This was right in front of my eyes. I was looking at all the pieces.

– The development and convergence of real and virtual reputation systems (and the importance of each).
– The increasingly thin barrier between the real and the virtual in all other aspects.
– The global social implications of these technologies.
– Maybe even a potential “missing link” in the development of an artificial intelligence*.
– And more…

But I didn’t put them together the way Dave Chiu and Didier Hillhorst assembled them (read about them and their project over on We Make Money Not Art – Link). Or see until now how executing it in the way Jane Siberry is doing (reminder courtesy of an entry on Boing Boing – Link) fits into the mix.

Wow. A big section of the puzzle was just completed. This is going to be very helpful.

* I’ll get back to how this works with kirkyans later.

Well, the “kirkyan” entry that was submitted to Wikipedia (not by me, btw) has been deleted. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, you might want to first read this post (reLink), and perhaps surf over to WorldChanging where the issue came up on an entry regarding the Metaverse Roadmap Conference (Link).

After you’ve done that, take a look at the Wikipedia page that was deleted (I saved it – Link). After you’ve read it, I should mention that the director of a simulation company, Stirling Reid Ltd, considered the idea entirely plausible and the concept worthy of its own entry. Unfortunately that comment was lost with the deletion. However, what’s nice is that if you test the links I still have, you’ll find that my saved Wikipedia page takes you to the original site and the people who sat in judgement over a concept that didn’t benefit from having a famous science fiction author give it a name … like “spime” (Link).

Here’s a list of the judges (Link) calling for deletion:

RHaworth (Link)
Porge (Link)
Blnguyen (Link)
JIP (Link)
Richardcavell (Link)
Dunstan (Link)
Andrew Lanahan (Link)
PJM (Link)
SorryGuy (Link)
Deville (Link)

If you do a little research on these individuals as I did last night, you’ll find some interesting things. Continue reading →

I caught the above item for sale on Etsy, Gameboy Color Cufflinks (Link) via Wonderland this morning. And I see it’s also being advertised on Boing Boing.

My first thought is: I bet this isn’t a licensed product.

My second thought is: I wonder if Sega is still around to protect this other game-related product, Sega Saturn Cufflinks (Link) (for sale by the same individual)?

My third thought is: Can repurposed Micro Machines toys be turned into “Micro Machines Toy Car Cufflinks” (Link) and sold using the “Micro Machines” name (as are the other two products)?

I don’t know. The one thing I do know is that one person has decided it’s easier to make a living leveraging other brands than develop their own. And as people become increasingly empowered to fabricate products just as they now have the power to make perfect digital copies of music, movies and software, trademarks and other intellectual property are going to be under serious siege.
Continue reading →

Seems like there’s a bit of a race on to integrate real life with game/virtual life. According to a new article over on C|Net, this is what the developers of Entropia Universe are doing. From the C|Net article by Seth Schiesel (Link):

The makers of “Entropia Universe” plan to introduce a real-world ATM card that will let players withdraw hard cash automatically converted from their virtual game treasury.
…
With around 250,000 players, “Entropia” is the leader of a small but growing group of online computer games with virtual economies explicitly based on real-world money, and today’s announcement is the most ambitious step yet to meld an in-game economy with the real global financial system.

The game’s maker, MindArk, based in Gothenburg, Sweden, estimates that “Entropia” players generated $165 million (or 1.65 billion PEDs) in total economic activity last year.

There’s definitely something surreal about the idea that players who chase alien animals around a virtual preserve collecting animal sweat could trade that unreal commodity for hard currency. It really points out the virtual nature of real world monetary systems (and makes me want to dig out my old copy of “Cryptonomicon“).

There’s more interesting bits in the article.
Continue reading →

This is kinda interesting. The Mixed Reality Lab has word of a project that starts to approach being less about augmented reality and more about what I keep calling transreality (though I’ve recently learned that may not be the best word). Well, let’s say it could be. The discussion is centered around augmented reality. Anyway, from the website (Link):

Free Network Visible Network is a project that combines different tools and processes to visualize, floating in the space, the interchanged information between users of a network. The people are able to experience in a new exciting way about how colorful virtual objects, representing the digital data, are flying around. These virtual objects will change their shape, size and color in relation with the different characteristics of the information that is circulating in the network.

There’s a video, but to be honest it’s not all that interesting imo; the images on the site look nicer. To be fair, I think this program has just kicked off. Which has me hoping that someone will get the idea to rip some 3D data and fab it. Now that would be a kick.

via information aesthetics

{Image Copyright © 2002 MXR – though I think that’s a mistaken date since the project claims to make use of the MXR Toolkit which was released in 2005 according to the site’s history}