Hamlet's Favorite 20 New World Notes Posts for 2007

Written by myself and others, here are NWN posts from last year that I think best capture the culture of Second Life:

- "Fighting the Front": The European far right is beset by exploding pig grenades and holographic train engines.

- "Spy Game": Corporate espionage with real world consequences comes to the metaverse.

- "All About My Avatar: Kazuhiro Aridian":  A brilliant creator of avatars from a dark future explains her vision.  "It is painful, skeletal, ethereal and almost human, but things like the inverted knees and enlongated hands make it not human at all.  Even with all this painful metal, it retains a human face, almost as a mockery of  humanity. Pain is the strongest physical feeling, and it's an attractive expression, visually..."

-  "Onder's Game - City of Lost Angels": My occasional correspondent of the in-world game scene explores the complex culture of play in Suzanne Soyinka's fantastic cyber-goth RPG.

- "All About My Avatar: Tasrill Sieyes": The man who turned Duchamp's legendary "Nude" into an avatar provides an equally compelling profile on identity and expression via abstract avatars: "When I am abstract, I don't have to worry about the preconceived notions of gender, race, or anything else but someone’s view on abstract art. I can just be pure intellect..."

- "A Crisis of Faith": An age-old theological dispute bring a metaverse spiritual order and a Sufi Muslim into conflict.

- "Social Circles": My first attempt to quantify SL sociocultural groups in terms of Venn diagrams. 

- "Live from Venezuela": An anti-Chavez movement chooses Second Life as its meeting place for Venezuelans in the country and outside it.

- "This is Truly China Tracy":  In a mixed reality profile, an internationally famed conceptual artist explains her reasons for choosing SL as her medium.

- "Going Greenies": A real world company manages to capture the surreal, bebop essence of Second Life while creating a viable marketing and promotion platform.

- "Ophelia's Gaze: The Second Life of Japanese Fashion": Outdoing herself with a two part epic, NWN style correspondent Iris Ophelia explores a brilliant creativity largely unknown to English-only Residents. Part 2 available here.

- "Remembering 9/11 in Second Life": Expanding the possibilities of the metaverse as an expressive medium, a real life survivor of the terrorist atrocities creates a 3D memorial worthy of the event.

- "International Union Protesters Converge on IBM: Company refuses comment, strike leaders claim success, 1850 total attendance (including bananas and geometric dissenters)": To this day, the reason for the anti-Korean message remains a mystery.  Then again, as with real world protests, there's usually a surreal off-message protester among the throng.

"Gwyneth Llewelyn on the New Idoru: Second Life and the coming end of real world celebrity":  An SL celebrity in her own right, Gwyneth offers an essential essay that will, I think, become prophetic over time.

- "Hope versus Understanding: the Yankee Group and the Rimm Effect": Examining the uninformed backlash against Second Life against an earlier version of the same phenomenon.

- "Ophelia's Gaze: Iris explores (and deplores) Armani's official site in Second Life": This is how a critique on real world marketing efforts in SL should be written.

- "Mirror Worldlet: Couple create topographic globe with dynamic real world weather":  As extraordinary as their technology is, I'm just as taken by the relationship of Zora Spoonhammer and Zee Pixel, the couple who invented it.

- "Mere Child's Play": A woman explains the painful realities behind her childlike avatar, and the SL community of people like her.

- "The Second Life of Babylon: An Iraqi Scholar Embraces the Metaverse": "[O]n August 5th, a Resident named 'alsarmady Eel' was born.  Because by then, the student had become an arts teacher based in Babylon, with an Internet connection that was strong enough for him to discover Second Life, create an account, and reach out of Iraq and touch the metaverse.  But only just barely..."

- "The Storytellers of Midian: How Collaborative Fiction Strengthen Roleplaying Communities": The story of a cyberpunk epic novel written by thousands of collaborators every night.

Comments

[Cyn Vandeverre]

If you like the All about my Avatar posts, why haven't you done more of them?

[Laetizia Coronet]

Ditto, what Cyn said. To me, the best read is not about a celeb or a corporation, but about a resident like myself - and the avatar is our prime way of expressing ourselves. Good concept, more please!

[Hamlet Au]

Thanks! Yeah, I definitely want to revive AAMA. If I remember right, I originally suspended in preparation for the Uncanny Expo, because I worried that the two series would get confused.