Deltango Vale

Y'know, I have written hundreds of pages in these fora, which I deleted unposted because they reveal too much about my RL. It's a constant burden to hold back sincere thoughts and feelings, to be forever on guard, but it is the price we pay in the media age. In Second Life, though, I can let my hair down, particularly with close friends. Perhaps I am more alert than most to the presence of the past. I don't want a possible university tenureship blown by some guy I messed with when I was an 18-year-old bitch. Those of us who busted out of that rough and tumble world are keenly aware of the incompatibility of our pasts with our presents. For example, good luck being elected president or prime minister now unless you have lived your whole life in a sterilized bubble. The age of media terrorism is upon us. Wisdom and experience have become vices to be exploited (one does not gain wisdom and experience in sterilized bubbles; one gains them through messy mistakes in the hurly-burly of human affairs). It's only a matter of time before people figure this out.

I have a sweet, girls-only sex bed, which I rarely use. Let's face it, sex animations are, at best, an unpleasant reminder of high school fumbling. Only when one has established a long and intimate relationship with someone via words and symbols does the bed come into play - and then mainly for the giggles of 'triple-tower back twist spider crawl' gymnastics. As for the 'free love' of the 60s, from what I hear, it was mostly a way for guys to pressure girls into free sex.

You've got to be kidding. You fell for that post?

I've not read the book, but your question prompted me to investigate further. From reading the introduction and notes, the book is academically legitimate, meaning the author is not a flake or journalist. He employes a qualitative methodology (as opposed to quantitative methodology), which is fine as a heuristic or for framing further research questions, but unlikely to yield conclusive results. In other words, he is telling a story within an academically legitimate methodology for telling stories. That the book ends in June 2007 is significant. The author missed the huge culture war resulting from Linden Lab's strategic, philosophical, and policy reversals of 2007-2010. Second Life 2003-2007 was a very different world from Second Life 2007-2011. Most interesting to me, therefore, is that the research was conducted precisely when Second Life was in its prime, when it was a model of free-flowing human interaction, unsullied by Linden Lab managers and RL reformers. For that reason alone, the book is probably worth reading.

@ everyone We seem to be stuck on Big Brother. I'm more concerned about little sister. How many of you are happy to leave your family photo album at the office? How many of you shrug when you lose your purse in a shopping center? Do you really want your family tree posted on the corkboard of a public library? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8018329.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/essex/7914415.stm http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-15018284 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14527103 The problem, in my mind, is not so much a steel-helmeted police state. It's the way people casually give their personal information to the entire bell curve of the human race. I truly believe this trend will collapse within the next five years.

"I've got a question. Do our feelings/outlook of such things (online exposure, privacy) have anything to do with our politics? Does it go by party line? Are some of us naturally more conservative or liberal in all things? I think probably so...it's bred into us, learned, over the years and we gravitate to those basic beliefs." ----------------------------------------------------------------- Interesting question. My problem is that I don't fit into any of the usual political boxes. I don't even fit into any literary political ideologies. I suppose you could call me a romantic realist. ETA: must now clean the RL bathroom, which is far from romantic.

Hey You are absolutely right about the normal risks of life. You are also right that one must not become paranoid. I think I can summarize by saying that online exposure greatly amplifies the normal risks of life. Because of that, I believe many people will gravitate to Second Life.

"Teenagers have traditionally always been desperate about being 'popular' (evolutionary drive = finding position in social heirarchy). Is the fashion for social media a sign of increasingly extended childhood?" ------------------------------------------------------------ They are the ones who will change their legal names to be free of their online history when applying for professional positions later in life. In your generation, being arrested while driving drunk might possibly have made it to the local newspaper. Now, your GF's panties are a global hit on YouTube. Maybe you recognize the guy stuffing them into his pocket? If not, I'm sure you can find out.

