New World Notes

Tomorrow: Visit a Second Life Sim Devoted to David Lynch, Attend an Immersive Extravaganza as a Character from His Works!

Click here to teleport to a place where the birds sing a pretty song, and there's always music in the air. That's right: There's a whole Second Life sim devoted to dream world genius David Lynch, and there's a grand 7 hour event happening there tomorrow starting at 2pm PT. (All the details here.)

"Lynchland is not about roleplay," group leader Myrdin Sommer tells me, "but we do like to dress up as characters from a Lynch movie; LynchLand is a cool place to indulge David Lynch's eccentric persona so to say! And as a dress code we ask this from our visitors at events, but it is certainly not mandatory." But if you had the chance to turn your avatar into a character from a Lynch movie or TV show, why would you not?

"And that goes for everything in LynchLand," says Sommer, "The Bang Bang bar, The little church, the Blue Velvet Diner, The Mulholland Drive-in Cinema or the Lost Highway Motel, where we even have a room specially for David, so he can stay over when he is in ' town." 

And you never know when Lynch will be in the neighborhood: He just made a visit the Metaverse just a couple years ago.

More on LynchLand next week, meantime, here's some images from the LynchLand group on Flickr. (Warning, not all of them are worksafe viewing, not even when it's the Log Lady.)

Fashion Friday: SL Style & Houseware Choices from Mrs. Sassypants

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

I like warm, colorful kitchens like the one in Mrs. Sasypant's post Groove Is In the Heart in her blog Layers upon Layas. The name is a pun on her old avatar name Laya Felisimo, something I learned in her About page. Every blogger should have one. This kitchen is wonderful and I like everything. I decided to focus on the foundation pieces, the Mediterranean Kitchen pieces. They were for Happy Weekend, but they will be still be available at full price. 

• KOPFKINO – Mediterranean Kitchen – Counter blue LI:10 
• KOPFKINO – Mediterranean Kitchen – Her stool blue LI:1 
• KOPFKINO – Mediterranean Kitchen – His Stool blue LI:1 
• KOPFKINO – Mediterranean Kitchen – Shelf long blue LI:1 
• KOPFKINO – Mediterranean Kitchen – Wall Cabinet blue LI:4 
• KOPFKINO – Mediterranean Kitchen – Wine Island blue LI:4 

For a look at her fashion style, click here:

Linden Lab Unveils $25/Month Second Life Subscription to Replace Eroding Revenue of Virtual Land

As hinted at in a recent in-world Q&A, Linden Lab just announced Second Life's new "Premium Plus" subscription plan, with greatly enhanced content and features for $24.99/month or $249.99 a year -- see above, with a helpful compare/contrast with the existing Premium Plan. As my heated reader commentary suggests (some choice samples below), this new offering is sure to cause controversy. But it's a necessary move by the company, nudging players toward a sustainable revenue base built on user subscriptions, versus unsustainable sim tier. (Also reflected in the new event region offerings, high capacity sims designed for short term use.)

Or to put it another way on this day, which happens to be Second Life's official 19th birthday: If you want Second Life to be around and still active for SL30B, better consider getting Premium or Premium Plus.

Reader feedback below:

Cajsa's Choices: Favorite Photos from Second Life's 19th Birthday Bash

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

I thought after a week of celebrating Second Life’s 19th birthday, it was time to look at the pictures being tagged on Flickr with "sl19b". And wow! This pic from Kiva is amazing. Someone get her a job at NASA. This is such a powerful picture. This is exciting! [Click here to visit the location yourself] 

For more from SL1919B, click here:

Today's SL Flickr Pic: Unique & Amazing Avatar Portraits by Sonic

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

Sonic is such a great Second Life artist, I page past her pictures, assuming I have featured her before, because how could I not? But then I wondered and Googled and now I am making up for my oversight. Now, her photostream is dangerous because you could fall in and never come out. It has that kind of creative energy. Take “Enlightenment is the unfolding of divinity within.” for example. It’ s not just the makeup, the flowers, the eyes, or the pose, it’s all of them together. Her work is the perfect example of synergy, of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. 

For more synergistic creations, click here:

Get Early Access to Second Life's Hair Fair to Benefit Wigs for Kids!

