Yet another interesting entry over on WorldChanging, this time penned by Alex Steffen. The post, “Future-Making” (Link), touches on what “reBang” is really all about now.
Initially I came up with the name and the idea mostly in the thought that industrial designers would help to build a virtual world and it would be tied to the real one. Considering my background in product design, CAD and rapid-prototyping, this wasn’t really much of a stretch (especially if you know that reading William Gibson’s collection of short stories in “Burning Chrome” had a major impact on my life). What I’ve since gained, spending time these last few years exploring videogames and virtual spaces, is an appreciation for networking technologies’ potential for significant social impact ; how virtual spaces can go well beyond the material. It’s why it was important for me to write that entry over on the SL Future Salon about my experience with the (supposedly) Chinese worker in Second Life, because whether or not the person’s circumstances were an illusion, what I learned about possibilities was very real.
Anyway, be sure to give the article a read. Besides, I’m happy to see that my old semi-tutorial explaining how to mash-up real world video with videogame machinima has gotten some use. I wish I had time to play with that stuff, but right now I’d like to see if there’s a smart way to build … I mean, grow … environmentally-friendly homes for hermit crabs.
Aw man when did you switch to the “Read the rest of this entry…” kind of formatting? It’s highly annoying. I don’t want to click back and forth all the time. Unless your entries have prok-length I see no reason to use it.
I’m playing right now, actually, and just started doing it over the course of this past weekend or so.
I’m aware that websites do this intentionally in order to bolster their page views… which happens to be the basis for a lot of advertising on blogs and what determines how much many people get paid (something like $5-8/thousand page views). I was curious to see what kind of impact that practice actually had.
At some point in the near future I’ll change it up.