Tech -- Culture -- Humour
It’s been an active week or so on ABC Island. In recent weeks the first Sandbox Challenge was completed: designing an Alien.
First place was Alien no. 5 which was Rifty Ristow’s. Second place was no. 8 (the brain in the jar) by Diag Anzac and third place was no. 7 by Sabs Moo. The booby prize went to no. 6 which had zero votes (also by Sabs Moo!). The three winners will be placed on a sky platform above the sandbox for posterity, for all to see.
The first Prim School was held this evening on ABC Island. Led by Gizzy Electricteeth, forty aussies were shown the basics of object creation. Future sessions are planned for those who’ve mastered the basics – joining the ABC Friends group will ensure you receive notice of the next session.
UK newspaper, The Liverpool Echo has created a poster originally designed for dissemination via email. Whilst wandering around the Stanlee sim which hosts the Liverpool replica, I noticed Maddie McCann had entered Second Life:
Imagine the power of a SL-based missing persons viewing area.
Australian teachers may be familiar with Kathy Schrock.
This USA educator has had an internet presence for just over a decade now and her website “Kathy Schrock’s Guide for Educators” is a popular resource which has certainly developed and changed since the early days.
Of course it stands to reason that Kathy is now exploring the options that SL has to offer educators and with that in mind she has established Kathy’s Kaffeeklatsch.
Downstairs there is a great coffee lounge adjoining a poster display of resources. The posters are, mainly, Web 1.0 links to various resources and events such as NECC 2007.
Upstairs Kathy has a more formally configured SL classroom in which to conduct Web 2.0 professional development and group gatherings.
The “To Put your Hand Up – press the fly up (PAGE UP) key. To Put your Hand Down – press the fly down (PAGE DOWN) key” when sitting in the classroom area is a reminder that in some ways school never changes, regardless of technology!
Jokay Wollongong provides an interesting story on an education symposium she attended and she made one point around how online learning guru Stephen Downes reeled off the usual litany of criticisms of SL, ones we all experience: lag, lack of interoperability with other virtual worlds and the issue of boundaries/rules in a metaverse context. All totally legitimate criticisms and ones that need to keep being made by the broader community.
However, the story does illustrate the huge growth in ‘experts’ proliferating in regards to virtual worlds. It’s not an unusual phenomenon, but a reasonable expectation of anyone claiming expertise is that they will provide constructive, considered thoughts on alternative approaches. Stephen Downes may certainly have done that but as SL grows, the number of people attempting to make a living off commentating on SL will also expand. Here’s hoping the chorus of commentary doesn’t turn into an ill-informed lynch mob – as always it’s about balance.
Warren Ellis is featured on the Reuters site talking about the contradiction of a virtual world groaning under the weight of its popularity whilst that same world contains massive tracts of regularly uninhabited buildings.
If you avoid the casino / nightclub / sex club areas then odds are you aren’t going to see great crowds of avatars. It’s a result of the current challenges for SL with lag / concurrency and bandwidth. If you can only fit 50-100 avatars on a sim then you’re never going to see crowding unless it’s in a very confined space – like a nightclub. So although the main drawcards may be music, dancing, sex (or all three) in those areas, the fourth may be the enhanced feeling of being part of a group.
One of the strengths of SL however is the communities of interest that develop – even on a geographical basis. There’s not a homogenous Australian community in SL but the relatively small number of active Aussies means that we do tend to meet together more often. Do you feel you’re part of a community in SL? If so, tell us all about it.
Over at Second Life Safari they like satire and it’s in full force with their ‘A Brief Pictorial History of Second Life’.
On the pictorial theme, we’re always keen to receive in-world shots of activities, Australian or otherwise that may be of interest to SLOz readers. Any used will receive full attribution.
The Official Linden Blog carried one of its more serious topics today – allegations of child pornography. The blog post details the chain of events. Linden Labs’ reaction certainly demonstrates their belief in stamping out anything related to child exploitation and they deserve commendation for that.
Based on the blog post, I took the opportunity to use the SL search functionality and typed in ‘child’ – the result was everything from anti-child pornography groups through to childrens clothing and body-shape stores. The second location we teleported to contained the following images:
Another location appeared more innocuous but still contained body shapes like this:
We’re not asserting that the locations we saw are involved in child pornography. However, these images are obviously of under-18’s. I saw another picture of a child-like body shape for sale in nothing but panties which contained a sales description of ‘pert preteen body’.
That on its own may not constitute pornography but it’s difficult to rationalise the use of child body shapes beyond some very unhealthy intentions. There are people in SL who want to be carefree and live like a child, but arguably this isn’t the majority of the market.
We’ve contacted Linden Labs via their PR company for comment and we’ll report any response.
Update (November 2007): Reuters is reporting that the UK have undercover police investigating pedophilia in virtual worlds including Second Life. Second Life Insider is also running a story on Wonderland sim and Sky News’ reporting on it.
Update 2: Croga is an excellent site that provides confidential information to those concerned about their viewing of child pornography online.
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