RE: [-empyre-] Re: Second Life

[Henry Warwick <henry.warwick@sbcglobal.net>]

Hi Patrick!

you wrote:


>There are evangelists and Luddites when it comes to SL, but my favorite
>thing is to wedge open the cracks and see what the dialectic has to
>offer, people.

That's a bit binary for my taste. I think there's another group of people
between the evangelists and the Luddites - the Ones Who Simply Don't Care and
have precious little time to spend on such activities.

Which is pretty much my position. My wife wrote her master's thesis on social
formation in online communities 

http://www.kether.com/words/thesis/index.html

so it's not like we're ignorant of these things. It's just that for me, if
given a choice between working on my artwork (music, imaging, video, etc.) or
futzing with Second Life, I'll make artwork. 

Youtube is a video bucket. At my (soon to go away when I move to Canada) day
job at http://www.gofish.com , they are pursuing a more focused strategy of
customisable channels. Their goal is to become an "Online TV network".
Whatever. I think it's utterly daft, but I'm short-timing there anyway, so what
do I care.?They bought bolt.com, which is a somewhat moribund but extremely
profitable social networking site, so my guess is they are going to be putting
the two notions together - video bucket and social networking, which might have
some use to some people.

What I like about places like youtube, gofish, fora.tv, and others is it's a
way for me to get access to video I wouldn't otherwise see, and I don't have to
"interact". I can put it on and listen to it or watch it as I want. My face /
brain / attention time is all I have, so I tend to be kind of picky about who
gets any of it.

That said, if you are having fun with SL, good for you!

best,

HW
SF
CA