New World Notes

Ted Chiang, Acclaimed Literary Author & Microsoft Technical Writer, Succinctly Explains Why AI Can't Create Art

Can AI create art? Ted Chiang is quite possibly the best qualified person in the world to answer this question, being both a technical writer for Microsoft and also an acclaimed literary writer, whose incredibly thought-provoking and moving science fiction stories transcend the genre. (One of his stories is the basis of the great 2017 movie Arrival.) 

In the New Yorker, Ted Chiang has an incredibly succinct way of explaining that, no, AI in itself probably can't create art:

Art is notoriously hard to define, and so are the differences between good art and bad art. But let me offer a generalization: art is something that results from making a lot of choices. This might be easiest to explain if we use fiction writing as an example. When you are writing fiction, you are—consciously or unconsciously—making a choice about almost every word you type; to oversimplify, we can imagine that a ten-thousand-word short story requires something on the order of ten thousand choices. When you give a generative-A.I. program a prompt, you are making very few choices; if you supply a hundred-word prompt, you have made on the order of a hundred choices.

If an A.I. generates a ten-thousand-word story based on your prompt, it has to fill in for all of the choices that you are not making. There are various ways it can do this. One is to take an average of the choices that other writers have made, as represented by text found on the Internet; that average is equivalent to the least interesting choices possible, which is why A.I.-generated text is often really bland. Another is to instruct the program to engage in style mimicry, emulating the choices made by a specific writer, which produces a highly derivative story. In neither case is it creating interesting art.

Chiang allows that there might be enough creator-driven intentionality and choice for a human artist to leverage AI into actual works of art -- I'd cite Nettrice Gaskins here, for visual art -- but if it's a matter of making an AI prompt more and more (and more) detailed, you might as well skip ChatGPT and just write the goddamn story yourself.  

Speaking of Chiang, his 2010 novella The Lifecycle of Software Objects (link below) is a brilliant if disturbing weave of virtual world avatars and AI:

Readers: What Special Second Life Sims Are Still Standing? Please Report Your Favorites Here!

I recently posted about seven spectacular Second Life sims to see on my Patreon, a report which took longer than I originally expected.

Why? Because going through my list of sims that I've visited/admired/written about over the years -- most filed under New World SLurl -- I discovered that many or even most are completely gone. As in, you click the SLurl now, and either it's a completely different place, or just completely gone from grid.

Like the one above: Steelhead Bay, a very cool seafaring steampunk sim that was restored in 2017. Sometime in the last several years (I didn't get the memo), it's gone to digital aether. I know that sims and sim owners come and go all the time, but these are places created with a lot of love and dedication, and tend to have dedicated communities around them.

So I'm asking readers, if you're so inclined, to explore the world and check in with your favorite sims, see if they're still standing -- and if so, report back here! 

And speaking of which, here's my list of favorite/noteworthy sims, and here's seven that are definitely still standing. (At least they were last week.)

Linden Lab Launches "Combat 2.0", Red vs. Blue Team FPS Map in Second Life. Featuring Fiercely Fighting Furries. UPDATE: It's a Showcase of LSL Combat2 Now Rolling Out Across SL.

Update, 9/6: Just heard from Brett at Linden Lab: The combat sims are a showcase demonstration for a system upgrade: "This is our expanded/improved combat system that is rolling out on the grid. Here's a wiki page that discusses it in a bit more detail."

When Linden Lab posted this video about an hour ago, I first assumed the company was highlighting a user-made combat game in Second Life -- but no, it's very much a Linden operation:

Step into the action with Combat 2.0, where players join either the blue team at Concord or the red team at Lexington. Engage in dynamic PVE and PVP battles, perfect for beginners and veterans alike. Equip yourself with free weapons and experience thrilling, fast-paced combat in this ever-evolving combat destination owned and run by Linden Lab.

So that's surprising! I believe the Lindens haven't launched an official game in SL since its Pokemen Go-esque Tyrah & the Curse of the Magical Glytches game in 2017.  I just gave Combat 2.0 a shot, and it's fairly fun if  traditional team-based FPS.

Here's the official teleport links, which nudge you to create a new account:

• Join the blue team at Concord  
• Join the red team at Lexington  

If you're having trouble with those entry points, just click here to teleport directly into Concord.

