New World Notes

Svarga Gone Silent? Virtual Ecosystem of SL Masterpiece Seems Broken

Svarga, the virtual island ecosystem created by a British game programmer in 2006, is a masterpiece of Second Life which briefly disappeared from the world after the owner retired from SL, but then returned in 2010 after Linden Lab generously purchased it from the owner. Sometime after that, something seems to have gone awry with the scripting system that simulated the actual ecosystem, in which virtual rainclouds randomly watered plants which would then grow to be subsequently pollinated by virtual bees. This came to my attention after an SL YouTuber made a recent visit to Svarga (below), casually noting that the ecosystem seemed to be on the fritz. I visited Svarga to double-check, and that does seem to be the case. I tried to reach the original creator, Laukosargas Svarog, but their last e-mail I have on file doesn't appear to be working.

Visit Svarga for yourself, especially if you're a scripter, and let us know if you see anything obviously off. If we're lucky, the ecosystem can be reset by Linden Lab with a few scripting tweaks.

Ozimals Lawsuit Co-Filer Defends Actions, Expresses Regret for Disruption to Second Life Community of Virtual Animal Lovers

Above: Ozimal's Candy Cerveau and Mr Malkavyn Eldrich

Aki Shichiroji*, owner of Akimeta, the co-filer in the lawsuit against Ozimals which led to the closing of the popular virtual animal brand in Second Life, confirmed to me by e-mail that she's the author of a long statement recently posted online, defending the legal action taken by her and Neobokrug Elytis:

"I can confirm that's me in that document," she told me. She went to express regret for the thousands of Ozimals owners now struggling to keep their virtual creatures virtually alive:

Everlasting Timepieces to Save Ozimals Virtual Pets from Eternal Hibernation Still Available (If It's Not Too Late)

Click here to get a free copy of the "Everlasting" timepiece required to save Ozimals' bunnies and other virtual creatures from the sudden extinction of permanent hibernation (and the long arm of the real life law). However, the adorable creatures were destined for obliteration 72 hours after Tuesday's announcement, so you better hurry.

This timepiece copy is made possible thanks to roving furry reporter Bixyl Shuftan, who left a copy outside of his virtual office, and has more details on the life of Ozimals after its reported owner closed down shop after a real life cease and desist court order:

With Support for Ozimals' Virtual Animals Gone from Second Life, Impact to Greater SL Economy Likely to Be Massive for Users & Linden Lab

Update to yesterday's announcement that Ozimals, an extremely popular brand of adorable virtual bunnies and other pets for Second Life (once partnered with Linden Lab itself), is about to go defunct due to a real life cease and desist order:

The announcement itself is now also defunct.

The Ozimals official company page is already down (that's what it looks like now, above), as is its Flickr page, as are its official locations in Second Life. (I can no longer find any listed in-world, at least.) The brand's owner, known as Malkavyn Eldritch, also seems to be gone. Before wiping all support for his animals from Second Life, Mr. Eldritch reportedly offered a magic "Everlasting" timepiece which would prevent these pets from going into a permanent coma. Owners who didn't get that timepiece in time, however, are not only in for some virtual tragedy, but left stuck with lots of virtual goods they spent many real life dollars (sometimes in the hundreds or even thousands of dollars) that are now useless. "I bought bunnies, I bought food, now I have hundreds of useless items that I would not have invested," complains one owner in the SL Universe discussion forum.

There's a lot about this story to unpack, but one major implication is the massive impact the end of Ozimals is likely to have on the Second Life economy as a whole -- and on Linden Lab as a company:

Can Consciousness Be Simulated as Musk Must Assume?

Really great reader conversation about Elon Musk's belief that we're already in a simulated reality. Here's a smart point by longtime reader "Galatea", who pushes back at my skepticism that consciousness probably can't be simulated:

To make a convincing argument that you can't simulate consciousness, you must make a convincing argument that you can't simulate physics, or that consciousness arises some something other than the physical (e.g. a soul). If you're committed to materialism, your only course to save this argument you're making is to make a convincing argument that basic physics is impossible to simulate, because once you can simulate that, you can simulate anything and everything that exists in the material universe, with enough processing power.

