New World Notes

THE SECOND LIFE OF THOMAS P.M. BARNETT

Originally published here.

So one day, you're briefing General Abizaid and Central Command; another day, you're briefing the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

I spent much of this month worrying how great a leap it would be for someone like Barnett, going right from the halls of the powerful to something so apparently trivial as an online world. At the same time, I had an inkling the divide wasn't so vast. A thinker who calls the tradition of American governance the "source code" for the future and his army of nation builders a "SysAdmin force", Barnett is a digital age Wilsonian, merging a strong-jaw internationalism with the metrics of a culture already ablaze with broadband. (That's not even to mention his prediction of a near future when an online world will overthrow a real world dictatorship-- but more on that later.)

So maybe it wasn't so surprising, after all, that when we teleported to the Second Life island made for him, he easily found and donned the custom avatar by lilith Pendragon, chuckling while he watched his alter ego morph into something resembling him, then when we had trouble teleporting into the United Nation's Grand Assembly Hall, he just began the journey there on foot, where an engaged and fairly rambunctious audience already waited for him.

And it was rambunctious. Since the talk started around Noon (PST), much of the audience there was from the EU, where it was early evening-- Britain, Germany, and France being the country names I caught, when my co-host SNOOPYBrown Zamboni gave an impromptu "Where you from?" shout-out to the audience at event's end. Generalizing broadly, most of the deepest skepticism to Barnett's ideas seemed to emanate from the European Residents gathered there. (Via Instant Message, one French
Resident described themselves as so scandalized that they were tempted to create tomatoes for the purpose of pelting Barnett's avatar.)

Barnett's own blog cites a review in a British publication which begins with qualified praise, but ends in a declarative, "[I]f you imagine modern Europe trying to follow his advice, you will laugh." It was fascinating to see that dynamic apparently play out in avatar form. And Barnett taking on all comers with a blogger's agile wit, when we moved to audience Q&A, generously staying with it for twice the 90 minutes alloted.

HOMELAND SECURITY COMES TO SECOND LIFE

Originally published here.

"Response" is the name of a private (but publicly accessible) island that happens to be owned by a top East Coast University. It's been built to resemble a small town in New England, not to evoke nostalgia, but to simulate and model emergency response behavior to very real dangers (fires, structure damage, and so on) in an online world. This morning, the leader of that university project (whose avatar is a cybernetic humanoid alien) will be giving a presentation on his work-- which happens to be funded by the United States Department ofHomeland Security. 

Educators and government/military officials have been exploring the national defense utility of online and virtual worlds for years, but now that they're doing so in a public setting in Second Life, it brings up all kinds of new challenges to my work as the embedded journalist. Up to now, "embedded" meant within the world of Second Life, reporting on the evolving community of Residents, mentioning the real world only insofar as it intersected with what they were creating and experiencing here. As with the New York convention last week, however, keeping those realities apart is becoming more and more difficult. This also means wondering when I'll need to drop the "embedded" part of my title altogether. Because not only do the worlds refuse to be kept apart, now that merger is being partially funded by US taxpayers, too.

Anyway, full announcement after the break. I won't actually be able to make this morning's event, myself, because as it turns out, I'm too busy hammering out the details on the Second Life visit by a guy who used to brief Donald Rumsfeld's staff and Senator John Kerry.

Second Life: A Platform for Homeland Security

The Synthetic Environments for Emergency Response Simulation (SEERS) project aims to provide cost effective mission rehearsal and virtual prototyping tools for the emergency response community. The project, which is funded by the U.S. Department ofHomeland Security, is part of the core research program of the Emergency Readiness and Response Research Center (ER3C) at Dartmouth College's Institute for Security Technology Studies.

Satchmo Prototype, a Dartmouth researcher, will give a presentation on the use of Second Life as a platform for creating synthetic environments forHomeland Security. He will discuss the pros and cons of the Second Life platform, present his work creating an environment for community emergency response teams and will lead a brainstorming session on other possible uses.

Day: Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Time: 10 am (gametime)
Location: Response (10,140)

For a teleport, IM Pietro Maracas [founder of the "RL Work in SL" group], Echinacea Wallaby, or Katherine Mullen.

ON A BICYCLE BUILT FOR 2L

Pedaling through an MMO on your own power...

I've been keeping a curious eye on the many mad scientist projects of Mr. qDot Bunnyhug, a relatively new Resident who brought his real life experience with robotics to Second Life, launching a whirlwind of interface innovation that he's been documenting with great detail in his blog.  First came a jury-rigged display of SL in full 3D, quickly followed by a joystick input into the world. Marvelous plans, to be sure, but his latest enterprise manages to burst out of the "cool hack for hardware hackers" category, driving straight into the realm of "potential revolution in online world interaction".

To wit, manuevering your avatar in an MMO by pedaling an exercycle.

Bunnyhug takes us step by step through the process, hooking up a sensor to an exercycle, transmitting that data from the PC and there into Second Life, while whipping up a steering device with a discarded Xbox controller. Fortunately, qDot is about as good a writer as he is a robotics hacker, so even readers outside the Slashdot set will enjoy the read, walking them through the technical details, and the Keanu-worthy mods to come:

... When the encoder is triggered, a 2 second timer is started. Every time the encoder is triggered after that, the timer is reset to 2 seconds. If the 2 second timer runs out, the keystroke is set to up, and the bike is stopped. This means that the user needs to be aware of where the bike will be in 2 seconds. They are also required to keep a minimum speed of at least 4.5 miles per hour. Future versions of the project will make the Second Life Bike explode and throw the avatar 10 sims over if they drop below this speed.

Read the full details at Bunnyhug's blog here.

Originally published here.

LAYING DOWN THE LAW: THE NOTARY PUBLIC OF THYRIS

Creating your own virtual John Hancock-- notarized and XML-enabled.

If you want a government that's for the Residents, by the Residents, do you call an in-world Constitutional Convention and begin drafting a grand document for a majority to ratify-- or do you just start by figuring out how to stamp a contract?

"I had read some posts in the [Second Life] Forums about various ideas for self-government," Zarf Vantongerloo explains. "There are tons of ideas floating around there, of course. What struck me was that everyone was talking abut major systems to put in place. And I thought I saw some very small things that could be done. Baby steps. And what was underlying them all was the ability to sign documents-- a notary."