New Article: "SL's loyal users embrace its decaying software and no-fun imperfections"

[CaerolleClaudel]

5 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Can't spoil the entire plot with a Wikipedia entry, so that was a good choice (leaving it out).

I am sooo numb to it lately, to much umm...RL experience. That's it!

Maybe that's why I like the Forum so much, "a fix of the surreal".

Which brings me to another thought on the article.  I mentioned how the author's fast-switching description of teleporting between locations reminded me of a story by my favorite Science Fiction author (Alfred Bester).  Well, I finally realized that while I didn't "appreciate" her use of "neologisms" (as Scylla so kindly put it, if only I were so kind), I finally realize that Bester also had his characters using "invented" words - a lot.  So, there's that.

Guess I need to go get the old can-opener and open my closed mind. Like how the "Flatheads" in Oz would carry cans of brains around which they could use to increase their own intelligence (being flat-headed), but they never actually used the brains until some pivotal scenes.

https://oz.fandom.com/wiki/Flatheads

 

Then you just kinda ruined it for all of us who were going to rush online to watch it??? OMG!!! (J-O-K-I-N-G!!!)

I love the weird, and until a few weeks ago spent a LOT of time on Tumblr, because that gave me a steady feed of weird and unusual (like Lydia from Beetlejuice, "I am also strange and usual" lol). I finally had to stop using Tumblr because I followed sooo much stuff and because I felt compelled to look at every single thing in my feed, I was spending far too much on there. Not that I don't spend hours a day online otherwise, but the Tumblr time was cutting into other interests.

I think you mentioned a book by Bester upthread?

Sorry, I am unfamiliar with The Land of Oz. A brain boost would probably serve all of us well from time to time., though.

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

I think you mentioned a book by Bester upthread?

His two most famous works were, "The Stars My Destination", and "The Demolished Man".  (A Babylon 5 character played by Walter Koenig was named "Bester" in his honor.)

4 minutes ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

Sorry, I am unfamiliar with The Land of Oz. A brain boost would probably serve all of us well from time to time., though.

The generation before mine - Baby Boomers - had small (children's book versions) and larger Oz books to read, as part of a larger Oz mythos, that were a far cry from the "sanitized and safe" movie "Wizard of Oz".  

I think perhaps "Emerald City" TV series did it justice. I THINK that is the series I recall watching a few years ago. Fairly horrifying and a little bit funny. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_City_(TV_series)

The point of the "brain boost" is, you have to actually "use" it, not just carry the "can-o-brains" around!

* gibs needy flatheads a can opener *

 

[CaerolleClaudel]

2 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

His two most famous works were, "The Stars My Destination", and "The Demolished Man".  (A Babylon 5 character played by Walter Koenig was named "Bester" in his honor.)

The generation before mine - Baby Boomers - had small (children's book versions) and larger Oz books to read, as part of a larger Oz mythos, that were a far cry from the "sanitized and safe" movie "Wizard of Oz".  

I think perhaps "Emerald City" TV series did it justice. I THINK that is the series I recall watching a few years ago. Fairly horrifying and a little bit funny. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_City_(TV_series)

The point of the "brain boost" is, you have to actually "use" it, not just carry the "can-o-brains" around!

* gibs needy flatheads a can opener *

 

Sorry, I know almost nothing about sci-fi. I read a fair amount of lesbian fantasy though (also romance, which I often think is also fantasy, given the characters and the plot lol).

I never read The Wizard of Oz, though I have seen a lot of the movie in bits and pieces on TV. I love the music video to Run-Around by Blues Traveler, though, which is based on Wizard of Oz. Very frenetic, reminds me of Emerald in some ways due to the pace.

 

Emerald, wow. Seems like a wild ride (I read all the episode synopses in the Wikipedia entry). I guess it got cancelled, seems like it was setting up for a second season with the appearance of The Beast. I guess they killed it because it wound up flopping, which is a shame.

 

[Paul Hexem]

7 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

To repeat something I've said above, this article isn't written for us. Everything about it -- its language and use of specialized academic jargon, its obvious affiliations with certain kinds of academic theory and areas of study, its ideological assumptions -- indicates that it has been written for a relatively specialized audience. Reading this, I recognized immediately where it was coming from, and whom it was written for, because I have some familiarity with its milieu, and my own areas of specialization (which include academic feminism) overlap to some degree with it.

Gotta be careful here. There's an issue in science where people will have a theory and look for data that proves it, ignoring everything else, instead of forming a theory after considering all the data.

This sounds awfully similar to that concept.

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

Gotta be careful here. There's an issue in science where people will have a theory and look for data that proves it, ignoring everything else, instead of forming a theory after considering all the data.