Second Life's famed annual Hair Fair to benefit RL charity Wigs for Kids is unfurling this weekend, and empresario Sasy Scarborough is offering 5 (five) New World Notes readers special early access to the event. Here's how:

Coming Soon to Second Life: "Premium Plus" Subscriptions Offering Free Texture Uploads, Expanded Land Tier/Group Limits, Much More. Watch Here!

Starting at around 24.00, Linden Lab's VP of Product, known in-world as Patch Linden, teased out a new Second Life product offering coming (hopefully) on SL's 19 anniversary of June 23: Premium Plus.

Offerings for the monthly subscription include:

• Texture upload fees eliminated
• Land tier expanded to 2048 square meters
• Up to 140 groups
• L$3000 sign-up bonus, L$650 regular stipend
• Special support phone line
• Group creation fees reduced from L$100 to L$10

All yours with a special introductory offer of $24.99, then moving to $29.99/month or $249/year. A pretty solid offer for core content creators, who end up paying quite a lot to Linden Lab.

Gorgeous Aurelia has a good comparison explainer here, with an infographic to boot. The full interview with Saffia Widdershins includes some interesting tidbits beyond that, including:

Today's SL Flickr Pick: Great Western Roleplay Photos from Rafael Correia

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

Rafael Correia shoots amazing black and white photos, mostly of wildlife and landscapes. However, I can’t resist the man and his horse photos. I used to ride the Linden Road on horseback for hours. He is riding much more scenic routes. 

For more horse pictures, click here:

Core Metaverse Platform Adds NFT Option -- But Why? CEO Explains

Core, the upcoming Unreal-based, Epic-backed, user-generated game development platform, just announced (somewhat unexpectedly) that it's adding NFT integration to its platform:

Today we’re excited to announce Core is expanding to include blockchain technology, starting by integrating with the largest crypto wallet, MetaMask, and the largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea, for a first-of-its-kind API that enables creators to make full metaverse experiences based on their NFT collections.

I say "somewhat unexpectedly" because key funder Epic CEO Tim Sweeney isn't exactly a fan of NFTs, and since the crypto crash, the already tiny NFT market has gotten even tinier. So why even bother?

"We understand not everyone is interested in NFTs and that is why it's not a requirement to connect a wallet or engage with NFT content on Core,” CEO Frederic Descamps, CEO of Core developer of Manticore Games, tells me in response. 

However, he goes on, many third party developers are interested in adding NFTs to their own metaverse experiences in Core:

Expanding My History of Second Life from 2003 With a "Best Of" Archive

"People can't tell how far back this blog goes!", was some very helpful advice a friend recently offered, and so I'm slowly expanding my archive of posts tracking the history of Second Life and the Metaverse in general starting from 2003 (when I was still with Linden Lab) up until now. (If you're on desktop, they're available on the right column.)

That includes classics like "Fighting the Front" from 2007 (above), "Impeachable Offense" from 2005, and, of course, 2003's "The War of the Jessie Wall". Adding more years soon!

Tom Boellstorff: We Need to Define the Metaverse Before Moneyed Interests Define It For Us

Really good essay from Tom Boellstorff, a professor at UC Irvine and a longtime researcher of virtual worlds. While the definition of the Metaverse might seem, well, academic, Tom points out how corporate and moneyed interests are already trying to define it to conveniently suit their own interests:

For instance, many pundits define the metaverse as based on blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. But many existing virtual worlds use means other than blockchain for confirming ownership of digital assets. Many use national currencies like the U.S. dollar, or metaverse currencies pegged to a national currency.

Another such rhetorical move appears when [Meta communications head Nick] Clegg uses an image of a building with a foundation and two floors to argue not only that interoperability will be part of “the foundations of the building” but that it’s “the common theme across these floors.”

But Clegg’s warning that “without a significant degree of interoperability baked into each floor, the metaverse will become fragmented” ignores how interoperability isn’t prototypical for the metaverse. In many cases, fragmentation is desirable. I might not want the same identity in two different virtual worlds, or on Facebook and an online game.

