Kzero: Virtual World Registered Accounts Top 1 Billion

Virtual worlds analysis company, Kzero is reporting that the total number of virtual world user accounts now exceed 1 billion. There are lots of ways you can slice this, examining density of age groups (young users are the largest per capita) to redundancy and/or duplicate registrations creating a falsely inflated number. Regardless, the number remains significant.

The fact of the matter remains that a worldwide generation is being raised playing, meeting and interacting with the world via virtual worlds. Although a generation of adults may find these spaces awkward or unusual, these young virtual world natives will not share these same levels of discomfort of the generation before them. The long term significance of this is critical: We need to pay attention to the culture and ethics of the development of virtual world communities. Now more than ever.

[Kzero: Virtual world registered accounts breakthrough 1bn]

[Also see: Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds.]

Via @MMPOW

Death by Invasion of Privacy

Tyler Clementi, shown left, ended his life by jumping off the George Washington Bridge days after a private liaison in his Rutgers dorm room was secretly documented and broadcast via Twitter to the Internet. Clementi’s roommate, Dharun Ravi, and classmate Molly Wei have been charged in the case. Read the story in The New York Times.

The tragic incident corresponded with the commencement of “Project Civility” at Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey.

"Long in the planning," reported The New York Times, "the campaign will involve panel discussions, lectures, workshops and other events intended to raise awareness about the importance of respect, compassion and courtesy in everyday interactions. Events scheduled for this fall include a workshop for students and administrators on residential life on campus, called “Respect Resides at Rutgers,” and a panel discussion titled “Uncivil Gadgets? Changing Technologies and Civil Behavior.”

The new "It Gets Better" project endeavors to help homosexual teenagers understand that life will get better after high school. This incident will erode that belief in many young people.

The Rally to Restore Sanity is coming at exactly the right time.

Playing with Fire in Minecraft

I've been watching with delight the stratospheric ascent of popularity of a new indie game called "Minecraft." (The creator, a Swedish game designer named Markus Persson earned upwards of $350,000 from downloads of the game in the first 24 hours.) The game is something like Legos for the virtual world set. It has simple, almost retro-style graphics that are big and chunky, not like the the highly detailed graphics we see in virtual worlds and mass-scale online games.

And yet it's wildly popular.

The above hilarious video of a guy demonstrating how to add a fireplace to a massive house he and a collaborator must have spent hours creating, is a great example of how different Minecraft is in its simplicity. But how devastating the consequences can be of your actions.

Game designer Fred Zeleny (aka @Fizzbang) reacted to it this way, "It's all about cleverly implementing small interacting systems, then standing back and watching the messy organic magic."

Watch and enjoy.

[Minecraft]

Why Everyone Should Read William Gibson's "Zero History"

William Gibson has outdone himself in his latest book. In "Zero History" Gibson has demonstrated himself to be a visionary who can evolve and refine over time, imagining the next iterations of humanity with a prescience that has a biting accuracy.

Zero History takes place in a present-day parallel universe where iPhones and Airbooks confound pre-brand denim-seeking hipsters. It is a today where techno-refugees minging with military fetishists, big money freelance security, and Cory Doctorow-esque Craphounds have carved out a possible living. Walking through the streets of London or Manhattan you will see these people everywhere.

Zero History is a lesson in understanding and anticipating the power of brand in a world of ubiquitous Internet and compelling social media.

Reading Zero History drives home how pristine the local cultures are in a world where the local mixes seemlessly with the urban, the corporate, the covert, the elite, and the government. It also paints a vivid picture of a world and a nuanced and fundamental understanding of social media that demonstrates how poignant is Gibson's Twitter moniker, "@GreatDismal."

If the tapestry of humanity is viewed through the prism of this book, then everyone is interconnected on both a meta-cultural level and a technological level. And though it can go disastrously awry, it will continue to move forward and adapt. Or maybe, as Cory Doctorow says, "things are apt to go more weirdly sideways than up or down."

Kind of like the Internet.

This isn't just a novel, it's a handbook.

[Highly recommended reading: Zero History.]

Gladwell Misses the Vesica Piscis

Gladwell's latest, on Why the revolution will not be Tweeted.