This sounds awfully similar to that concept.

Very wise.  Scylla, being a writer, and knowing that the author is "obviously" a writer, and that the article is published on a "writers-type" online source, will look at things from that perspective.

But if the author ONLY wrote for that audience, it would be pretty short-sighted on their part.

I mean sure, if it were "poetry" on a "poetry blog" (poetry came up earlier), that's one thing.

But an article about Second Life, that anyone could find with Google, is completely open to criticism by anyone who is looking for an article about Second Life.

It could be "true" that it wasn't "written for us normie reader non-writer-types".  That doesn't make it as if, "ok then, nothing she wrote about Second Life really matters, right?"

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

5 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

Gotta be careful here. There's an issue in science where people will have a theory and look for data that proves it, ignoring everything else, instead of forming a theory after considering all the data.

This sounds awfully similar to that concept.

That's definitely an issue that can arise in all analytical work, in any field.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

7 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Very wise.  Scylla, being a writer, and knowing that the author is "obviously" a writer, and that the article is published on a "writers-type" online source, will look at things from that perspective.

But if the author ONLY wrote for that audience, it would be pretty short-sighted on their part.

I mean sure, if it were "poetry" on a "poetry blog" (poetry came up earlier), that's one thing.

But an article about Second Life, that anyone could find with Google, is completely open to criticism by anyone who is looking for an article about Second Life.

It could be "true" that it wasn't "written for us normie reader non-writer-types".  That doesn't make it as if, "ok then, nothing she wrote about Second Life really matters, right?"

 

The blogosphere is a weird thing. I dont know anything about this particular publication, so I'm not entirely sure what its aim is, but there is a lot of movement these days towards public engagement with academia. There are fields like Public Sciences, and the Public Humanities, that are all about taking academic disciplines outside of the academy.

Usually, though, things written in that vein are written in a more accessible style, for obvious reasons.

But there are also just highly specialized public venues for publishing academic or related work. I mentioned The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research (which seems to be on hiatus at the moment): it's an open access publication.

[Arielle Popstar]

Just amazing how you are getting so much mileage out of one article.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Just now, Arielle Popstar said:

Just amazing how you are getting so much mileage out of one article.

Jealous?

😀

[Love Zhaoying]

6 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

The blogosphere is a weird thing. I dont know anything about this particular publication, so I'm not entirely sure what its aim is, but there is a lot of movement these days towards public engagement with academia. There are fields like Public Sciences, and the Public Humanities, that are all about taking academic disciplines outside of the academy.

Usually, though, things written in that vein are written in a more accessible style, for obvious reasons.

But there are also just highly specialized public venues for publishing academic or related work. I mentioned The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research (which seems to be on hiatus at the moment): it's an open access publication.

Cool, I was grasping for terms and could have benefited using "academia" and "blogs". 🙂

 

[Love Zhaoying]

Just now, Scylla Rhiadra said:

1 minute ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Just amazing how you are getting so much mileage out of one article.

Jealous?

😀

It's weird how someone can write so much without complaining about Second Life!

(You, not the "author" of the article, of course!)

Have you considered giving lessons?

[CaerolleClaudel]

58 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

The blogosphere is a weird thing. I dont know anything about this particular publication, so I'm not entirely sure what its aim is, but there is a lot of movement these days towards public engagement with academia. There are fields like Public Sciences, and the Public Humanities, that are all about taking academic disciplines outside of the academy.

Usually, though, things written in that vein are written in a more accessible style, for obvious reasons.

But there are also just highly specialized public venues for publishing academic or related work. I mentioned The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research (which seems to be on hiatus at the moment): it's an open access publication.

I remember Thoreau talking about a project called Little Reading in which (I think) learned people toured and led discussions or something. IIRC he said he at first thought they were talking about a small town in Pennsylvania.

[Love Zhaoying]

@Scylla Rhiadra should start more intelligentsia threads!

[CaerolleClaudel]

Just now, Love Zhaoying said:

@Scylla Rhiadra should start more intelligentsia threads!

Aren't all her threads?

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Just now, Love Zhaoying said:

@Scylla Rhiadra should start more intelligentsia threads!

Gosh, that sounds like f ...

No. Just ... no.

😬

[Love Zhaoying]

Just now, CaerolleClaudel said:

Aren't all her threads?

Yes (they aren't). Not gonna catch ME in a trick question!

[Scylla Rhiadra]

20 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Yes (they aren't). Not gonna catch ME in a trick question!

Well, this is a thread about a quasi-academic article. So I guess it's a sort of "academic" thread.

But ALL of our threads here are, OF COURSE, "intelligentsia threads," because, well, we're all part of the intellectual elite here!