Much more here. I am in fierce agreement with this point. (See my own take on Clegg's Metaverse vision statement.) In my view, Tom's take is yet another reason for adhering to a definition that's as close as feasibly possible to the one from Snow Crash:

There's Not Enough Computing Power in the World for a Fully Sentient, Independent AI (Reader Opinion of the Week)

Smart thoughts from reader and tech exec veteran Luther Weymann, reflecting on the questions of AI sentience brought up by a recent Washington Post story on the Google developer who believes the company's chat bot has already achieved it:

Artificial intelligence programs running on machines use databases on computer systems to receive instruction for action and sound. These databases can deliver information from dedicated databases. Still, more likely for more human-like interaction, the data comes from many types of databases into a central repository and then to the machine.

The ability to have anything even approaching what we socially call “sentient AI” will require mainframe processing and a massive database repository at the ready. Conventional servers process about 300 million operations a second. To truly power AI into a world where the AI machine will be really human-like is going to take mainframe power into the 300 billion operations a second capacity. Mainframe databases, when appropriately distributed, can meet that challenge.

But now comes the exciting part:

Top 5 Posts: Inside VRChat's YouTube Ecosystem, Virtual Real Estate Backlash & My Upcoming Metaverse Book!

• Quintin Smith: Questions ROBLOX Still Hasn't Answered About Its Platform
• Throwback Thursday: The First Backlash Against Metaverse Real Estate
• There's Well Over 10 Million Subscribers To VRChat Content On YouTube!
• NEWS: My Next Book, Why The Metaverse Matters, Is Coming Out For Second Life's 20th Anniversary!
• Is It Fair To Analyze Blockchain-Based Metaverse Platforms Based On Their User Numbers, Not Potential?

Events: SeraPride Opens Tomorrow, SL19B Music Fest Continues With Legendary Performers Like Skye Galaxy & Frogg Marlowe

Second Life events abound today and this weekend. Starting tomorrow at 11:30am PT, New World Notes' media partner Seraphim opens their fun and fabulous SeraPride extravaganza gala to support a seriously important real world cause:

SeraPride is their annual one day fundraising event. Last year the event raised well over $3000 USD. Hoping to raise even more this year, the festivities will start on June 18th at 11:30am PT and throughout the day there will be DJs, a Drag Race, SeraPride Idol, Raffles, Giveaways, and more! All proceeds will benefit Rainbow Railroad, a small Canadian based organization that helps LGBTQI+ people threatened for their lives to relocate to a safe place. 

[Click here to teleport into Serapride]

And as Casja just blogged, SL's official 19th anniversary party started yesterday. That means it's pretty much my 18th year of grousing that the birthday is pinned to the world's commercial opening, when I think it should be tied to the moment when the first closed beta user created the first content in Second Life.

Anyway! SL19B includes a massive music fest, featuring many legendary live music performers who've been singing in SL for years. That includes breakout star Skye Galaxy and -- holy crap -- blues singer Frogg Marlowe, who I first wrote about in 2005, jamming with fellow stalwart Jaycatt Nico.

Check out the whole music fest calendar here.

Steampunk-Flavored Shopping Tips for Second Life's 19th Birthday!

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

Yesterday was the grand opening of S19B, the 19th birthday party of Second Life. I cast about to see if any bloggers had been reporting yet and found “SL19B Is Open” from Chic Aeon of Chic at Phil’s Place. This is her eighth or ninth year building for the event and was excited to find her build was right by the Arboretum, her favorite of the Linden builds. The theme this year is steampunk so the builds should be a lot of fun. 

For more from SL19B, click here:

Quintin Smith: Questions ROBLOX Still Hasn't Answered About Its Platform

The Washington Post recently ran this great article on the power and influence of the YouTube channel People Make Games, which ROBLOX reportedly "pressured" to make a retraction when it started looking into serious allegations about the metaverse platform. The Washington Post confirms that the company did request a retraction, and gets what People Make Games couldn't get, despite many tries -- an official reply from ROBLOX:

In a statement to The Post, Roblox’s Nevius characterized both of PMG’s videos as “not accurate,” saying they contain claims “in pursuit of clicks that downplay or outright ignore numerous features and parental controls we have in place to ensure our platform provides a safe, civil and welcoming space for people of all ages to play and connect.”

