Interesting news over on Clickable Culture as word has gotten out that an ARG (alternate reality game) linked to the virtual simulation Second Life has gotten under way. It’ll be interesting to see how the authors integrate the Real World with the Virtual World. Stay tuned.
Recipe for a Metaverse: One Part Virtual Weapons
I’ve hinted at this sort of thing in past posts, but thought I’d provide more this time; especially after seeing an online advertisement for this “griefing” tool.
This is an advertisement for a virtual weapon. It is designed to attack another person/avatar inside the Second Life virtual simulation. And it does this without – according to the creator – violating the Terms of Service by being… well… pretty creative. Read what it can do for yourself:
Simply rez one of these objects and set the target’s name using “/500 target name”. If that target comes into the same sim and with in 96m of the DBomber, the DBomber will send them over 15000 blue dialog boxes, along with 15000 notecards. It screws the client, and it doesnt stop when the avatar logs out, it will continue to pump notecards to their account even whilst logged out, if they come with in 96m of the DBomber, they WILL get 15000 notecards, and many Dialogs(the dialogs dont conintue after the avatar logs out, the notecards do though).
To provide some point of reference, this is equivalent to receiving 15000 spam emails and 15000 telemarketing phone calls all at the same time. Except the purpose isn’t to sell something, it’s to virtually assault someone – and this kind of assault often results in the target’s program (“client”) crashing. Additionally, as virtual worlds improve in sophistication, there’s no reason to believe computer worms and other malicious code won’t be included in the “sales package” of these kinds of virtual product. So there you have one ingredient of the virtual future. Hope you can handle the bitter stuff. Me? I’ve got this cool idea for a MIRVed virtual cruise missile with programmable payloads.
(edit: I’ve modified a comment to reflect a valid omission pointed out by someone commenting on this entry over on another blog. You can read more about my mistake, my correction, and the bigger point on which I’m hoping more people focus their attention here; or just read my comment copied below)
Pierre Omidyar On BW
The founder of eBay, Pierre Omidyar, has been increasingly in the news. And BusinessWeek online has an interview with him here. From the interview:
What we see in the blogging community is that it’s very easy to focus around radical points of view. I think that’s totally fine. But it does tend to create centers of gravity around polar opposite points of view, and that’s a challenge for our time.
That bit resonated with me since in some circles lately my position in favor of copyright enforcement is viewed as a pro-corporate position. It’s not. The issue in my opinion are the laws that dictate the kinds of protection society gives to its creative individuals. At one pole are the “make everything free” utopians who don’t seem to want any laws, and at the other are the “we need to extend copyrights forever” corporations who want more controlling laws. Believe it or not, there is a position between the two. And I’m taking it because it’s in my self-interest.
From Mr. Omidyar:
Self-interest is a powerful motivator. The nice thing about eBay is that it’s very clearly based on self-interest. You’ve got sellers interested in getting the highest price for their item, and buyers interested in acquiring the item, yet somehow they agree on a price. So even through the pursuit of your own self-interest, by connecting with other people you do create some shared value.
Y’know, when I look at those poles, I see Consumers and Distributors. I don’t see many Creators.
The Polymorph Saddle
Vik has been at it again. From Vik Olliver’s entry on the RepRap blog:
It was during the process of explaining what we wanted it for that I tried to demonstrate a carriage mechanism, and walloped a saddle together out of Polymorph that sat around a ground steel bar.
Crude but effective.
And before anyone makes some snide comment, I wonder how many people have seen a “first shot” part created with an injection mold (the thing that makes most of the plastic stuff in people’s homes). It’s rarely a pretty sight, and from first shot to production quality part can take quite a bit of time, trial and error – even though the tool alone often costs tens of thousands of dollars (that’s in addition to the injection molding machine itself which is much more expensive). I’d say under the circumstances, this is looking pretty remarkable.
The Hordes
There’s an interesting article on BusinessWeek online called “The Power Of Us“. Rather than comment I’ll post this little slice to whet your appetite:
The nearly 1 billion people online worldwide — along with their shared knowledge, social contacts, online reputations, computing power, and more — are rapidly becoming a collective force of unprecedented power. For the first time in human history, mass cooperation across time and space is suddenly economical. “There’s a fundamental shift in power happening,” says Pierre M. Omidyar, founder and chairman of the online marketplace eBay Inc.
The author includes a fair number of example companies; from Skype to P&G, from LEGO to Second Life. Sounds like an intersection between the real and the virtual to me. Highly recommended reading.
(cross-posted to the Core77 blog)