Very valid point. I'd answer that from a slightly different direction, and say that it's likely that consciousness only arises from living creatures as an evolutionary adaptation. Or as philosopher Alva Noë puts it:

Welcome NWN Partner Fawns: Free, Breedable Pet Game in Second Life (Partner News)

Fawns is a free-to-breed pet game for Second Life, and I'm proud to announce they're now a sponsoring partner of New World Notes. (No fooling!) Breedables are an incredibly popular (and technically impressive) genre of games in SL, so I'm glad to finally have one as a partner. Created by Daemon Blackflag, Dashing Riddler, and Katharine McGinnis, the same team behind the well-known Fennux breedables, Fawns, as the name suggests, are adorable as hell baby deer, and come with some unique features:

"We didn't want to release a new breedable that would step on our own product's toes, so we created something that literally anyone would feel comfortable breeding due to the low cost of entry - just obtaining a pair of fawns and breeding for free," says Daemon. The team are touting Fawns as "the first major/mainstream breedable to have a completely free method of breeding. Once someone owns a male and a female fawn, they can breed completely for free."

Some other unique features:

4/20 Flashback: One of Second Life's Greatest Early Inventions Was a Virtual "Hippie Tamagotchi" Pot Plant

As we mark 4/20 day, let us look back at a milestone in Second Life creativity, from back in 2006: The virtual cannabis plant of Dave and Robbie Dingo, which grew when you watered it, turned brown when you didn't, and sent you messages when it was ignored:

"Well, we toyed with the idea of it dying. But in the end, [we] opted for it not growing." Nothing worse than forgetting to log into SL for awhile, and coming home to a withered pot plant. But you can give your cannabis a name, and like a hippie tamagotchi, when it's running low on water, your plant will send you an urgent Instant Message, to remind you to start praying.

I called my own plant Kona Gold, and it still stands 25 feet tall in my Second Life office in Waterhead. Watering it is still one of my favorite activities in SL: You click and select Water from the menu, which launches a "Pray for Rain" animation on your avatar:

... and moments after you pray, dark clouds form, thunder rumbles, and...:

OpenWorm Nervous System Simulated in LEGO Robot

I for one welcome our artificial worm-robot powered overlords:

This is the latest from OpenWorm, a collaborative, open source attempt to construct an artificial life form -- a simple worm, computationally created from the cellular level to a point where it's sophisticated enough to solve, as the site explains, "basic problems such as feeding, mate-finding and predator avoidance". As Cory Doctorow explains about this update:

[T]hey've sequenced the connectome of all 302 neurons in a C. Elegans worm, simulated them in software, and put them to work driving a Lego robot. The legobot's sensors and motors are connected to the software in a way that corresponds to the worm's sensory apparatus and motor neurons, and the researchers claim that the resulting robotic behaviors are strikingly similar to a C Elegans' own. The significant thing here is that these behaviors were not programmed: they emerged naturally from mere act of simulating the worm's neurons.

So yes, OpenWorm has moved from the digital realm into robots. And our world will soon be dominated by them.

I've written a lot about the OpenWorm project, because a well-known SL programmer was part of the lead team during its inception:

Hatsune Miku and the Pros and Cons of Democratizing Your Pop Idols

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Polygon's Chris Plante posted a video today comparing the meteoric rise (and ongoing fall) of pop idol Justin Beiber to the world of virtual pop princess Hatsune Miku. Miku, along with her fellow Vocaloids, are both highly-accessible vocal emulators and anime-inspired characters -- basically pre-built virtual pop idols delivered into the hands of pros and amateurs alike. This open-source approach has lead to a tremendous amount of music and material being produced under Miku's name, making her one of the most ubiquitous pop princesses of all time. Except for that whole not-being-a-human thing.

Plante posits that for better or for worse a virtual pop star in the hands of their fans for better or for worse is a good alternative to a flesh-and-blood idol like Bieber, prone to implode under the phenomenal pressure they're placed under from a young age.

And he may have a point...

Why You Should Help Kickstart Wiglets, an Avatar Pioneer's Artificial Life, Augmented Reality Creatures for Mobile

Click here to consider financing Peck Peck's Journey, a real world book which interacts with Wiglets, a pretty brilliant form of artificial life conceived by Linden Lab veteran Jeffrey Ventrella, a leading innovator in avatar creation (see here and also here). "When I was working at Linden," Jeffrey tells me, "I was trying to inject more life into the avatars (and other things). As a software puppeteer, I use more than just basic principles of character animation to inform avatar software design; I also use my expertise in artificial life research." This project, he says, "is all about applying this knowledge and experience towards a new genre of virtual worlds that infuses autonomous agents into a real world context."

How's that work, and why should you, oh lover of all things virtual, help finance it? Read on, read on: