[-empyre-] Re: Second Life

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

Just want to point out that I've been working for quite a while in SL and 
have spent $4.00 US total. I don't expect the environment to be free since 
obviously people are running it, but it doesn't cost that much. As far as 
state-of-the-art computers go - at least in my experience this isn't true; 
what surprises me is the smart use of caching and building primitives only 
when needed - this keeps the transfer etc. down. There are numerous venues 
for showing video as well as live performance; in the ones I work in, 
there's no advertising although I think a screen carries a corporate ad 
when it's not presenting media. That's about it.

I don't think SL is a Utopia, but it's the most successful virtual world 
experiment since Lambda MOO, and it's a lot less arcane.

I'm not sure that shows are expensive to set up; there are people doing 
this I believe for close to nothing, once the land is bought. I may be 
wrong.

As far as students not knowing about it - here at Brown, Mark Tribe's 
students are building in SL; Tom Zummer's students at Tyler were doing 
projects there, Patrick Lichty has been teaching a course in it (I 
believe), and I use it for demo. You're probably write about anthro 
students.

So for me it's the same old story; yes, there's money involved (and 
sometimes large sums), but there's also a lot that's free and one can work 
on performance etc. with almost no cash at all. I'm nowhere near the 
advertising areas; I'm not sure where they are. The SL Lib stuff is 
fascinating. Etc.

In other words, this is I think the beginning of something relatively new 
- a virtual gamespace that people are using creatively and socially; there 
are people I know who spend their social lives there. And as tech changes, 
these kinds of spaces will become more elaborate, more capable of live- 
stream video (audio is already possible), etc. For me, I'm pleased I can 
do live performance with complex behaviors that stem from motion capture 
and might return through choreography. When I worked in Poser/Blender, 
what I created could be seen only as static entity - i.e. the control that 
cinema has (one moves through the predetermined diegesis etc.); now, there 
is the freedom of interaction (which does occur), and the line between 
performer and spectator is blurred.

- Alan



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