they experience in SL are related to their computer and not LL. Different types of computers respond differently to different viewers in terms of graphics and efficiency. Some computers, particularly lap tops, can only function on low graphics or similar problems to the one described will result. The default setting for SL on my lap top is for low graphics but I am able to increase the setting to the mid-rage if I turn off some of the features. If I do not do this, my avatar ends up looking like the pic or the screen goes black sometimes. I recommend that you adjust the graphics settings of your viewer under preferences to correct this kind of problem.

First of all, everyone has issues. Some more than others. In RL when you get to know someone well, you discover all sorts of things about them that you would not know as a casual acquaintance. So it follows that if you get to know someone either through face to face contact or through a digital medium you will eventually come to know their issues. There is no real dichotomy between a digital medium and RL, it is all part of RL. If you look at the statistics for gamers, TV watchers, movie audiences, clubbers, drinkers, church goers, clubbers etc., almost everyone in the world falls into one of these categories. So everyone has time for their form of entertainment. There are some who prefer digital mediums like SL to the other mentioned activities and will spend more of their time in SL. They have no more issues than the people in all the other categories or everyone in the world. SL is a microcosm of the world. In fact. I would say that if someone has some issues to deal with, they would do better to get RL help. SL is definitely more suited for a person in a healthy mental state, because such a person will recognize and use SL for what it is, an entertaining digital medium, and the large majority of people I've met in SL do use it this way. BTW, have you seen how many young people are addicted to their BlackBerry, even at parties, at the beach, in bed etc.

Just as in RL, the social circles you hang out in colours your view of the world. SL has a lot of different people here using it for a lot of different reasons. It is a mistake to assume that because you have some kind of problem and most of the people you meet have similar problems, then this is the main demographic of SL. When I was involved in role play sims most of the people I met were RPing, and just for fun not because they had some kind of problem. They were mainly gamers who preferred the free flow type of game environment offered by SL. I now mainly attend music events, art festivals etc. These events give an opportunity fo upcoming artists to showcase their talent before launching out in RL or provides a relatively cheap promotional tool for these artists. The people who attend these events are not suffering from any problem. In any case, who except the affluent has enough money to go out every night for entertainment? SL is a relatively cheap entertainment offering for many people and also a social outlet that compliments RL. So please disabuse yourself of the notion that people who use SL have some kind of problem. I sometimes wonder if people are being paid to slander SL like this.

I recently travelled and met some interesting people who I wanted to keep in touch with but the only option was Facebook. There was only one person who I tried to introduce to SL, like this: "This might sound strange but I hope you have an open mind. I am a member of a virtual world where you can have your own avatar. It's really interesting and you can keep in touch with friends all over the world by using it. " She said that she might consider it. I would have been too embarrassed to suggest it to the other persons based on the professional circumstances under which we met. This is the basic problem of SL. It would be a wonderful 3D tool to keep in touch with friends all over the world but it's just too strange for most people. This is my main concern, SL is being advertised for people who want to RP vampires or raise virtual animals, which makes it even more difficult to introduce people to the world. The "strangeness" of SL attracted me to use it in the first place. Unfortunately, most people think "strange" is strange.

It is a homestead sim on private land.

All the scripts on my land have stopped working and on the top bar there is an icon indicating that scripts are not allowed on the land which I did not enable. I've tried using my land tool to correct this but it doesn't enable the scripts. Can anyone help with ths?

Profile problem solved with the update to Viewer 2 today. Not sure about the land texture issue yet. So far so good.