The Power of Numbers

Fractal generated landscape

Last class we mentioned the example of Benoit Mandelbrot, the father of Fractal Geometry. His work is so important and has influenced so many fields, from mathematics to medicine to entertainment and economics that I am not even attempting to go into more details.

I leave it up to you to find out by utilizing available resources in the net or in the literature, like Mandelbrot's own book The Fractal Geometry of Nature, which made possible to non-specialists to understand or simply enjoy how the visualization of a simple recursive formula can reveal the underlying structure of the world around us, I would even say of the Universe itself.

After people in the film industry for example, were able to "see" with their own eyes the generative power of this recursive formulas, computer graphics programs were developed to take advantage of this procedure to generate highly realistic natural phenomena, from landscapes to water, explosions, fire and such. Things would never be the same.

Algorithmic music generated by the Wolfram Tones program

On a similar note (pun intended), Stephen Wolfram, has contributed to the visualization field, as well as many others too numerous:-) to mention here. Among other things he is the creator of Mathematica, a computational software used primarily for scientific and engineering visualizations. Thanks to that program many applications have been developed that relate to the arts as well. The case in point is Wolfram Tones, which allows you to generate music, soundtracks etc. where you can modify parameters (such as type of sound, rhythm etc) to suit your taste or your application, try it out. You could call it Audiolizations!

Small Worlds

Anyone trying out Small Worlds yet? It's just gone into public beta.

http://www.smallworlds.com

I'm Sebastien Knoller in there as well.

Keith

HiPiHi: China's Answer to SL

Just thought I'd post this little tid bit about China's SL clone that just came into beta. In some ways it looks more detailed than SL, but the animations don't look as smooth to me. Either way I thought it was interesting that there is a thought that HiPiHi could be the answer to go create standards for virtual worlds and take them from being a simulation separate from the Internet to becoming mainstream internet as the 3D internet.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/21/hipihi-opens-its-doors-to-the-public/

BTW Anyone understand Mandarin?

Social behavior in virtual environments

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal was discussing the "surprising power of synthetic identity." (WEEKEND JOURNAL; Is This Man Cheating on His Wife?
Alexandra Alter. Wall Street Journal (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Aug 10, 2007. p. W.1 - link: http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1317807881&sid=1&Fmt=3&clientId=20179&RQT=309&VName=PQD). Some interesting statistics reported in the article: 40% of men and 53% of women who play online games said their virtual friends were equal to or better than their rl friends... and 25% of the 30,000 surveyed said the emotional highlight of their past week occurred in the virtual realm. The link to the Stanford study should be attached. I find this fascinating and curious. Is it bad, good, neither, or both? Thoughts?

Who's Joining Me?

So reading through my blogs this morning I was pleasantly surprised that I had quite a few virtual worlds articles.

My favorite (and the one that the title of the post refers to) is Nickelodeon is developing a Spongebob Squarepants Virtual World.

Also interesting is that Paramount is using There.com (another virtual world... Anyone have experience with this one?) to by allowing avatars to place mini clips over their heads.

What really gets me about the Paramount article is how amazing viral marketing has become online. I'm not an advertising or marketing major and really know little about it, but holy cow this business is booming especially with websites like those created for the new Batman movie.

And what about civil law?

Several recent links and posts have discussed the blur between real and virtual in the realm of criminal acts. The link regarding "Ageplay sim eyes new grid," for example, explains that child porn may be available in SL (if it's not already). Porn is obviously alive and thriving in SL, which is not illegal.. but the idea of sex acts with children is very disturbing, even in a virtual sense. Obviously, no real child is being harmed... in this case... but, where do we draw the line of illegal behavior. It's like the people who have asked... is it infidelity if you have virtual sex outside of marriage? I have heard strong opinions from both sides. Even Dennis' comment about virtual rape raises many questions. We don't know the people involved and what their emotional state is. For some, it is not merely "lighthearted play" and such an act could be very traumatising and could carry into their RL just as some nightmares haunt us.

On a less dramatic note, there have been many issues raised recently about fraud and privacy, especially among social networking sites that have made it into the courts. It would seem inevitable that the same will filter into SL. Even with all sorts of consent forms at sign-in (which maybe that was the small print most us never read in the "terms of agreement") which release not only Linden but the players of any liability, legal questions will emerge and be challenged. As one final example, there are many people now offering "advice" in SL. In RL we have to have licenses to "practice" in certain fields, such as psychology, and usually for good reason. To do so without a license is a felony offense. Who are these people offering such advice in SL and what are their credentials? Or... do avatars even care? Should they care? In RL, Dr. Phil has made kabillions of dollars offering advice... without a license... for years. Is it simply entertainment and we should let it go at that? I guess it's just a case of "buyer beware" at this point.

Welcome back - and thoughts on civic engagement

Hope everyone had a wonderful break... and welcome back. To get back into the rhythm of things, I wanted to share some thoughts on a discussion I attended last night at Thotica (in SL - every Sunday night, on evolutionary psychology). This group is very engaged and many are very much of the post-humanist school of thought. Last night's discussion included many opinions shared about the evolution of human as "cyborg" via advances in technologies and programs such as SL. As they posed the question regarding the pro's and con's of transitioning to "life" in virtual realities, the discussion moved to the idea of community. Certainly there are many communities forming in SL, as they have via social networking sites, blogs, and interest communities on the Internet. Yet, civic engagement in local communities continues to wane in our culture. Will people choose a virtual community over their neighborhoods, towns, civic organizations, etc? (it appears some already have) And if so, why? And at what consequence? (we still need to raise our children and provide food, clothing -in theory, and shelter in the rl) I have many thoughts on how to answer these questions both from positive and negative perspectives, but thought I'd throw it out to you...

Academic Institutions in Second Life

The link on the class website to the research article on academic institutions in Second Life used INSEAD as one of its case study samples. If you haven't visited it yet, I highly recommend it. They've truly embraced the idea of classrooms without walls and thinking of creating "infrastructure" that cannot exist in the real world. I know this concept has been a challenge for many teams.

Preliminary Report on the Digital Worlds Emory Conference

I drove to Atlanta on Sunday and attended the Digital Worlds Conference all day Monday. They did video tape the entire conference, and promised it would be up on the web before too long. They had a wireless internet feed for guests, but the band width was too low to do more than check email. No one except the hard-wired presenters could get into SL.

One of the speakers in the first panel was Dr. Edward Castronova, who gave recent updates on his research in MMORGS. They are still the biggest game in town.

This fed into the next panel, on economics and money, and how the linkage between the real world and virtual worlds will need to evolve before financial institutions can function effectively in virtual worlds.

A reoccurring theme in all the panels was identity and how it will work and evolve. The third panel talked about future man/machine interfaces that will make virtual worlds easier for noobs, and how identities will be expressed in the virtual arena in politics and business.

The final panel had the CFO on Linden Labs, and the CEO of a new social networking virtual world Kaneva, discussing the role of entertainment versus avatar-generated activities, and the impact of open-source, open-standards, and interoperable virtual worlds software. This session was done as a multi-platform event. It was a live feed to and from the SL weekly TV show Metanomics and the Linden Labs rep was in-world and on Skype. Audience members in-world and in Atlanta got to ask questions and make comments. Very shortly this panel should be available through the Metanomics webite, http://metanomics.net/

It was an interesting event where I also got to meet face to face some of the pioneering avatars of education in SL.

Doug