Along with red vs. blue team combat, there's a free-for-all zone. Since I didn't enter through the official links, I might have missed a HUD to track scores and hitpoints (beyond the default damage meter) but I'll give it a proper play later.

I'm not seeing any background on the game from official Linden channels, so I'll ping them now. Kudos for launching a game that could draw in new users, though I am surprised they're going with FPS as the genre to grab gamers:

Sannyのおすすめバーチャルワールドニュース : 2024年8月 Sanny Reports For Virtual Japan

 

Sanny Yoshikawa が、New World Notesのなかから、毎月おすすめのバーチャルワールドニュースを日本語で紹介 します

Sanny Yoshikawa covers the monthly virtual world highlights from New World Notes for virtual Japan.

 

 

Tomorrow at 11am on X/Twitter: Join Me & OMI on Spaces to Chat Metaverse vs. Gen AI!

Join Wagner James Au @slhamlet with us on Friday!

Open House & Talking all things Metaverse -- what it was -- what it is -- what it could be -- and why he thinks it's beating GenAI !!!

Here on X starting :
11AM(PST) 2PM(EST) 6PM(UTC) pic.twitter.com/3OQTiPIAzO

— Open Metaverse Interoperability Group (@open_metaverse) September 4, 2024

I'm on an X/Twitter Space tomorrow at 11am PT co-hosted by the Open Metaverse Interoperability Group, where we'll be getting punchy about the continued vitality of the Metaverse and metaverse platforms, especially as compared to the (largely) unsustainable hype of generative AI. Get your questions ready and join the fun! 

Afterward (around Noon PT), we'll be hitting a virtual world after party in the web-based NOWHERE, in a space co-hosted by the Virtual Worlds Museum -- will share the link when we're there! 

Cajsa's Choices: Mimi Soleil Makes Hilariously Kitschy Pics in Second Life

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Mimi Soleil is the Queen of Camp and her photostream is a rollicking adventure. From movie posters like “Part 92?” mocking all the Sharknado titles to magazine covers and comic books, she turns Second Life into the mediums of popular culture pre-internet. She often tells a little bit about how she created a picture. In the description of a recent pic, she wrote, “Sandbox fun! No post-effects. All transparent prims. Actually, the only post effects I usually do are lens-flares or cleaning up intersecting meshes.” According to her description, this Sharknado film capture was also shot in a sandbox.

For more hilarity, click here:

Here's Why the Metaverse Works, Leading to Massive Platforms Like Roblox, Fortnite & Many More

The growth of leading metaverse platforms in 2024 is now nearly 700 million active users -- increasing by 140 million people since Making a Metaverse That Matters came out last year. (See chart.)

But why are platforms like Roblox and Fortnite -- or for that matter, Second Life -- so successful?

Plainly put: Because the Metaverse, more or less as Neal Stephenson originally conceived it, works.  

As described in Snow Crash, the Metaverse is a vast, immersive virtual world that's simultaneously accessible by millions of people through highly customizable avatars and powerful experience creation tools that are integrated with the offline world through its virtual economy and external technology. 

Each of these elements contributes to the strong/steady growth of leading metaverse platforms:

 

Equimake Adds Embed Codes & Social Sharing to Its 3D Web-Based Creation Platform -- Check it Out Here!

There's a huge raft of new features/options to Equimake (a proud NWN partner!), the web-based, multi-user 3D creation platform for learners and creators:

• Embed Equimake worlds on the web. Compatible with WordPress, Wix, and most blog services, including New World Notes. (Click above to demo!)
• Social sharing. Instantly share a world link to X/Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc.
• Massive world storage. Get 2 gigs of free space with the free Starter account, and 50 gigs with a $6.99/month Maker subscription account. (By comparison, Sketchfab, which has similar features to Equimake, charges $15/month but for just 5 gigs of space limited to 50 uploads/mo.) 

You can start creating your own worlds here. Since launching, Equimake has attracted some 1600 users, pretty impressive for a small startup (in my highly biased opinion). One option readers have discussed is using Equimake to prototype virtual world designs -- see the fashion display below for an example: 

Flickr Has a Whole Huge Group Devoted to Photographing the Virtual Fowls of Second Life

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Bella Blackheart recently posted “Family Portrait” to Fowl Deeds, a Second Life Flickr group with nearly 300 followers devoted to photographing “chickens and their eggs, geese, ducks, swans and turkeys” by the thousands. The kind of birds you find on farms and in people’s backyards in some municipalities, geese are not my favorite fowl. I like them just fine flying in the air, but  on the ground, these are the bullies of the barnyard. If you have a goose, you don’t need a guard dog. But here we have a family of five. 

