Have a great Holiday Season, everyone!

Diwali, for those of you who don’t know, is the Festival of Lights for those who adhere to Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism and Buddhism. It celebrates, in Hinduism, the return home of the god Rama after 14 years, who was welcomed with rows of alight lamps.

The essence of the festival is the same across all the religions though – it’s a celebration of Ātman – an innermost light which is pure and infinite. It’s like your individual soul, as opposed to the physical body that you occupy. It’s what allows us to love and show compassion. Even in Second Life, it manifests itself behind all the pixels and mesh – it’s behind every (non-bot) avatar.

I want to take the occasion to thank everyone over the past year for friendships and for lighting my path, without whom I wouldn’t be a fraction of who I’d be. And to look forward to the future, and whatever it may hold.

Wishing you a Happy Diwali, and a Prosperous New Year.

I saw Surrogates recently, which stars Bruce Willis as an FBI agent in a world where people minimise risk to themselves by living their life through an artificial being which is an idealised representation of who they want to be.

Sound familiar at all?

The whole idea seems rather far fetched, even if we are living an artificially created life through Second Life. Or is it?

A decade ago, a Spanish university conducted experiments which concentrated around the neurophilosophical theory of “body swap illusion”. It looked at how you could project your own body experiences from another being, believing that you are experiencing the same sensations as they would be.

The team recently took the study a step further and demonstrated the same theory will apply to virtual reality situations. The participants in the experiment responded as if the virtual limb was their own, and their mind had incorporated the virtual into the reality.

So it’s entirely possible that in the near future, we’ll be able to experience the sensations of the virtual world. But experience alone doesn’t mean the world can be replaced by immersive avatars. You’d need an artificial presence yourself too, and try as you may, your gorgeous avatar’s not leaving the grid anytime soon.

But the solution could well already be here – AnyBots in California are a company which produces telepresence robots. A robot which can give you eyes and ears when you’re in a remote location. It’s pretty functional, allowing you to move around, interact with objects and perform tasks (like washing up!).

The concept means you can be in two places at once with more ability to interact with your environment than through more conventional methods.

Combine the two methods I’ve looked at, and you have a functional, artificial being which you can control remotely, and experience the sensations that it experiences. Although, that robot isn’t very human looking..

Introducing the Actroid. It replicates human breathing, blinking and speaking functions, whilst looking humanoid. Uncanny Valley, maybe, but we’ve come to accept the premise of prim feet.

Combine all three technologies, and you suddenly realise that the concept of Surrogates is actually only around the corner.

And then you get into all the different types of issues that the film brings up. Drastic decreases in crime and a world of idealised-aesthetic beings. But also a complete breakdown in social skills, an awareness that the person you’re speaking to may not be who they look like they are, and.. well, pretty much all the other issues we see in daily life in Second Life.

That’s assuming we’d want to live life through an immersive avatar. Simple question – if Second Life could be real, would you want it to be?

A Tasar Collar sold on XStreet SL

A story like this really just writes its own title.

Taser International Inc. have filed a suit against Linden Lab, XStreetSL and the former owners of XSL, VirtuaTrade. Taser are the biggest producers of stun guns, of course, and it seems they’re unhappy about those residents who are infringing their trademark in SL.

It’s interesting to note however, that Taser are going straight to Linden Lab with this legal action, specifically naming Philip Rosendale, Mark Kingdon and John Zdanowski (who’s actually left LL now – nothing like jumping off the ship and getting caught on the anchor, eh?). They’ve not filed against John Doe avatars, but instead are applying pressure on Linden Lab, presumably to put pressure on them to stop the trademark violations in world.

In particular, Taser Inc. are unhappy that the Taser brand is being used in.. wait for it.. sex products! Unsuprisingly, the Taser Collar by Oni Horan (pictured above) has now been removed from XStreet SL.

This raises the question, are Linden Lab responsible for us and our actions? When circumstances like these occur, finding those directly responsible are harder to deal with in terms of First Life (FL) information, not to mention proving that they are the guilty party. So the result is that Linden Lab will have to take action and remove the offending items themselves, and clean up the mess we’re making.

And then what happens? Will Linden Lab enforce stricter guidelines on what can be created and prevent the use of FL copyrights? Do residents who use RL brands to sell wares in Second Life suddenly find their accounts disabled?

I can understand Taser’s desire to hold onto their trademark – I’ve met SL residents who have thought FL brands are operating in SL, when in fact they’re more often than not just cheap rip offs. And it seems few FL corporations want their brand associated with Second Life anymore.

One of the fundamental elements of that is around IP rights. It is really, really important that people who create great content are able to enjoy it and protect it and that was one of the things that Philip put in place and has underpinned the economy as we know it today.