What Gladwell misses is the vesica piscis: the area of intersection between two overlapping circles or ideas.

Like Malcolm Gladwell, I prefer the courageous commitment of sit-ins during the civil rights era to Facebook posts, no matter what the subject matter.

But Gladwell begins his manifesto by invoking one of the most special examples of American revolution and adding that it happened "without e-mail, texting, Facebook, or Twitter." Yeah, and...?

Gladwell writes about an event at MTV that I attended and he, I'm quite sure, did not. His piece reads as if he only knows what he heard somebody else (who also wasn't there) say about it.

“You are the best hope for us all,” James K. Glassman, a former senior State Department official, told a crowd of cyber activists at a recent conference sponsored by Facebook, A. T. & T., Howcast, MTV, and Google. Sites like Facebook, Glassman said, “give the U.S. a significant competitive advantage over terrorists. Some time ago, I said that Al Qaeda was ‘eating our lunch on the Internet.’ That is no longer the case. Al Qaeda is stuck in Web 1.0. The Internet is now about interactivity and conversation.”

These are strong, and puzzling, claims. Why does it matter who is eating whose lunch on the Internet? Are people who log on to their Facebook page really the best hope for us all?

I wonder if it matters to Gladwell that he's eating every other writer's lunch on the Internet today, but no matter.

The grassroots civic leaders at the event, or "cyber activists," as Gladwell condescends, represented a broad array of projects that are every bit as real life, every bit as blood, sweat and tears as any authentic struggle against tyranny and oppression gets. They didn't just send their avatars, or post an emoticon to the group in lieu of showing up. The term cyber activists implies that there's a distinction between "real" and "digital" revolution. They personally told their stories, and it was one of the most moving events I've ever attended.

One Million Voices Against the FARC was there along with Save Darfur Coalition, Genocide Intervention Network, Burma Global Action Network and Invisible Children. These are real people, using the internet as a tool for community connectivity. They also use it as a broadcast medium for the inexplicable violence people witness and experience on a daily basis and for sophisticated geomapping efforts that might just facilitate progress on some of the endless quagmires some people and groups face. The Internet is used in extremely creative ways by those who realize that Facebook and Twitter are not the sum total of the opportunities created by this new dimension in human interaction.

Gladwell's argument centers on the binary perception that in stark contrast to the civil war era, the youth of today seem quite content with banal exchanges, but just because he doesn't personally know any revolutionaries doesn't mean they don't exist and it also doesn't mean that they aren't using the Internet in ways that perhaps Gladwell himself can't imagine. It comes as no surprise therefore that he cites Evgeny Morozov (whose work I critiqued in Policy Innovations).

Glassman himself has demonstrated committed interest in the edges of the Internet. In 2009, my company produced a mixed media event, broadcast live to the Internet to a global audience of hundreds of journalists from dozens of countries, featuring Glassman. I had my doubts about Glassman's policies ahead of time, but during pre-production sessions and the event I came to understand that he trusts in the future of the Internet, not just the way it is used today but for the potential for connectivity that crosses geopolitical barriers. Glassman has faith that young people are developing the capacity for visionary use of available technology to create lasting cultural transformation.

The young drive revolution, today as during the civil rights era. The Internet is not the sole source of youthful complacency, but it has conveniently manifested during an epidemic of childhood obesity compounded by the aftereffects of the teevee couch potato phenomenon having easily given way to hours of uninterrupted screen time by soda slugging kids, 500,000 of whom are legally drugged. These contributing factors cannot be overlooked in any discussion about the modern complacency of youth in America.

The simultaneous crisis in education and the workforce guarantees that this mainstream trend will grow before it shifts, but that doesn't excuse ignoring the development of the actual revolutionaries--young social entrepreneurs who will be interconnected and employable as their complacent peers teach parents that there is only one thing worse than having an empty nest and that's sitting on a bunch of big babies long after they should have learned how to fly.

Read a comments round up by Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic.

Anil Dash has also written a fantastic piece, Make the Revolution.

The amazing digital kaleidoscope

The zefrank kaleidoscope is a great toy and the ultimate procrastination tool, if you like to make videos. This video is a thank-you note to Liz Dorland, who sent me the link.

