Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Second Life and the second dimension
Imagine a society of which you really have no physical contact with. A society literally embedded throughout the globe, where although they feel as though they’re best friends, they don’t even know who each other really are? Welcome to Second Life, an online computer game allowing folk to disconnect from their real lives, with their 40 hour a week jobs, bills, illness, children and possibly undesirable physical appearance, to jump into a virtual reality in which they control the tools to make themselves whoever they want to be, to create their own reality around them.
But really, could second life ever be considered reality? I think that Second Life should be considered as a form of reality. Although you are controlling your “avatar” merely through fingers on a keyboard, there is a level of shared experiences which makes Second Life’s
experiences undeniably real. Chatting to friends in coffee houses, playing games, and flying through the air: these are fake experiences that people are discovering together. And when several million people are coming together every day to experience it, clearly, their reality is transcending far beyond simply “Playing a computer game”. These players are socializing, exploring, chatting, laughing and maybe even loving. How could all of these emotions ever be considered fake?
As Meadows argued, the fact that people in these virtual worlds such as Second Life are building things, using them, trading them and discussing them and other people in the game are seeing that object to and placing value on it, clearly there is an aspect of reality in it. These peoples’ shared experiences have created a reality of their own outside of the scope of the real world, and some may say that this fantastic. Think about what the real world is like: worldwide famine, disgusting wars, racism, hate, anger and murder. Wouldn’t you just like to fly awa
y from it all? Well, in Second life, you can.
People have done some pretty amazing things within Virtual Worlds. Marriages have blossomed, ideas have boomed, and people have that ultimate feeling of discovery from within their living rooms. You, as a citizen of the cyber world, can write your own destiny.
This is definitely where the appeal comes from. This new reality must have come to pass from people who are so incredibly unhappy with their own personal lives that they seek to colonize a plane of virtual existence that holds no bias against them, not even the bias of being born a specific colour. By seeking freedom from their own lives, it’s possible that these men and women have created a utopia in which you can escape the real world’s dystopia, and by experiencing it together, they have created a shared reality that could be argued to be as real as the world around you right now.
So I say, go for it. Explore the Virtual Worlds, colonize and good luck!
But really, could second life ever be considered reality? I think that Second Life should be considered as a form of reality. Although you are controlling your “avatar” merely through fingers on a keyboard, there is a level of shared experiences which makes Second Life’s
experiences undeniably real. Chatting to friends in coffee houses, playing games, and flying through the air: these are fake experiences that people are discovering together. And when several million people are coming together every day to experience it, clearly, their reality is transcending far beyond simply “Playing a computer game”. These players are socializing, exploring, chatting, laughing and maybe even loving. How could all of these emotions ever be considered fake?As Meadows argued, the fact that people in these virtual worlds such as Second Life are building things, using them, trading them and discussing them and other people in the game are seeing that object to and placing value on it, clearly there is an aspect of reality in it. These peoples’ shared experiences have created a reality of their own outside of the scope of the real world, and some may say that this fantastic. Think about what the real world is like: worldwide famine, disgusting wars, racism, hate, anger and murder. Wouldn’t you just like to fly awa
y from it all? Well, in Second life, you can.People have done some pretty amazing things within Virtual Worlds. Marriages have blossomed, ideas have boomed, and people have that ultimate feeling of discovery from within their living rooms. You, as a citizen of the cyber world, can write your own destiny.
This is definitely where the appeal comes from. This new reality must have come to pass from people who are so incredibly unhappy with their own personal lives that they seek to colonize a plane of virtual existence that holds no bias against them, not even the bias of being born a specific colour. By seeking freedom from their own lives, it’s possible that these men and women have created a utopia in which you can escape the real world’s dystopia, and by experiencing it together, they have created a shared reality that could be argued to be as real as the world around you right now.
So I say, go for it. Explore the Virtual Worlds, colonize and good luck!
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Internet & Extremists 101
The internet is an amazing place to get your hate on.
Once the internet crawled out of its DARPA roots and in to the real world, thirteen year-olds reveled in their new found possibilities: access to playboy and the ability to question the sexuality of strangers whilst boasting that they were 25, ripped and drove a Porsche.
Meanwhile, Intelligence organizations worldwide drooled at the possibilities for information sharing, hackers pulled off daring hacks in a virtually undefended cyberspace, and haters discovered that they could let everybody know, how much they're gonna hate.
Twisted tongues of hate and malice are now available within the comfort of your own homes. One can now bypass the "propaganda" of the mainstream news, and hear it straight from the guerrillas' tongue.
Case in point: Kavkaz Centre. http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/
The true news from within the Chechen Emirate.