One of the interesting challenges that we face is that, as Second Life becomes much more international and about 60% of our Residents now are outside of the US, we have a whole set of diverse values, beliefs, and even laws that we have to take into consideration.

Nevertheless, we believe in individuality, we prize creativity, and we are going to do everything we can to keep Second Life as open and free flowing as it has always been.

~M Linden, SL5B Opening Speech

That was almost a year ago now, and it seems that there is a lot of work that needs to be done to clarify to residents as to what they can and can’t do with regards to in world content.

There are brands, trademarks and even entire designs that are ripped directly from real world designers and corporations, and it seems the time is nearing for Linden Lab to take decisive action on these.

Truth be told, it’s because I’m finding it harder to sustain regular writing. It takes a lot of work to post an article daily, and to maintain being amusing/informative/insightful (pick none).

So for the past month or two, I’ve gone periods of days, and even weeks when I’ve not been able to post articles, engage is social media or even to log into Second Life.

Why?

That blessed curse known as Real Life of course. There’s been a major change in my real world circumstances, which I’m now feeling ready to divulge.

The first one is that in the real world I am actually female – I’m a twenty something rocker chick who loves salads and ice creams, but not together. It’s something that has been very difficult to keep under the wraps, and over the past couple of years, I’ve enjoyed playing a male avatar. When I first joined SL, I based my avatar on a guy who’s picture I found on Facebook, and proceeded to *borrow* the pics to maintain my cover.

Why did I do this? Well I never realised the advantages of being a male in Second Life – there are certainly several advantages to playing the opposite sex, including the different sorts of attention you garner. I could never bring myself to get a freenis though – that much is true!

The biggest challenges were when I was asked to start DJing about 2 years ago, and I had to claim my microphone was broken/I’d chewed on the mic by accident and it was distorting my voice. In reality, I was just using voice manipulation software, which I’d not managed to perfect yet and was making me sound rather odd.

People often ask me how I do everything I do – well us women have the knack of being able to multitask! You just don’t expect it from a guy av..!

So the real world circumstance that has been affecting my time recently? Well I’m expecting my first baby, and aside of all the moodswings and need to run to the bathroom and then nap all the time, I’m just finding that I’m doing a lot more in FL to prepare for the arrival of the baby.

I don’t know the gender yet, but I’m due to give birth on 31st June, and I can’t wait! Until then, and for a while after, I doubt I’ll be back to regular blogging, hence the hiring of new and talented writers to continue Metaversally Speaking to be the edgy, funny blog you’ve all come to love!

I guess there’s nowhere else for me to run after coming clean about this, but I hope y’all don’t think any different about me – I’m still Prad Prathivi

POST-SCRIPT: Yes, it was an April Fool’s Gag – I’m fully male in the First Life as well as Second, although many may question my masculinity! Also, I’d never get any work done if I had a pair of breasts of play with..

I’ve seen the notion that “internet friends aren’t real” bandied around before, yet it feel incredibly real. I’ve come to the conclusion that this is because any friend has to fulfil two criteria:

1. Someone whom you have entrusted with a secret.
2. Someone who has accepted a favour from you.

My definition here is based around the concept of giving, rather than recieving. If you’re someone who picks out their friends by what they have to offer to you, then you probably don’t have many friends at all.

To tell somebody a secret about yourself entrusts them with an intimate detail of your life. You become more vunerable, and the person you told becomes a protector – and thus a bond is formed.

Secondly, we accept favours from strangers fairly often. But we don’t entrust these strangers with our secrets, so it’s a combination of the two which allows a friendship to bond. The other person will usually reciprocate, as is human nature to. The strength of the friendship is reliant on how willing the other person is to reciprocate.

Obviously this is simplistic and there’s more to it than that – similar interests and complimenting personalities are always important too. But these aren’t traits which you can control – the two I stated are.

Second Life offers us the opportunity to talk to many people, and interact directly with the personality. We are all accessible and easily reached when in world, and we’re all capable of making good friends here, exactly the same way as in the first life.

Strong friendship isn’t reliant on face-to-face human contact. It can be as simple as a secret and a favour, which is just as possible in a virtual world as it is in the real one.

Google is my browser’s homepage, and when I click for Firefox to load, I expect Google to pop up instantly. This set a dangerous precedent when I then do a search, and again expect the results to be accurate to what I’m looking for, and to appear instantly.

Now I appreiciate that the results webpages won’t be as quick as Google is, but anything longer than 5-10 seconds, and I’m going to hit ‘Back’ and try another result. That’s a pretty strong contrast to a decade ago when I was happy to kill a couple of minutes playing Minesweeper while I waited for Yahoo! to load up on Dial Up.

Similarly, I find reading articles and blogs online to be much easier than reading long drawn articles on the internet or print – if an article goes more than 5-6 paragraphs, I tend to find myself skim reading to get the jist of it.

That could well be a sign of my own lack of attention span, but I have the feeling that other people will relate to this – the internet presents us a quick and easy way to gain access to the knowledge we want to know, primarily through search tools.

My musing is whether this would apply within Second Life – a platform which is based strongly on visual components.

SL has the issue with load times – I find if a sim hasn’t loaded after a couple of minutes, I’ll get bored and move on. When building a sim, I rarely use a palette of more than 10 textures, as I’m aware once the sim owner adds their own pieces in, the place will have a longer load time.

The shorter the load time, the faster a visitor can access what they’re looking for. It’s part of the age where speed is a necessity, and people don’t expect to be kept waiting.

A hair store in SL which I visited recently blindsighted me on this. I tp’d in and waited for the sim to load, but all I saw was my avatar stood in shallow sea water, and lots of floating panels with hair products. It took me a good few minutes to realise there was actually no store build, and that I had fully rezzed a while ago – in a metaverse where we expect fancy, high quality builds, it was refreshing to find someone who had put convenience first.

But my ponder is if this impatience is going to make us stupider? Will our demand for access to only information that we require lead to us abandon the “deep reading” attained from the printing press? The pressure for immediacy and efficiency could well sacrifice the imagery and deep mental connection we make with what we see and read, instead just becoming information decoders.

Essentially what we are presented with is a form of artificial intelligence – the tools we are using to gain access to information are getting better at knowing what we want, and where we can find it as well as being quicker and more efficient about it.

When online, we need a purpose – just sitting and contemplating what to do on the internet or in Second Life is being shunned. We are presented with a wide array of activities and information to serve our procrastination, and little time for thought and ambiguity.

The faster we surf the web, or teleport from sim to sim, the more opportunities are available for commercial interests to pick up on our trends, and aim advertising at us. It’s in the economic interest of these companies that we don’t use the internet at a slow pace, and engage in concentrated thoughts. More clicks and more hits equates to more money.

Perhaps I’m just overanalysing this. It’s only natural to ponder the worst of a situation when new technologies present themselves. Socrates complained that the written word would destroy mankind’s ability to carry knowledge in their head, and the failure to exercise their memory would lead them to be forgetful. He argued that the advent of written word would lead to people being able to give the perception of intelligence, but without understanding what they’ve read, they would simply be ignorant. Essentially filled with the conceit of wisdom, as opposed to real wisdom.

Socrates wasn’t far wrong either – but he failed to realise that the sharing of ideas through the written word would spur creativity and allow for new ideas and knowledge to develop.

It should be noted that deep reading doesn’t equate to deep thinking – the internet may give us the power to find information concisely, but that doesn’t mean we don’t ponder it. Indeed, we think about ways that information in Second Life can be presented better, and we have the tools to be able to express our ideas differently.

I think it’s important that we don’t take everything at face value, and that we think, create and share ideas – don’t accept something you see in SL as it is. Know that you can think about ways it could be improved, and that you can develop and implement the skills to do so, or share the ideas with someone else who can.

I think too many people in Second Life are taking things as they are, and not communicating their ideas. We don’t want a society where the avatar feels scripted to accept what is there. As we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, we run the risk of our own intelligence flattening into artificial intelligence.

Questions things. Ponder how something can be better. Think about things you see and interact with, and how they enhance your experience. Don’t just live an existence in Second Life – share your ideas, change it and make a difference.

I am fully aware on the irony at the length of this article, and that you most likely skim read it. It’s okay.

“Go outside, meet a real person, read a book, have a walk, live a REAL life!”

I mean, jeeez. Get over yourselves. This “real world” myth that people who use the internet are all socially dysfunctional is bizarre, and very wrong.

Second Life isn’t a game – it’s a metaverse. A virtual world. It has no final endgame, and it has no goals or missions. It’s simply what you make of it. It’s a form of entertainment – like watching television, or reading a book. It serves as a way for people to get a little enjoyment.

Except it’s more than that – SL grants us the power to express ourselves creatively. To create an income. To form relationships. To learn new skills. So it’s a more powerful form of entertainment than most.

In the real world, I’m a keen swimmer and water polo enthusiast and I enjoy my world away from Second Life. But “Real Life” consists of both the First and Second Lives – one doesn’t go away simply because you ignore it. If you choose to spend more time in Second Life than first, then so be it. It doesn’t make you any better or worse than anybody else.

People in Second Life are still people, albeit more anonymous. Yes – it is a fantasy world, but then what is wrong with that? All we seek in life is the chance to enjoy ourselves. We all make our choices, and we all reap the rewards, and suffer the consequences.