Slavoj Žižek: Charity "degrades and demoralizes"

The ever-edgy team at RSA Animate (part of the UK's Royal Society for Encouragement of the Arts -- TheRSA.org) has a compelling animated video, narrated by Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek exploring the meaning, impetus and value of "charity" to society.

Thanks @BjoernLasse!

Amazing Inside-the-Game Video of the Upcoming Video Game: Bioshock Infinite

Here's one more example of how the video game industry is exceeding the movie industry in its creativity and mind-bending storytelling potential. The above video trailer of gameplay inside the forthcoming 2012 title "Bioshock Infinity."

Just look at it!

[ArsTechnica: 10-minute Bioshock Infinite trailer hallucinatory, beautiful]

Via @Laroquod

Iranian Hip-Hop Artist YAS: The Underground Story

Ghesseye Zirzamin (The Underground Story)

YAS | MySpace Video

When we launched the Understanding Islam project in 2008, one of the first people we met who transformed our perspective about cultural relations was Iranian Hip-Hop artist YAS, the first Hip-Hop artist sanctioned by the Iranian government, who at the US-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar, performed a spontaneous Hip-Hop song in Farsi with Palestinian Hip Hop artist Mohammed Mughrabi, who sang in Arabic, through a shared avatar in the virtual world of Second Life. Unbeknownst to the two of them, since neither spoke the other's language, they were both singing about reconciliation .

Neda Sarmast, YAS's collaborator emails us the below update:

A couple of months ago YAS was asked to represent the voice of Hip Hop in a new upcoming documentary called ROCK ON, about the state of Rock music in Iran. In the interview they wanted to ask YAS' opinion about Hip Hop (which is dominating the music scene) in support of Rock music. The result was a music video for the film soundtrack called, Ghesseye Zirzamin (The Underground Story) where YAS was asked to collaborate with a few Rock musicians inside Iran to show his support.

You can see the video on YAS' Facebook & Myspace pages or throughout the net.

www.Facebook.com/YASOfficialPage (English translations in the NOTES tab)
www.Facebook.com/YASfans
www.Myspace.com/YASpersian2

- or -

Watch it through this link because the English translations are in included in the comment section:
http://www.radiojavan.com/videos/video/the-ways-ghesseye-zirzamin-(ft-erwin-khachikian-arad-aria-arian-naeini-yas)

"Where Good Ideas Come From"

Author Steven Johnson discusses what makes a creative space great for innovation.

The reason cafes were so popular before the 20th century, is because they "created a space where ideas could mingle and swap," says Johnson. "Chance favors the connected mind."

This concept works well for cultural relations as well: Creating meaningful points of connection to innovate toward greater trust and understanding.

[Where Good Ideas Come From]

Impossible Girl #2

Impossible Girl #2 from Kim Boekbinder on Vimeo.

New York musician Kim Boekbinder has released yet another amazing video from her new album.

Enjoy.

[Kim Boekbinder]

Renee for Congress

This video gives the impression that "Renee for Congress" views all Muslims as terrorists and all architecturally significant mosques in places where conflict occurred to be "victory mosques" to commemorate conquering.

The depth of this fear is the same suspense that drives films about aliens coming to earth. Are they friendly? Will they kill us?

Except Muslims aren't aliens. They are human beings, so it isn't us against them. It's just us. The sooner we realize that, the less conflict will escalate into full-blown violence. Ignorance will always be the leading cause of conflict, and emotional grandstanding will always by the leading means by which people are mislead into perceiving differences first. Renee for Congress is feeding both beasts with this campaign.

While she's entitled to her opinion and aims to close in on a tight race by any means necessary, the blatant bigotry and fear-mongering in this video is despicable.

Thanks for the link, Lisa Mabe.

The Future of Presentations

This will not only keep people awake during a presentation, but actually communicate the point!

Planet Michael, The Virtual World

The latest entry into the virtual world universe is prime fodder for comedy. But out of respect for the people I know who (among millions of people worldwide) take Michael Jackson and his contribution to music very seriously, I will leave the comedy to you, dear reader. Thus, we leave you to interpret for yourself a virtual world that bills itself as a chance to "Live in the world of Michael Jackson." (You might also read the hilarious tweets about it from technology journalist Mitch Wagner.)

