Re: [-empyre-] Lambda Moo - 'early adopters' and technological elites

[Kathy Cleland <kathy.cleland@arts.usyd.edu.au>]

dear blakkbyrd

you talk about the "dumbing down" of the interface in SL comparing it 
unfavourably with LambdaMOO which required its users to be familiar with 
an object oriented programming language

what exactly is wrong with making virtual spaces easier to navigate and 
use!? doesn't this just make them more accessible and democratic? and 
isn't that a good thing rather than a bad thing? what's wrong with 
providing a user-friendly environment for non-technically adept newbies? 
And, from what i see of SL there is still a lot of scope for scripting 
and programming for the more technically adept providing different 
levels of engagement. These multiple entry points and levels of 
engagement are a  positive feature of  SL and make it a more 'open' 
space not limited to technological elites.

i sometimes get the feeling that early adopters and technological elites 
resent the intrusion of the great unwashed into their previously 
exclusive domains and the threat this represents to their authority and 
status in the socio-technical hierarchy ;-) i remember hearing similar 
arguments from early html web coders when the first webpage  design 
software applications came out.


Kathy Cleland

> dear list
>
> back in the early nineties I spent a year in Lambda Moo, that was 
> before chat rooms, before browsers, when participants had to use unix, 
> and everything was command lines and text.
>
> There was a lot of discussion about lambda's future and the inevitable 
> addition of images.  It has come to pass and with it has come a 
> dumbing down of the participants as the interface becomes easier to use.
>
> In Lamda, to build, you had to use an object orientated programming 
> language.
>
> What I'm seeing now is a new generation of theorists trying to 
> re-invent the wheel.  In forming a theory of second life, surely one 
> has to at least acknowledge Lambda's role and the considerable amount 
> of papers it inspired?
>
> I havent done much in SL, its  too much like "been there, done that" 
> for me, but I have complied a collection of posts on SL in connection 
> with my own research.
>
> see
> http://blakkbyrd.blogspot.com/search/label/Second%20Life
>
> and there are videos here
> http://www.youtube.com/my_playlists?p=5322BFAA7ECA62E9
>
> regards
> blakkbyrd
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
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