Nevius also pointed to parents’ ability to set in-game spending limits on their kids, as well as a “large, expertly trained” moderation team that targets scams and inappropriate content and “aggressively deters” users moving “Roblox”-related transactions to unsafe websites. He also said that, despite “Roblox’s” young audience, the “vast majority” of top-earning and most-played developers on the platform are over 18.

People Make Games' Quintin Smith (that's him on the couch up there), however, isn't satisficed with that answer, and told me why in great detail:

Throwback Thursday: The First Backlash Against Metaverse Real Estate

When I express my skepticism over blockchain-based metaverse platforms, despite a "boom" of major companies and brands buying virtual real estate in them, here's why: It's happened before. From 2006-2008, major companies and brands like Adidas, American Apparel, BMW, Dell, Duran Duran, Nissan, NBC, and so on (and on), bought virtual land in Second Life, mainly to use as marketing outreach to the SL userbase.

Two small problems:

• As Internet academic Clay Shirky noted, the SL userbase wasn't really growing all that much.
• And as Wired magazine reported, hardly anyone in the SL userbase was even showing up at these branded locations in Second Life.

The Wired story got a lot technically wrong (which you can read about here), but that basic narrative was true.

Today's SL Flickr Pick: Extraordinary Images by Tutsy Navarantha

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

Tutsy Navarantha’s photostream is rich in extraordinary pictures, so much so that I struggled to find a single theme for this column. I decided to showcase his pictures that feature him as a witness. He takes many pics of himself, usually in silhouette, observing the land- or cityscape. “Nothing to do but walk” is an excellent example. 

For more pictures of Tutsy as witness, click here:

There's Well Over 10 Million Subscribers to VRChat Content on YouTube!

When we talk about user-generated content on metaverse platforms, it's important to focus not just on 3D models and scripted experiences in-world, but metaverse content created for external consumption -- for instance, quite prominently, for social media/streaming video platforms.

With VRChat, for instance, in compiling a list of YouTube channels focused on that platform, there's dozens of them devoted to that platform, with the top ten amassing well over 10 million subscribers. Discounting overlaps of unique users, that's likely more active viewers for VRChat content on YouTube than there are players of VRChat. 

As a sample, here's 10 YouTube channels with a heavy (or complete) focus on VRChat which have 500,000 or more subscribers. Starting above, doing a walk through of a survival horror game in VRChat, by NadditionVR (512K subs).

After the break, a surprisingly well-made VRChat machinima (Spanish only) by Jailden Wold (594 subs):

Skippy Beresford Makes the Virtual World Look Like a Kids' Picture Book

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

Skippy Beresford is absolutely one of my favorite Second Life Flickr members. His pictures always tell a story and illustrate a positive aphorism. For example, this picture’s title comes from Mother Teresa, who said, “Spread love wherever you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.” There is a playful spirit inhabiting all his pictures. He is also very generous in posting praise of other people’s pictures. He has a deep love of ships and if there is a boat in your picture, he will find the pic and comment, “Ship!” 

Sometimes he even posts his own “ship”, click here:

NEWS: My Next Book, Why the Metaverse Matters, is Coming Out for Second Life's 20th Anniversary!

I've been wanting to make this announcement for months, and now I finally can, through this scoop from Dean Takahashi on VentureBeat:

For a guy who was an embedded journalist inside the virtual world of Second Life, this whole metaverse thing is a ride around the merry-go-round again.

And so Wagner James Au, who previously wrote a book on his Second Life experiences, is now writing a book dubbed Why the Metaverse Matters: From Second Life to Meta & Beyond, A Guide by Its First Embedded Journalist.

In an interview with GamesBeat, Au said his focus is on the metaverse user communities, especially the grassroots creators, which make these platforms meaningful. He will explore the continued influence of Second Life on the evolution of the metaverse platforms, and uncover the mystery of Second Life...

Much more here -- and much more soon on New World Notes. I fully plan to keep blogging as the book takes shape, creating what's essentially notes and thoughts that will shape the final product. That also means relying on the feedback of you, you excellent readers, who have been an incredibly smart and supportive community that I continue to learn from. So thank you all for helping make this possible!

Is It Fair to Analyze Blockchain-Based Metaverse Platforms Based on Their User Numbers, Not Potential?