MMORPG.com reports Planet Michael Jackson,

"will be an immersive virtual space themed after iconic visuals drawn from Michael's music, his life and the global issues that concerned him. Entire continents will be created that will celebrate Michael's unique genius in a way that underscores his place as the greatest artist of all time. Michael's longtime fans will feel at home as they find themselves in places that seem familiar and yet unknown at the same time, and new generations will discover and experience Michael's life in a way never before imagined. At its core, Planet Michael is a massive social gaming experience that will allow everyone, from the hardcore fan to the novice, to connect and engage in collaborative in-game activities with people worldwide."

See for yourself ...

[Planet Michael]

Bioware's Mass Effect Added to Canadian College Reading List

Since the early 1990s, I've been compelled by the potential of video games as a hugely influential form of the future of storytelling.

One of my favorite games of 2010 was Bioware's "Mass Effect 2" a space opera in which the player is a space faring military special ops agent, who has been "reenlisted" to handle a new alien species insurrection. It's a tense and compelling story as you navigate through cultural and diplomatic challenges each with a "paragon" or "rebel" option, as well as more nuanced conversation choices.

Now the CBC is reporting that Darren Wershler of Concordia University in Edmonton, Canada is including Mass Effect 2 in his syllabus as an example of non-linear storytelling.

I think a lot more games qualify and certainly Bioware, the makers of Mass Effect and many others are some of the best a crafting elaborate, well-written stories in a game environment. Many games tend to undervalue a good story for twitch play -- that is combat or hand-eye coordination tasks, which tend not to interest me so much.

It's a growing field and I'm excited that it is getting the level of attention it deserves, especially since games are an increasingly popular form of entertainment.

[CBC: School's Use Video Games as Teaching Tools.]

Good Write-Up about Business Innovation Factory by Helen Walters

We blogged earlier about John Hagel's powerful presentation about the importance of passion for transforming our culture and economy. Design journalist, Helen Walters has done an excellent write-up of the entire day for design magazine, Core77, which highlights some of the other fascinating talks, including John Maeda, head of the Rhode Island School of Design, Richard Saul Wurman, the creator of TED, and Rita J. King.

Helen's writing style is incredibly fun to read, equal parts probing and informative and witty repartee. To wit, her kicker, "All in all, a mixed bag, with not a dud in the bunch."

[Helen Walters in Core77: BIF6: Reporting from the first day of the Business Innovation Factory's annual shindig.]

OK Go and Friends

And there's a goat!

The MMO You've Been Waiting For: The Bible Online

For those who can't get enough of the descendants of Abraham, your wait is over. A new web-based massively multiplayer online game (MMO) has just come out in beta: The Bible Online. The game will be released in Europe and Israel shortly. Players don't get to play Abraham, but apparently they can encounter him. For those not-so-familiar with MMOs, this looks a bit like Farmville ... only in the Fertile Crescent. No sense of what interpretations of the Bible or other related historical documents will factor into the player experience. According to MMORPG.com the game allows "players to work through some of the most famous stories in the Bible." Players grow their cities from Ur to Canaan.



So many questions about this game such as, will "Martyr" will be a character class? [H/T to @MarkWallace for that question.]

[New Online Game: The Bible.]

The world's smallest character: Dot

This is completely adorable.

John Hagel on the Importance of Passion in Transforming our Economy and Culture

At this week's Business Innovation Factory 6 just after Rita J. King told a riveting story about Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds, John Hagel took the stage. Just earlier he had tweeted that he was going to tell us all a personal story. That personal story, it turns out, has profound global economic and cultural implications.

What he told us was something akin to a Sermon on the Mount for the collapse of the US industrial economy and the transformation of our global culture and economy.

