We've been doing a lot of building and coding in Second Life over the past few months. And it's occurred to me more than once (read: "hourly") that one of the great things about the SL environment is the range of opportunities it creates for fertile improvisation. The LSL script language and building tools are rich and (somewhat) well-structured, and -- like all developer toolkits -- clearly intended to promote and facilitate certain kinds of approaches to problem-solving. But they haven't yet been surrounded by an institutional envelope that dictates thinking about best practice. Too many diverse minds are working simultaneously on too broad a set of problems.

Continue reading "Svarga SL Ecology Simulation"

Freelancer Blog

I love the last ten days before a big show, when final pieces of the program start falling into place. Sun's Nicole Yankelovich will be keynoting on Tuesday the 18th, discussing Wonderland: Sun's powerful 3D collaboration world for knowledge-workers. Yankelovich is Principal Investigator in Collaboration Environments for Sun Labs, and is a bonafide pioneer in user experience design -- an early innovator in IP telephony, speech UI, shared shells and similar technology. Following up at 2 PM PST/5 PM ET will be Sun's Chief Gaming Officer, Chris Melissinos, who'll give us Java-heads the latest and straightest on Darkstar, Sun's massively-scaleable "redshift" platform for multi-user game and virtual world building. Meanwhile, I've been on the email since the wee hours with Cisco's Christian Renaud, Chief Architect of Networked Virtual Environments, who's been (as usual) waxing insightful about how virtual worlds re-intermediate between people and economic actors who might otherwise be disenfranchised and driven apart by hyperconnectivity. We're looking forward to his keynote on Friday, March 21 at 9 AM PST/Noon ET.

Continue reading "Identity, Migration and Critical Density"