Right?

Edited May 16 by Scylla Rhiadra
It's difficult to pose as "the Intellgentsia" if one can't spell the word correctly

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Well, this is a thread about a quasi-academic article. So I guess it's a sort of "academic" thread.

But ALL of our threads here are, OF COURSE, "intelligensia threads," because, well, we're all part of the intellectual elite here!

Right?

Right!

The normal categories are:

- Smart people talking about dumb stuff

- Dumb people talking about smart stuff

Nobody knows which group or topic they are in.

[CaerolleClaudel]

7 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Yes (they aren't). Not gonna catch ME in a trick question!

OK you lost me there. I did not mean it as a trick question; I feel Scylla brings an intellectual approach to most of her posts, with the exception of the goofy one. I guess they are not specifically about an article like this though.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

We addressed this issue here a while ago, actually.

Note the graphic. It pretty much says it all!

 

Edited May 16 by Scylla Rhiadra
WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY TYPPI ... MY TYPING TODAY????

[ValKalAstra]

15 hours ago, JacksonBollock said:

The Mullet - or maybe that's just me.

Let me introduce you to Second Life's unofficial Anthem:

And with that, back to off topic, uh, on topic. I'm the self proclaimed queen of ambivalence and with that I shall grace all of you with my wisdumb. I remember that back at university, there was a lot of push to write in a way that people outside of the field could at least grasp the essence of what was said.

It's true, the scientific field does have a communication problem. It's often laced with terminology that isn't always immediately clear to those outside of it or it redefines existing terms in a more specific context. This quite frankly causes societal issues in my opinion, because you get popular science websites that run with idiotic headlines born from a misunderstanding to people half-quoting Popper as a cudgel to kill any discourse with. 

Communication in science is important, because if you don't get it right, usually the most unfavorable explanation is what people tend to run with. Which more or less is what happened in this thread, I want to say. I did enjoy the discourse though, even if the article got so much wrong.

I also looked into who wrote the article and found it fascinating that they were deep into the AI ecosystem, looking to blend AI, game engines and artistry. Fascinating. Under the lens of browsing through some of her exhibitions, I really don't think that she meant "decaying" in a negative way and more along the lines of a certain fascination for how game engines work and how Second Life is a bit of a technological portal into days gone.

I think I'll ping her a mail and wonder if she would be willing to enter a discourse on the topic or maybe explain some things.

15 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

Good point...what news source do you trust these days?

I can only go by what I'm seeing being enacted according to recent laws moving in a scary direction, and so I know this agenda is real.

These changes in law can be researched with accuracy.

Personally, I am using https://ground.news/

It's doing something interesting in that it generates summaries based on articles sorted into left, center, right and then allows you to switch between these, get a summary telling you which side focused on what part of the news and then let's you click through to the actual articles so you can follow through on it in depth. It's not perfect but... I find it an interesting idea to get multiple angles.

[belindacarson]

4 hours ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

Aren't all her threads?

No.

[InnerCity Elf]

13 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

If the article WAS written by an AI, that could explain all the judgement, as the AI obviously thinks that Second Life is "inferior" software.

 

And if it was not, someone should write a prompt for the currently superiorest AI to prompt it to make a survey among all its AI mates, including itself, as to what their favourite virtual world/metaverse/not-game is. Who knows, maybe if the article's author made the prompt, it would turn out that the AIs also favour SL, despite, or because, being so broken and inferior... and that this is the true reason why SL still exists, AI manipulating concurrent user numbers, logging in accounts and bot accounts by long-gone humans, and other things I won't mention because it would sound far too conspiracy theories (very much unlike what I already wrote ;)). In short, "Do AIs dream of ⚡ 🌍 🌎?" (By the way, there should be at the least one more perspectivey world icon...)

[diamond Marchant]

1 hour ago, ValKalAstra said:

I really don't think that she meant "decaying" in a negative way and more along the lines of a certain fascination for how game engines work and how Second Life is a bit of a technological portal into days gone.

Nice insight. This word choice did trigger me a bit. In this context I read “decay” as a synonym for “bitrot”, implying that the SL software ecosystem is not maintained and the bugs are piling up. 

[Love Zhaoying]

50 minutes ago, diamond Marchant said:

Nice insight. This word choice did trigger me a bit. In this context I read “decay” as a synonym for “bitrot”, implying that the SL software ecosystem is not maintained and the bugs are piling up. 

That's the word, I couldn't remember it - "bitrot".  I had a boss that used a similar word, or more babbling like, "the bits are degrading", etc.  Us IT professionals know that's not really a thing except on physical media.  Sure, programs stop working over time. Sure, we see inventory missing - but it's a BIIIIIG database!