"Privacy is an illusion online too, and SL plays into that illusion, by giving people the impression that they are "anonymous" here. But, all it'd take is a court order or legal subpoena, and anyone's RL name, address, and personal information could be gleaned and mined from the SL data systems.. It's all stored there. (With the exception of someone who uses a "friend's" computer, and gives a fake name, and maybe even uses a proxy server to lessen IP tracking, but most people in SL don't go to all that trouble.)" --------------------------------------------------------------- @ everyone I wasn't thinking so much about back door invasion of privacy (having specialist IT tools to dig to get information) nor was I thinking about government/corporate conspiracies of surveillance. Rather, I was thinking about the consequences of people rushing to publish their entire lives online for anyone and everyone to see it. As yet, there have been no high-profile cases to bring attention to the problem. Sure, there is the usual: houses are burgled because the thieves know from Facebook/Twitter than Dave and Cindy have taken the kids (Sarah and Josh) to visit aunt Cassie in Baltimore for the weekend professional scammers and spammers know how to correlate personal information gleaned from the web to replicate identities passwords can be guessed much more easily when viewing someone's personal profile (birthdays, street names and addresses, pet names etc.) stalking ('Hey, how are things? Saw you on Facebook. I just live next door and I thought I'd pop by and say hello.") online quarrels resulting in RL harassment ("FU Tyrone, I'll find you on the street.") people change their names to distance themselves from 'youthful and exuberant' blog postings in order to get a professional job ("So, Janet - or should I call you BitchBabeSeven?") the spreading of false and malicious gossip ("Gods, Barbara, don't tell anyone about Ted's drinking problem! It's just between you and me, okay?") Most of us are familiar with these problems, but until we have a 'Murdoch Moment' (a high-profile implosion of something taken for granted), people will blithely expose themselves to several billion nosy neighbors.

It's a big puzzle for me. Does literature affect or reflect? Did Tom Clancy pave the way for the Neocons? Did Charles Dickens create British Socialism? Did Ayn Rand revitalize American Liberalism? Or were they each prisoners of their time, merely reflecting existing attitudes? (Aside: I use the term Liberalism in its historical, international sense, not in the American sense, which is the exact opposite of its historical-international meaning. Interesting too that the political meaning of red and blue are reversed in America. It always baffles non-Americans that the Republicans use the color of International Socialism/Communism while the Democrats use conservative/business blue.) Science Fiction anticipates the future. The film GATTACA was way ahead of the curve, for example, though, in my opinion, Neuromancer (the novel by William Gibson) remains unbeatable nearly 30 years after publication. (I honestly believe nothing interesting has been written in Science Fiction since the mid 80s, which is why it was so easy for me to catch up.) (Aside: what is Science Fiction today other than more hobbits, cavemen, vampires, aliens, cyberspace and Star Wars clones? I think the film Cowboys and Aliens sums it up nicely, though I'm sure Attack of the Vampire Hobbits is being filmed as we speak.) I digress, but I can't help but feel that the world is drowning in boredom. Anyway, back to topic (well, subtopic), how much influence does literature (and the arts in general) have on RL?

Bump.

I have a question. I find it intriguing that the UK - home of the George Orwell and the setting for 1984 - has ended up with the most CCTV cameras on Earth. One would expect the exact opposite. Is it possible that 1984 desensitized the British population such that they embraced rather than rejected social surveillance? In other words, did Orwell unwittingly promote rather than prevent aspects of the dystopian future he feared?

Ishtara, What a wonderful little essay. Tobacco has become the new luxury (because only wealthy people can afford it), the new middle-class drug of choice (because of its brain-boosting properties) and the new street cool (because of the backlash against neo-Puritanism). I am greatly encouraged by a close friend of mine who changed from a hardcore anti-smoking zealot to a tobacco connoisseur. There is hope for mankind.

Let me put it another way. In the past, only celebrities had to build a wall of privacy around themselves. They were the target of stalkers, fraudsters, photographers, trial lawyers and journalists. Their personal, legal and financial affairs were gone through with a fine-tooth comb by just about everyone. They could hardly order a meal in a restaurant without someone identifying them. What applied only to the rich and famous ten years ago will apply to everyone ten years from now. Call it the democratization of public scrutiny. There will be the inevitable backlash. This will be the gravy train for Second Life: a parallel world with a metaphor-based economy in which we transact free from RL constraints. Linden Lab sort of understood this back in 2006, but I believe the company was impatient, sacrificing many of SL's core strengths for a quick buck - always a mistake in business. If Linden Lab would take a longer term view, it would realize that the petroleum oozing up out of the ground is not a problem to be bottled as 'medicine' but the 'oil' of a whole new economy.