Second Life contains two basic essentials which make it a powerful medium that causes us to develop a strong emotional attachment to it – love and money. It’s this component that people in the real world (and heck, even the second one) don’t seem to understand.

Love and money is what fuels a society, and essentially breeds what is good and bad about the world. It causes the greatest of happiness, the depths of sadness, the heights of drama and the power of knowledge. As in the first life, those in Second Life are working in a society seeking these two bare essentials, and that is why people become attached to this metaverse.

Yes, you can seek both of these things in the real world too. And I agree that you should too, but it shouldn’t be overlooked that both love and money can transcend the virtual world and enter the first. The first life may dismiss those in the second as social outcasts and what haves, but many are simply living out their dreams and fantasies in ways the first won’t allow.

I’ve been on the grid when it’s been closed, and I’ve been one of a handful of people who have been “locked in” After griefing and looting, it becomes rather boring and you yearn for people to come back.

So, it’s really no different to the real life. The fact that so many people have the perception that people are using virtual worlds for sordid reasons simply affirms to me how misunderstood the metaverse is. As residents, we have no real link to the real world where we can showcase what we do, and demonstrate the true power of the metaverse.

So it boils down to the fact that the metaverse is a misunderstood phenomenon, and people who don’t use it fail to understand the true power of love and money. They don’t see how such things can be replicated in a virtual environment, but still feel as real and powerful.

So while we can go out and have a walk through the park, it doesn’t mean Second Life is any more or less important.

Yes, there’s an ‘Exit’ button.

No, that doesn’t mean it all goes away.

My headmaster at primary school would play a classical piece of music while we waited for morning assemblies to start, and I grew a passion for the piano. I’ve been playing since a young age, and it’s an instrument which fascinates me immensly.

While I write up blog entries, or while I’m drawing, I love to listen to the piano, one of my favourites being Ludovico Einudi – allow me to share some of his compositions. Close your eyes, and let the music take you over..

Ludovico Einaudi – Divenire

Ludovico Einaudi – Primavera

Ludovico Einaudi – Andare

Ludovico Einaudi – L’origine nascosta

I actually had to look up “Smarmy”.. it didn’t mean what I thought it did.

I regularly get picked up about my sense of humour, in both worlds. I daresay it’s one of the first traits that anyone will pick up from me – I have a wickedly dry sarcastic tone, coupled with a quick wit and a tongue which has absolutely no connection to my brain. The other day, someone said they aspired to be as witty – that arranged can be. No, really.

Renounce your nationality and pledge allegiance to Her Majesty The Queen.

Brits have a natural flair for witty and dry humour. It’s everywhere.. it’s what rocks our socks. We make fun of every situation, regardless of how grave. It’s how we deal and it’s how we function. We know how to laugh at ourselves, and we don’t take ourselves too seriously. Heck, you can’t when you just lost your empire.

We enjoy our humour, and we’ll take any chance we can to make satire of a situation. It’s the background of where so many of my “funnies” posts come from.. we’re a nation of people who love a good laugh, usually at someone else’s expense.

One of my favourite TV shows in the UK is “Have I Got News For You” which takes a satirical look at the week’s news events, and it is the pinnacle of all that is British humour. We never take politics seriously in Britain – you have to look and behave the part to be in a position of power. We’d never elect an Austrian former bodybuilder-turned filmstar to Parliament, let alone a gaffe-prone cowboy. Heaven help us, but we most definately wouldn’t elect a short, angry guy with a dodgy moustache to run the country. We’d be far too busy rolling around the floor, clutching our sides and laughing.

But us Brits are truly funny when we lose our cool.. mainly because you don’t even realise it. Unlike Americans, we don’t take out 9 people with a shotgun in the office. Us Brits, on the other hand, are completely apathetic.. and then we ask “Okay.. what now?”. When we’re really pissed off, we write a letter. It’s the British way.. you can’t knock it.

I’m sometimes told that where you’re from and who you are in First Life bears little insignificance to who you are in Second Life.. they try to make out that you can be anyone. But I’m of the opinion that that is just not true. Who we are in you in the First Life shapes your personality, your confidence and the way your think, act and behave. All traits which are clearly evident in Second Life.

So I figure that although Second Life levels the play field for a lot of people, we’re all essentially constrained by our real life personas. In my case, I’m apparently a “smarmy Brit”, which I can live with. I’m happy being who I am, and I won’t try to hide it in Second Life.

My thoughts are don’t try to be someone else.. there’s too much of that going on, and everyone needs to find their own space, doing their own thing for us to all co-habit together in this virtual world. Be happy with who you are, not with who you want to be.. because if you try to be someone you’re not, you’re never going to get there.

And swearing an oath to the Crown isn’t really going to help you either.