Hagel began telling us how he spent most of his early life figuring out ways to get out of school so that he could experience the diverse cultures that he saw living abroad with his family. As a third grader in Venezuela Hagel forged his mother's signature and would spend his day exploring the slums of Caracas. What he discovered is that these villages were not places of hopeless people, but a place of energy and excitement. Many of the people in the slums had actively chosen to live there. Counter to the predominant narrative of slums being a place of despair, he noted that the people had moved in from the countryside to seek opportunity. He found the slums remarkably vibrant.

Of Scalable Potential and Possibility.

The main body of his story was about the notion of passion as a misunderstood, yet critical part of the human experience and, especially in these transformational economic times, the work experience.

Hagel described two personality iterations he and his team at the Center for the Edge have found in passionate people: The "True Believer" and the "Explorer." The "True Believer" is a person who has a profound conviction about their idea. He indicated that this is a common personality type among Silicon Valley start-ups.

The other passionate personality type is that of the "Explorer" -- a person who wants to pursue something and make a difference over time. He described the Explorer as having two core traits, a "questing" disposition and a "connecting" one. By questing, he illustrated that passionate explorers will find ways of connecting with people as they quest to solve their problems. (As a gamer, I found this particularly resonant.)

The passionate worker, he said, is twice as likely to have a questing disposition and is twice as connected as the person who lacks passion. This results in a sustained productivity in the work place and beyond.

The downside of this in today's United States: Only about 20% of the US workforce is passionate about their work. Conversely, the other 80% is not.

Further, the level of passion workers experience is inversely proportionate to the size of the institution.

Hagel described how we live in an institutional environment designed to squash passion. Not just our corporations, he says, but our school systems, our government institutions, all institutions. "We have created a group of institutions that were designed for scalable efficiency." Not for encouraging passion about work.

He offered a chilling statistic to that scalable efficiency: "Since 1965 Return on Assets for all US companies has collapsed by 75% ... It has been a sustained long-term deterioriation beyond any economic cycle ... And no evidence of it leveling off or turning around."

What Hagel thinks we need are institutions tailored to scalable peer-to-peer learning, not what they currently are focused on: Product, technology or breakthrough innovation.

When I interviewed for my first jobs, when asked by my potential employers what would set me apart as an employee, I always gave the same answer: "I'm passionate." I've worked in the private sector, non-profit sector, federal government, academia -- all the large scale institutions that John describes. And I think he's on to something critically important. When I looked around in each of these institutions during my years there, I noted with dismay the preponderance of people whose seemed crushed by a system, trudging to work with shoulders hunched over and head down. At one time these were people who saw potential in life. Possibly they were people who had passion.

John's thesis addresses what I think is the DNA of our cultural and organizational systemic failures. It has broader applications for transforming our global culture and economy. And we would all do well to listen.

The problems we are trying to fix in our society are not just about stimulating the economy, but stimulating the people.

John's story (as with all of the stories at BIF-6) is 15 minutes long. It's well worth the listen.

[John Hagel on Passion at Business Innovation Factory 6 (audio archive is on the right hand column).]

[More John Hagel on the importance of Passion from his blog.]

[Also listen to Rita J. King's story about Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds.]

Journalist Helen Walters as Badly Drawn Boy Chicken

Is the headline weird enough for you?

Amazing design journalist Helen Walters recently blogged about an adventure she had in which she was decorated as a chicken for a music video for the pop group, Badly Drawn Boy. It's a great confluence of digital art, design, happenstance and the art of being a participatory journalist at the right time in the right place. Take a look at the video and the backstory, below.

[Badly Drawn Boy -- Too Many Miracles]
[Helen Walters: In Which I Become a Badly Drawn Boy Chicken]

Disenfranchised German Students Empowered through Hip Hop

The Christian Science Monitor has a moving blog post about DIP collaborator Battery Dance Company and their work to create cultural relations access points using dance. This story is also about how Battery Dance is creating confidence among disenfranchised German youth by teaching them Hip Hop dance. On the one hand it's a story about cultural relations: A US dance company teaching a US dance form to a German student. At the same time, it's about empowering at-risk, disenfranchised immigrants to Germany with tools to feel better about themselves and their identity through dance. It's touching and powerful:

If, a few weeks back, you’d asked Duc-Tin Thung to dance in front of hundreds of spectators, he would have stared at you as if you had just arrived from the moon. “I would never ever dare,” says Duc-Tin, a Frankfurt vocational school ninth-grader.