Yes. One of the many huge advantages of Second Life over RL social networks is anonymity. The days of plastering our RL information over the internet is rapidly coming to an end. Privacy is not only a big plus for SL, it is the Achilles Heel of RL social networks.

What's the term? Fumble? Interception? Could be a close game

Whew! That was weird. For a while, I thought I had been redirected to a scam site. Rebooted PC, ran virus scan, rebooted router. Did San Francisco get hit by an earthquake or something?

What on Earth has gone wrong with the Fora software? Is it just me? I can't find anything in this giant wall of noise. I don't even know where this post will end up.

Why Second Life is the future and Facebook isn't: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15069858 ETA: http://www.economist.com/node/21524829

"I smoked 40 cigarettes a day back then. Since I gave up smoking, my learning capacity and ability to focus appear to have greatly diminished." -------------------------------------- Ha, so true. It's one of the reasons I love smoking. It gives me a 20-point IQ advantage over my non-smoking doppelganger. There's no way I'm giving up those 20 points.

In a nutshell, we the jury wanted to know whether it was a 'beauty contest' or a 'math problem'. The judge's key point was that the acccused's initial status was not 'neutral' or 'undefined' (floating somewhere in limbo between guilty and innocent); the accused had an initial status of innocent. The onus was on the prosecution to prove not-innocent. In other words, the process was not a beauty contest between equal and opposite candidates (innocence or guilt), it was a math problem that required the prosecution to provide a clean and unambiguous path from A (innocence) to B (guilt).

This is skirting awfully close to Dolcett

What's with this current trend to max the sliders? When I came in, the default for women was 70 (5'8" I think). I don't know what it was for men, but I presume 75 or something. I'm still 70 and I feel like I'm in an episode of Land of the Giants (a very old TV show). Why would a woman want to be 9'6" or a guy want to be 11'4"?

In the UK, a jury is selected at random from the Electoral Role (the official list of eligible voters). On the first day of the trial, before the jurors are seated, the judge asks if any juror has a compelling reason for being excused from jury service. Very few excuses are accepted. The jury is then seated and the trial begins. There is no grooming by the prosecution or the defense (no selection, no elimination, no racial profiling, no gender profiling, no professional profiling). Our jury was an eclectic mix: six women, six men, two academics, four professionals, two students, two housewives, two laborers, eight white, four non-white (with different national/cultural backgrounds). What impressed me about the jury system (the non-groomed jury system) was: It forced the prosecution and the police to present their evidence publicly. Anyone who believes that the inner workings of the legal system are clear, efficient and rigorous is deluded. Our case exposed rivalries within the police about what evidence to present and when to present it, conflicts between police informers and regular officers, personality clashes between police officers and the prosecution, petty rivalries, inside jokes, deliberate attempts to deceive and obfuscate, professional jealousies, hidden political agendas, bureaucratic mistakes etc. Without a jury and a public gallery, the trial would have been Kafkaesque. The accused would have been convicted based on a better-safe-than-sorry political agenda supported by weak evidence gathered hastily through less than competent means. It demonstrated that 12 very different people from a wide range of backgrounds could converge rapidly on the truth (that the prosecution case was flimsy at best). What horrified me about the jury system was: That juries can easily form opinions rather than evaluate evidence rationally. Few jurors have any formal training. Having said that, I was pleased that those on our jury with the least education were quickest to spot the BS. Yet something had obviously gone wrong with the previous jury.At the end of the day, no system is perfect. I think the US jury-grooming system is deeply flawed, but anything is better than a secret trial behind closed doors.

Speaking of publication dates, has anyone ever noticed the date of John Galt's big speech? It's damn peculiar. I've always wondered if there was a link.