By the way, this image above is an example of the Rule of Odds. The weird thing is as viewers, we spend more time looking at pictures with an odd-numbered group because we’re busy trying to pair them off and we can’t. This makes pictures with odd numbers appeal to us more. We like them better. 

For more Fowl deeds caught on screen, click here:

Coming Soon to My Patreon: The Mystery of Gizem Mishi, from Blueberry & Beyond

Join my Patreon for free to read a story I'm excited to tell (very soon):

What's been happening with Gizem Mishi since launching a successful cross-platform metaverse company which she grew from Blueberry, her beloved Second Life brand? Readers have been wondering about her mysterious absence from SL in recent months, what will become with Blueberry in SL, and how that relates to her new plans in SL. 

After a long and heartfelt chat with Gizem recently, I'm happy to tell all that and more, expanding on a story I first told in Making a Metaverse That Matters, beginning with her time as a teenager in Turkey, who first happened upon the virtual world to attend a Skye Galaxy concert, but wound up changing her entire life's direction.

Sign up to my Patreon for free to be first to read about Gizem's new chapter. 

Cajsa's Choices: Mari Seesaw Beautifully Photographs Second Life Like Polaroid Pictures

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Mari Seesaw is a black and white tuxedo cat who explores Second Life and shares her unique Polaroid-style photos. She ran into a bit of trouble in Walsh County, though she obviously returned from her adventure none the worse for wear. I have a soft spot for the Second Life Walsh County though having survived a couple tornadoes in the real Walsh County, the one in SL is safer even with UFOs. (Also featured in Hamlet’s recent seven sims to visit guide.)

For more of a cat’s eye view of Second Life, click here:

 

Top 4 Posts Including Metaverse Platform Leader Chart & an inZOI Intro

• Which of These New-ish Second Life Brands Do You Like Most? Nominate TWO in Comments!
• Metaverse Platform Leader Chart Has Nearly 700M Active Users in 2024
• Interested in inZOI? Powerful Life Simulator / Character Creator Goes Viral in Wake of Life By You's Cancellation
• Survey Results: Nearly Half Experience Motion Sickness Visiting Second Life's New Homepage

Which of These New-ish Second Life Brands Do You Like Most? Nominate TWO in Comments!

After digging through reader suggestions, here are the first five new-ish Second Life brands to check out this weekend -- and if you like nominate favorites in my reader straw poll! 

In alphabetical order, they are:

Aardvark (Marketplace)

“Aardvark makes some pretty funny stuff. Their items always makes me smile. I was riding around on a balloon dog! They started out in decor and have been making a lot of animals lately.” (Recommended by “Jessie”) Flickr feed here.

ADD (Marketplace)

“I make clothing for women, casual and playful. Second Life has become a real second home for me, where I can realize my creative aspirations. I am very grateful to my customers for their support and the opportunity to continue making beautiful clothes.” (Alex, owner) Flickr feed here.

The Discord Experts (Marketplace) 

“Simply put, we interface Second Life with Discord, and offer a wiiiiide range of tools for private homes, shops, clubs, roleplay sims, communities etc. The product range is modular and requires a Base (sold at 5 L$) and then any number of add-ons suiting the needs of the individual user. In terms of social media, you find out very vivid user community, support and product info at Discord (of course) (Peter Strinberg, owner)

Dope Pixels (Marketplace)

 "We make beautiful, scene-changing skyboxes from real-world photos, renders and AI, but mostly AI lately! It's gotten so good," says owner Adrienne Lowe (Andi Ayashi, owner) Facebook feed. 

Limited Addiction (Marketplace)

“Limited Addiction was created to house all my original mesh under one brand. It took quite a few years to teach myself how to model, rig, and render textures! But it was all worth it and I absolutely love my little brand and hope others will enjoy it as well! As for style....it is kind of all over the place just like me. Some days its a goth mood, others kawaii, or just a cozy casual fit!” (limitedaddiction, owner) Flickr feed here.