But recently, he twisted and turned his body hip-hop style on a basketball court in a routine he had choreographed partially through Dancing to Connect, a groundbreaking project that partners professional dancers from New York’s Battery Dancing Company and Drastic Action with children, often from disadvantaged backgrounds.

In a country that tracks children into university-bound and vocational schools as early as age 9 or 10, vocational schools like Duc-Tin’s are often called “leftover schools,” because they are where immigrants and children from low socioeconomic backgrounds often get relegated. Dancing to Connect boosts the confidence of children like Duc-Tin, and helps educators see those pupils in a different light.

“I would not in my wildest dreams have imagined that my pupils are capable of performing the way they did,” says Heinrich Kössler, principal of Duc-Tin’s school, the Theodor-Heuss-Schule.

Christian Science Monitor: German Students Express Themselves with American Hip Hop

British Council asks: “Who has the authority to speak about national identity?"

Andrew Kneale of the British Council sends us this note about a new British Council publication:

This anthology of essays explores the many ways we explain our culture and portray other societies. Inspired by the Tricycle Theatre’s The Great Game—an epic exploration of foreign engagement in Afghanistan from the 1840s to the present day, now touring the U.S.—Trust Me, I’m An Expert sets out to answer the question, “Who has the authority to speak about national identity?"

With a foreword by General Sir David Richards, Chief of the General Staff, British Ministry of Defence, the publication includes essays by UCLA's Nushin Arbabzadah - Afghan author and journalist, internationally acclaimed writer Reza Aslan - author of No god but God, publisher of the popular political blog The Washington Note - Steve Clemons, Christina Lamb - The Sunday Times' Washington Bureau Chief, and Yale School of Art's Sarah E. Lewis. Edited by the Director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, Christopher Merrill.

[British Council: "Trust Me I'm an Expert"]

Information and Cultural Exchange: The 2009 Story Exchange

Jody Ranck points us to an interesting 2009 cultural relations project of West Sydney Australia's ICE -- the Institute for Culture and Exchange: The Story Exchange.

The Story Exchange 2009 is a creative engagement project aimed at consulting children and young people about the strengths and needs of their neighbourhoods through digital photography, story telling and new technologies. The works produced by participants explore themes of neighbourhood strength, pride in place, local identity and passion for the environment.

[The Story Exchange]

Thanks Jody!

Speaking of Games

"All this koran-burning shtick has me hankering to pan-fry a copy of the AD&D Monster Manual. Anybody *wants* a piece o' that..."

An excellent tweet by @Misanthropod.

Short Russian Robot Love Story

Transistor from suponix.com on Vimeo.

Here's a novel little robot love story by Russian animation studio, Suponix called, "Transistor: Beauty is Individual".

Via Kuriositas.

Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: A Story about Identity and Imagination

Writer Ethan Gilsdorf recently interviewed Rita J. King and me for an article he was working on for The Christian Science Monitor about virtual worlds and intercultural dialogue. In the course of the interview I discovered that Ethan had a new book on the culture of gamers and role-players called "Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks" that just came out in paperback and I got a copy.

Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, as described on the author's website, is a book to help people (friends and family members, for example) to understand the culture and mindset of fantasy role players and gamers.

I am a lifelong gamer, who started playing Dungeons and Dragons in my family's basement at the age of 10. So I know a thing or two about costumes and roleplaying board and computer games.

If you are looking for information about how these people live their lives and what makes them tick you will find it.

But, if you're a gamer like me, you might find something else: A story about one person's journey to understand himself, his identity, family and love.

Gilsdorf, who found solace at the age of 12 in Dungeons and Dragons while his mother descended into dementia and madness, takes the reader on his own personal quest to understand his mother's illness and what he found meaningful to cope with it and, more importantly, what it taught him about himself and about love.

For those who don't know, one of the linchpin actions of gameplay, especially fantasy gameplay (be it World of Warcraft on a PC or Dungeons and Dragons on a tabletop), is quests. Players and roleplayers are sent on an infinite number of quests toward greater knowledge and experience.

Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks is one man's personal quest to understand this subculture of our culture, people who love creating fantasy worlds. Along the way, the author learns about himself. He takes us through a painful breakup with a girlfriend and translates it through the filter of people who love games. We learn about the culture of gamers. But we also learn a bit about what it means to be human.

For that alone, it's worth the read.

"Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks," by Ethan Gilsdorf

"A virtual world that breaks real barriers"

Ethan Gilsdorf a journalist writing for The Christian Science Monitor interviewed Rita J. King and me a few weeks back about our research exploring the real world, cultural relations benefit of some Second Life communities, such as Al Andalus, which was featured in our Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds reports and my recent article for Saudi Aramco World.

Gilsdorf, the author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, which recently came out in paperback, had never been into Second Life before. Despite lack of familiarity and deadline pressure, he went in on his own and did some great original reporting.

It's well worth the read.

[Christian Science Monitor: A virtual world that breaks real barriers]

Blue Mars Hires Virtual World Journalist Wagner Au

Against the backdrop of news that the virtual world of Second Life's market valuation has decreased by US$100 million, comes news that Wagner James Au, virtual world journalist who was first hired as an embedded journalist at Linden Lab the makers of Second Life, to chronicle the inside story of Second Life, has now, six years later, been hired by Avatar Reality the makers of the new virtual world Blue Mars to do the same thing.

This is an excellent idea for many reasons, the least of which is that, although millions of people have experienced virtual worlds, the concept is still strange and unusual to mainstream media. Virtual worlds need experienced journalists to tell their story in a way that explains it to both newcomers and mainstream media.

When Rita J. King and I speak and write about virtual worlds, we consistently find that the dominant media narrative of virtual worlds continues to misunderstand the potential value of these spaces for cultural relations, work, security, education and more. Blue Mars will likely face a similar challenge. Hiring a competent journalist to help tell their story is a wise move.

I hope that in his effort to chronicle Blue Mars, Wagner gives equal attention the real world impact of these spaces. There is much important work going on in virtual worlds which he has not addressed in his blog, such as the future of work and the role virtual worlds play in this evolving vector in our society.

[Blue Mars Blog: Announcing a New Column: Wagner James Au’s Blue World Notes!]

Thanks Ron for your editorial suggestion!

Detroit: "More than just Ruins"

Stephen McGee profiles the team behind BuildingsofDetroit.com.

Detroit Cinematographer Stephen McGee has one of the lead stories on Newsweek Magazine, profiling a group of people documenting and exploring the abandoned buildings of Detroit. The group is a mix of artists, one who relocated from New York, who see documenting the inside of these monuments to design and architecture as sort of a societal obligation. One of the groups, appropriately, is called "Buildings of Detroit." The work is dangerous, sometimes illegal, but the video is amazing.

We were in Detroit recently as part of our collaboration with Jerry Paffendorf on his Loveland project. The stark images of massive abandoned buildings, monuments to the Industrial Age and the hubris of Henry Ford, give Detroit a kind of post-apocalyptic feel, that or an abandoned Hollywood studio lot. Not coincidentally, a number of movies are being filmed there.

Newsweek won't allow you to embed videos into websites, so the above is just a screenshot. Sarah at Newsweek explained in the comments how to embed the video. Updated and embedded. Thanks Sarah!

Newsweek Magazine: More than just Ruins

For context, also see, Rita J. King's essay, "Detroit: Shrink a City with Wild Imagination"

The Impossible Girl

Kim Boekbinder's first video (directed by Brianna Olson) for "Open/Avocado" is mesmerizing.

I commissioned Kim to play at the Imagination Age Salon earlier this summer while artist Molly Crabapple drew the guests under a lit canopy. It was a magical night, filled with absinthe mojitos.

Rita J. King, Joshua S. Fouts and Mike Hardy by Molly Crabapple. I'll scan the rest of the set soon.

[Kim Bookbinder]

Weekend Reading: How to Build a Troll-Proof Bridge

How to Build a Troll-Proof Bridge from Kiyash Monsef on Vimeo.

Kiyash Monsef, the artist and producer behind the socially conscious online game, "URGENT: EVOKE," which we blogged about this past spring, just posted a short story on his blog (the video above is a teaser) that is a timely and worthwhile read.

