This was a good week for presentations in Second Life: earlier in the week Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig chatted inworld (Link), and tonight computer pioneer Doug Engelbart (see announcement with relevant links over on the SL Future Salon blog – Link) presented to both the Bay Area Future Salon group and SL residents… well, kinda; he didn’t seem to pay much attention to us avatars. No matter. I enjoyed both.

However, I’m striking out when it comes to getting questions answered. With Lessig, the full scope of my question wasn’t considered and so the answer he provided was essentially worthless to me. I asked two other questions later, but apparently there wasn’t time for seconds.

With Engelbart, the question I posed in reference to his discussion (on “Collective IQ” and augmenting human abilities) actually borrows from my previous blog entry. Here it is (as if you’re really interested):

Collective systems also facilitate negative input. e.g. Some student creates the “Million Dollar Homepage” but his success (made possible by augment systems) also opens him up to extortion and other unpleasantries. What can be done to safeguard against this kind of abuse?

Personally I think I did a lousy job putting that question together, so actually I’m kind of glad it was overlooked. Better that I go looking for some answers myself. There’s probably a gold mine of information on the issue.

Just passed through Blogspotting and noticed a Stephen Baker entry (Link) which had a comment in it I thought was worth sharing since I’ve raised the issue of virtual “griefing” on several occasions (most notably this one – Link). His blog entry concerns the trials and tribulations of the now very well known “Million Dollar Homepage” entrepeneur, Alex Tew. As most people are now probably aware, the newly-minted millionaire is apparently becoming the target of denial-of-service attacks originating from Russian extortionists (i.e. they’ve infected the computers of average people worldwide and are turning them into “zombies” which repeatedly attempt to access the target website, thus overwhelming it and basically causing it to shut down). That’s a problem considering his obligations to those who purchased ad space on his website and made him wealthy. Here’s what Mr. Baker had to say:

The lesson? Success draws outlaws, who in the world of the net are just a click or two away. In retrospect, sometime between hatching the idea and gaining monster publicity for it, Alex should have secured the site, arranged for massive bandwidth, and hired a lawyer. Next time he probably will.

I’m not sure there’ll be a next time for Alex, but that’s good advice for whoever does have the next million-dollar idea.

I hope people – especially industrial designers – are following the progress of Muttpop‘s latest project over on the Vinyl Pulse website. Knowing that they’re providing updates every Friday should make that easy. I know I look forward to reading them and seeing how the project is developing.

And if you’re not familiar with what’s been going on over there (or in the “urban vinyl” niche toy market in general), be sure to take a look. “El Panda”, the current effort being profiled (Link to El Panda’s development blog entries), follows close on the heels of Muttpop’s “Tequila” project and looks to be just as much fun.

{Image source: Vinyl Pulse}

It’s time. This… could… get… messy.

Looks like the good folks at SLBoutique are on their way to helping blur the increasingly fuzzy line between what’s real and what’s virtual. As Jerry P warned readers of his blog last week (Link), SLBoutique is now selling real goods for virtual cash (see the latest post over on the SL Future Salon blog – Link). Guess it should come as no surprise the first product is a computer component; too bad they aren’t selling something more dramatic… like a puppy.

But the truth is, I’m not sure this will make waves. A lot of interested people have already read stories about people in developing countries earning living wages playing online games. Is this really so outlandish given that news? I don’t think so.

On the other hand, in an object culture full of people claiming they “love” McDonald’s fries, “love” their iPod, “love” their new car, and sometimes “love” their significant other, who knows. Now if it had been a puppy…