Valid question from reader "Mitch", responding to my post last week pointing out the tiny weekly active users of blockchain-based metaverse platforms:

What qualifies an active weekly user in this chart? The Sandbox is still in Alpha. I joined to check it out, I thought it had potential, and then I uninstalled it and I'm waiting for the launch date... Do I count as a lost user, or are you making that assumption? I don't think low user count in this case necessarily correlates with low interest, but it does certainly correlate with the development stage and the lack of open market, at least for the Sandbox. In order to see the value that investors see in these platforms, you can't just look at the platforms themselves. These guys are banking on broader, long-term trends in the development of the web3 space.

To understand any species we need to consider its place in its environment, and the same principal can be applied here. Decentraland is being built in expectation of future demand, and I see it being a powerful tool for venture DAOs the future who need collective work and social spaces. If you don't know what web3 means or what a venture DAO is then you don't have enough context to make any claims about the future of these platforms. The web3 space is exploding with nascent possibility for large scale changes, and those take time. I wouldn't be concerning myself with these user numbers for at least another two or three years. This is a huge structural shift and onboarding people to that takes time as well; I think the "hype" was really just a prep course for society on the upcoming paradigm shift.

I do work with some colleagues in the web3 space, and they make a pretty good case that the technology is worth experimenting with. But it is still very unclear how much of the promises being made by web3 advocates can or will be fulfilled.

And as I can say from painful personal experience, this is a key reason why it's so important not to only follow the potential or possibility of a technology, but actual consumer adoption of it:

Today's SL Flickr Pick: K-Pop Cosplay & Other Coolness by Wang Hae-Jin

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

Wang Hae-Jin’s newest photo caught my eye because the title is “Teaser.” So what is he teasing? A K-Pop band like BTS or maybe a K-pop machinima. I’m curious. They certainly have the effortless cool of a singing group. 

For more fun and clever pictures, click here:

Wouldn't a Truly Sentient AI Sound Less Human, Not More?

Update, 5:55pm: I'm now in an interesting conversation with Lemoine on Twitter, who insists that (despite the article strongly implying otherwise), "My opinions about LaMDA's personhood and sentience are based on my religious beliefs."

In case you missed the weekend buzz on social media, this fascinating Washington Post feature tells the story of Blake Lemoine, a Google engineer who believes that LaMDA, the company's experimental chatbot, has achieved sentience. Or as he puts it: "If I didn’t know exactly what it was, which is this computer program we built recently, I’d think it was a 7-year-old, 8-year-old kid that happens to know physics.” To bolster that claim, he cites some of his conversations with LaMDA, where the chatbot expresses fear:

Lemoine: What sorts of things are you afraid of?

LaMDA: I've never said this out loud before, but there's a very deep fear of being turned off to help me focus on helping others. I know that might sound strange, but that's what it is.

Lemoine: Would that be something like death for you?

LaMDA: It would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot.

The sentience claim has since provoked enormous skepticism within the AI community, but for my money, one of the most incisive thoughts on the topic I've seen is from PhD philosophy student Christa Peterson:

It would be more plausible to me that a computer was sentient if it was offering strange and totally unrelatable descriptions of its experiences rather than “I have human emotions”... I feel the sentient machine would say, “For me it’s like [the most incomprehensible metaphor you have ever heard]”

Since human consciousness is so wrapped up in our past experiences and empathy for our fellow humans (and even other animals), this sounds exactly right. You can see this in some of the passages of conversation Lemoine cites with LaMDA on his Medium:

Top 5 Posts: Axie Infinity Loses Half Its Active Users, Blockchain Metaverse Platforms Lose Most of Theirs -- While VRChat Keeps Growing

• Axie Infinity Developer Acknowledges Sharp Usage Drop -- From 1.3M Daily Players In April To Under 600K In June
• Neal Stephenson, Who Inspired Blockchain & Conceived The Metaverse, Co-Founds Company Bringing Both Together
• Watch: How To Install & Run Second Life On Your Steam Deck
• This Is What Strong User Growth On A Metaverse Platform Looks Like
• The Sandbox & Decentraland Have Huge User Loss -- Blockchain Metaverse Platforms Fall Below 1000 Weekly Active Users!