"How to Build a Troll-Proof Bridge" is a poignant tale with wry insight that could be applied to the challenges of living in a bureaucratic, culturally-diverse society while concurrently offering suggestions on how to live a fulfilling life. It's a story for all ages and experience. People in the cultural relations field, game design and arts may find it resonant.

[Kiyash Monsef: How to Build a Troll-Proof Bridge.]

The Mainstreaming of Furries: Adidas Selling Wookie Parka

I'm not sure what to make of this latest Adidas product as part of their Star Wars line-up. It's a Wookie Parka. My first thought was, "Cool! But I'd never wear it." But then I began to wonder who in Adidas thought there would be a market for adult-sized people who wanted to wear a Wookie Parka. Could it be that furries (people who like to look like furry animals as avatars or sometimes in real life) are going mainstream?

Would you want to dress-up like a Wookie wearing an Adidas Parka?

[Adidas Wookie Parka]

The Economist Reports on Cultural Relations and the Web

The Economist has a new article relevant to those interested in the role of the Internet in cultural relations. "A cyber-house divided" focuses on two key elements: 1) Humans tend to gravitate toward things they know making online communities predominantly homogenous, and 2) meeting in the physical world is the real killer app.

The Economist appears to be trying to present this as a zero-sum game.

In our 2009 report "Digital Diplomacy," which explored the potential of the Internet for cultural relations (especially around Islam), we recommended that the Obama Administration not view the Internet as a panacea. Rather, we stressed that it should be used as a tool to augment and extend relationships that could be formed in the physical world. We also described how virtual worlds in particular, among the various channels of online communication available, were the most complex engagement platforms extant. And that they were particularly valuable in enabling textured communication around difficult topics.

It's important to note that The Economist article is only talking about web-based (i.e. primarily text) social media, which, while the dominant venue for discourse, is essentially taking a snapshot of one sector of Internet-based discourse.

The Economist: "A cyber-house divided"

Blue Beanie Hat with Crocheted Beard

Sometimes the hardest thing about going outside during the bitter cold of winter is covering everything but your face. How many people have thought to themselves, "If only I had a beard!" Or maybe you're an erstwhile spy trying to look inconspicuous under cover of cold. Well, the above Bizarre Etsy Item of the Day is one step closer toward addressing this problem, er, face foward.

We present: A blue winter's beanie with a crocheted beard attached. (As I type this, the brown crocheted beard appears to be sold!)

Extra special to me is the handlebar moustache detail. Beards are so in!

Want!

Thanks to @Brainpicker for the tip!

STOked: Star Trek Gamer Nerds Geeking out on Star Trek: Online

As an admitted Star Trek gaming nerd who plays Star Trek: Online, I was totally amazed to discover the episodic web series, "STOked" a serial that discusses developments in and around Star Trek: Online.

This week STOked is celebrating its 49th episode and one year anniversary, which is amazing if but for the fact that the show began almost six months before Star Trek: Online was released this past March.

This is not Wayne's World for the webisode set, but it is delightfully geeky. The hosts debate everything from whether the hull size of a new Excelsior Class ship is big enough, to critical takes on the Star Trek: Online quests being "too Star Warsy."

I've been playing Star Trek Online for a few weeks now. One of the things I'm most pleased about is that Cryptic Studios, the makers of Star Trek, allow US players and non-US players to choose to play on the same servers. This is not typical. For example, Blizzard, the makers of World of Warcraft sells different versions of World of Warcraft to non-US players meaning that if I want to play with players outside the US or vice versa, I have to acquire what amounts to contraband copies of WoW. My experience playing Star Trek: Online is truly the multicultural world that Gene Roddenberry envisioned. I routinely see chat in multiple European languages, which creates a sense of a collapsing, collaborative world shared virtually. (I've written about the cross-cultural influence of similar games like Star Wars Galaxies on our work here.)

STOked is a highly produced, informative, newsy, funny, thoughtful and totally geeky in a way that gamers who are both fans of Star Trek and Star Trek Online will find likely find interesting and relevant.

[STOked]