Take a look at their Marketplace and social pages -- even consider buying some of their items -- and nominate your favorite two among these in Comments below:

Friday Flickr Follow: Ali H Photographs & Blogs Her SL Adventures

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Ali H is a Flickr microblogger, but she’s not blogging travel, decor, or fashion. She blogging about her adventures in Second Life. I liked this picture of the bakery she found while looking for wine and her encounter with a Second Life burglar. 

“Well, it’s not wine. But doughnuts are an acceptable backup plan. A bakery! Happy twirls! There was also a small yacht moored nearby which a random passerby was trying to coerce me into stealing with him. Swanky neighborhood. Only in SL, right? Of course this is kinda why we love it. I derendered him quickly, (oh, the joy) grabbed my pastries and headed back to the farm.”

For more adventures, click here:

Play Crush House, the New Indie Game Where You're a Camera Person With Secrets in a Mysterious Reality TV Show

If you're looking for a quirky immersive game for this long weekend, check out the Crush House (Steam page here), where you play the camera person in a reality TV show from the 90s/early 2000s. I've been playing off-and-on since blogging about it last April, and it's enjoyably creepily voyeuristic, surreal, and tense -- though in this case, the tension isn't to shoot enough aliens/zombies/etc. in time, but to shoot enough drama and butt shots before your audience ratings go down.

As a player tip, prepare for a slow start as you get acclimated to the gameplay loop in the first two-three days of shooting. But then the plot twists start popping!

While the concept is beautifully executed, I think this is a case where the experience could be even more immersive, and incorporate voice acting. (Understandably tough to pull off on a lower budget.) I would love to see a live action variation of this concept in VRChat or Second Life (he hinted broadly) where we could enable voice chat and really lean into the live action reality show angle. Steam description below!

 

Metaverse Platform Leader Chart Has Nearly 700M Active Users in 2024

In case you missed it from my online Afterword, here's the current metaverse platform leaders tracked in Making a Metaverse That Matters. Overall, total monthly metaverse platform active user growth tracked in this chat increased by 140 million people, for a total global audience of roughly 690 million in 2024.

This is very much a quick snapshot, so the numbers are admittedly not precise. I first posted it last month, for instance, but recently Roblox has been reaching closer to 380-400 million MAU, so it might soon need to be revised upward.

These are just estimates of total active users, which is only one way of measuring. If we were to calculate which metaverse platforms is the leader based on profitability (both for the company and the creator community), Roblox, VRChat, and Horizon Worlds (for starters) probably wouldn't be on that list at all -- and Second Life would be somewhere close to number 1. 

Cajsa's Choices: Delightful Avatar Depictions by Reo

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Reo has captured a contemplative interlude, a woman closing her eyes, perhaps to gather herself for her next task of the day. She’s gathered flowers and perhaps is taking them to a friend or family member. The picture is beautifully composed with her avatar in prime “Rule of Thirds” position. I love it when people’s pictures seem spontaneous, no matter how much work it takes to create the appearance of spontaneity. 

For more captured moments, click here:

Interested in inZOI? Powerful Life Simulator / Character Creator Goes Viral in Wake of Life By You's Cancellation

In recent weeks my social media has low key exploded with interest in "inZOI" -- Steam page here -- the quirky name for an upcoming life simulator/character creator game from South Korean-based company KRAFTON. This is happening only months (weeks?) after the mysterious sudden cancelling of Life by You, Rod Humble's highly anticipated life simulator.

Much of the interest was generated after KRAFTON briefly released the character creator tool, leading to highly buzzed influencer videos like this on TikTok and YouTube:

The character creator is ridiculously robust and ultra-realistic (moreso than Life by You let alone the Sims franchise), veering toward the very edge of the uncanny valley and maybe plummeting head first right in. KRAFTON the company has been pretty closed mouth about the game, so here's more from the Steam page:

 

Me & My Dog Second Life is a Huge Flickr Group Devoted to Photographing Our Virtual Canines. Here's Some Favorites!

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

International Dog Day earlier this week inspired me to look for photographs of Second Life’s canines, which eventually led me to the Flickr group, Me & My Dog Second Life. I found this wonderful picture by Alsation Kidd shot at Mother Road in a lovely coincidence. That’s a happy, well-balanced dog. He must be wearing a seat belt, at least I hope so. (One way to celebrate Dog Day, by the way, would be to get your dog a seat belt.) 