Wait, what? I will remind those whom are uninformed. There is no Chechen Emirate. This website speaks for the self proclaimed Emirs of Chechnya, land Internationally recognized as Russian Soil.
The website's language is intense and intentional. the Russian Secret Service is labeled terrorists and articles throughout the website label Russian police as puppets.
The Chechen Mujaheddin aren't the only extremist group with a website showering them with praise: Al Qaeda has many official and unofficial sites across the internet where they offer press releases and new video footage of their latest threats, and white supremacist organisation websites number in the thousands. One of the largest being http://www.stormfront.org/forum/, a forum for those sympathetic to the cause. At the time of this writing, Stormfront has 195,028 members, and 7,003,172 posts have been made to this discussion board.
Now let's have a look at the Australia First Party, a self admitted "Australian Nationalist Party". Reading their website, they're slowly tiptoeing the line between nationalist, and white nationalist. Actually, scratch that. They're just plan hateful. The articles throughout their website encourage us to claim back our country from "boat people invasion" and there is even a link for an unfinished web page entitled "Overseas students go home!" Wow. Just, wow.
Clearly, the Australia First Party is the White Australia policy modernized to have a southern cross tattoo and thongs, still clinging to the ideas that cultures are so incredibly different that its not possible for us to live together. "The protests of Indian students in Australia against a climate of violence and robbery have highlighted to all the corrosive quality of multiculturalism as an ideology and of the multi-culti society in practice." Question to Australia First: maybe if people with anti multi-cultural views kept it to themselves, parts of the community wouldn't dub their Friday and Sunday nights "smash a curry night" which was a lovely conversation i was subjected to on a train in to Flinders Street Station by a drunken lout.
So in closing, before the internet could stand, haters could get their hate on and unfortunately, in the unregulated state of the internet, this is something that will continue until the death of the free internet.
Does this mean that we need to regulate the internet? That's a whole other pile of plums. Do we censor billions because of a few thousand louts?
Once the internet crawled out of its DARPA roots and in to the real world, thirteen year-olds reveled in their new found possibilities: access to playboy and the ability to question the sexuality of strangers whilst boasting that they were 25, ripped and drove a Porsche.
Meanwhile, Intelligence organizations worldwide drooled at the possibilities for information sharing, hackers pulled off daring hacks in a virtually undefended cyberspace, and haters discovered that they could let everybody know, how much they're gonna hate.
Twisted tongues of hate and malice are now available within the comfort of your own homes. One can now bypass the "propaganda" of the mainstream news, and hear it straight from the guerrillas' tongue.
Case in point: Kavkaz Centre. http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/
The true news from within the Chechen Emirate.
Wait, what? I will remind those whom are uninformed. There is no Chechen Emirate. This website speaks for the self proclaimed Emirs of Chechnya, land Internationally recognized as Russian Soil.
The website's language is intense and intentional. the Russian Secret Service is labeled terrorists and articles throughout the website label Russian police as puppets.
The Chechen Mujaheddin aren't the only extremist group with a website showering them with praise: Al Qaeda has many official and unofficial sites across the internet where they offer press releases and new video footage of their latest threats, and white supremacist organisation websites number in the thousands. One of the largest being http://www.stormfront.org/forum/, a forum for those sympathetic to the cause. At the time of this writing, Stormfront has 195,028 members, and 7,003,172 posts have been made to this discussion board.
Now let's have a look at the Australia First Party, a self admitted "Australian Nationalist Party". Reading their website, they're slowly tiptoeing the line between nationalist, and white nationalist. Actually, scratch that. They're just plan hateful. The articles throughout their website encourage us to claim back our country from "boat people invasion" and there is even a link for an unfinished web page entitled "Overseas students go home!" Wow. Just, wow.
Clearly, the Australia First Party is the White Australia policy modernized to have a southern cross tattoo and thongs, still clinging to the ideas that cultures are so incredibly different that its not possible for us to live together. "The protests of Indian students in Australia against a climate of violence and robbery have highlighted to all the corrosive quality of multiculturalism as an ideology and of the multi-culti society in practice." Question to Australia First: maybe if people with anti multi-cultural views kept it to themselves, parts of the community wouldn't dub their Friday and Sunday nights "smash a curry night" which was a lovely conversation i was subjected to on a train in to Flinders Street Station by a drunken lout.
So in closing, before the internet could stand, haters could get their hate on and unfortunately, in the unregulated state of the internet, this is something that will continue until the death of the free internet.
Does this mean that we need to regulate the internet? That's a whole other pile of plums. Do we censor billions because of a few thousand louts?
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