For more SL hounds, click here:

Survey Results: Nearly Half Experience Motion Sickness Visiting Second Life's New Homepage

Here's the results of my survey last week, asking if you experienced any motion sickness when visiting SecondLife.com's new-ish homepage. I posted that question after receiving some reports of people having that sensation, so was curious how widespread that reaction is. 

Turns out, a fair amount: 

Reaction was nearly evenly split, with 46% saying they felt motion sickness "a little" or "a lot" when visiting the Second Life homepage. (I'm personally in the "little" category.) If you haven't visited the homepage lately, you can check your own reaction by using a browser that doesn't have your credentials pre-cookied (as that might take you right to your account dashboard) and go here. 

The new homepage is a cool montage of fun, fullscreen video with quite a lot of panning and zooming:

What Other New-ish SL Brands Should New World Notes Feature?

I'm compiling a finalist list of new-ish Second Life brands to feature next month but still have some openings for consideration! If you'd like to nominate some personal favorites in Comments below, here's the info/criteria to include:

• SL brand must be 5 years old or less
• Brand's Marketplace listing
• Brand's social media feed (Flickr, X/Twitter, FB, etc.)
• Must be innovative, high quality, and graphically well-optimized 
• Include a short explanation about why the brand is unique/interesting/worthwhile

Please post details/links in Comments by Thursday! And yes, self-promotion is fine. (See previous nominations here and here.)

Cajsa's Choices: Gorgeous Avatar Portraits Framed by Hair, Light & Shadow

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Corymar’s photostream focuses on extraordinary self-portraits meticulously edited so that you can feel the breeze lifting her hair. In this untitled picture, you can tell the breeze is cold because her nose is red from the cold. Sure, it’s a black and white picture, but you know her nose is red and it’s cold outside. I just love this.  

For more of Corymar’s gorgeous portraits , click here:

Richard Bartle & Readers Opine on Irena Pereira's Theory on What Went Wrong With WoW

Lots of interesting reader feedback to my interview with Irena Pereria, on what went wrong with WoW, based on her insights as a former Blizzard designer/developer. Irena's core argument is that changes to World of Warcraft starting with the Cataclysm expansion degraded the sense of World of Warcraft as a dynamic, living virtual world and hurt its appeal as a virtual community where you wanted to socialize with other players.

On my Facebook feed, Richard Bartle -- who literally wrote the book on designing MMOs -- stopped by to offer some complementary thoughts:

The deleterious effects of many quality-of-life changes were obvious to most experienced designers as soon as they were discussed, and the effects were exposed by Asheron's Call 2. It put them in and it failed. Nevertheless, most modern MMOs now put them in as standard (or, for some things like fast travel, sell them). Some such features are unavoidable, though. When WoW didn't have a LFG mechanism, there were addons available that provided that functionality (albeit not with instant teleportation into an instance). Once the genie is out of the bottle, it's hard to put it back in again without changing the bottle.

Instead, it's better to nudge players to play with each other, as they do in countless Minecrafter servers, as Bartle writes:

Self-directed entertainment isn't just entertainment: it's fun. If people merely want entertainment, they can passively watch TV or listen to music. If they want fun, they can play games. Minecraft isn't just entertaining, it's fun. When an MMO becomes the equivalent of a movie but you have to play a combat mini-game between scenes, the fun is leeched out. The same thing happens when other players become objects rather than subjects: you may as well play a single-player game.

Some reader responses, some concurring, some disagreeing, after the break -- though I'd read the original interview first to get the full context:

 

Subscribe to My Patreon, Get Special Benefits, Including My First Book & a Blog/Social Shout-Out!

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More details and options here.

Top 5 Posts Including: Why Roblox Is Huge But Unprofitable & What Went Wrong With WoW

• New-ish Second Life Brands Recommended by Readers: Dope Pixels, Neutral Tones & Star Quake. What Others Should Be Featured?
• How Roblox is Incredibly Popular Yet Still Unprofitable: Matthew Ball Untangles the Metaverse Platform Paradox
• Five of the Best Brain-Melting VRChat Worlds to Explore
• Here's a Whole Huge Flickr Group Photographing a Second Life Recreation of a Rundown Desert Town Off Route 66
• What Went Wrong With WoW? A Blizzard Veteran’s Theory on World of Warcraft’s Fall From Its 12 Million Subscriber Height