New World Notes

Who's Afraid of Second Life's Data Gathering Bonnie Bots? (Comment of the Week)

Above: A Bonnie bot, tirelessly on bot patrol

There's been lots of interesting conversation and debate spurred by my post on BonnieBots, the new website tracking genuine Second Life activity. While Bonnie's bots don't violate any Linden Lab policy that I'm aware of, the sheer amount of information that both her avatar and web-based bots are able to collect and surface on the site has generated much surprise and controversy (including in comments here).

Reader Kate Nova argues that much of the pushback is based on a very understandable distrust of surveillance provoked by very real abuses by the Internet giants:

I was surprised and disappointed to discover that there's so much hating on them. SL can be narrow and intolerant in so many ways. Ban Lines and Security Orbs make the idyllic SL mainland into an untraversable minefield of hate and GTFO-ness.

Obviously, I'm not the arbiter of anyone else's security and privacy concerns. If you feel that your parcel needs ban lines, or a 10-second security orb, or that the stuff in your profile is private info, it's not my call to dispute that. I kinda wish it were my call, because I think all of these diminish the SL experience, but SL or Physical World, it is, of course, not my call. And it shouldn't be, no matter how frustrated they make me.

Surveillance Capitalism as heavily practiced by Google & Facebook have rightly made everyone security and privacy conscious. Or paranoid. Ironically, if we ever do regulate this, it will be after Google & Facebook already have enough data to control us in perpetuity. Any future regulations will more likely serve to lock out competition and cement these giants in place. On this topic I recommend Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff and Zucked by Roger McNamee.

Some concern has been raised that Bonnie's bots also pull data from user profiles available in search, but Kate argues this is not the intrusion some say it is -- and that overall, the site is incredibly valuable:

How to Improve Second Life New User Retention: Reader Recommendations

Whoever Linden Lab hires to fix its first-time user experience, they may want to take a look at what New World Notes readers recommend:

Optimize the first-time orientation for low-end computers. Ideally it should look halfway decent on even a PC/Mac laptop with no 3D card. More from Yves Firlan:

Update the default settings so any system they might have runs halfway stable with decent graphics after installing the viewer for the first time (like: did they ever change the default setting for bandwidth from 500 to 950/1000 which is one of the main reasons things rez frustratingly slow for Newbies?)

Immediately connect new users with affinity groups:

I don’t think there is a single new user experience in the history of Second Life’s carrier that prompts you to join groups you may be interested in. Such a no brainer for social. -- Adeon Writer

[I]t's astounding Linden Lab never figured that one out. To take it further, groups need to be improved. (Or maybe we need a feature separate from groups that can act more as a social hub, as current groups are tied to land ownership and other features that limit how many groups we can have, cause group chat issues, etc.) -- Penny

Yes, exactly. I'd go so far as to say new users should be able to choose groups on the webpage sign-up.

A couple more important recommendations:

Do You Prefer Green Screen or "Documentary" Machinima? (Comment of the Week)

Good thoughtful comments from Kate Nova, reflecting on that amazing (and heavily post-processed) Second Life machinima from Teal Aurelia:

It's a gorgeous video! And a very cool "how to" companion video. [Watch above] Wonderful work by Aurelia and I wish her a great career journey!

One of the reasons people sometimes go gaga over Christopher Nolan films is that his fiction is "real". If a 747 crashes into a building, he buys a 747 and crashes it into a building. All the films with CGI 747s are amazing. But there's something both visually and conceptually powerful about Nolan making "real fiction".

I love Aurelia's story and vision. Yet the idea of "bringing all these influences together" while beautiful and wonderfully intentioned, is "fake". The different SL personalities that we see walking together never did walk together. It's all (excellent) green screen. [See above]

There's nothing wrong with any of this, and yes, the results are impressive!

For herself, Kate makes the case for "documentary" machinima:

Second Life's Early Growth Problems Exacerbated by Rise of Facebook, Ironically Enough (Comment of the Week)

Left to right: Linden Lab's Robin Harper and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, along with  the CEOs of MySpace and LinkedIn (Commonwealth Club, 2006)

Good point from reader Martin K, adding to Cory Ondrejka's analysis of why Second Life hit a growth plateau during the peak of media attention between 2006-2008:

The other trend that SecondLife was facing around 2007 was Facebook on PC (and social media in general). If you look at google trends for "SecondLife" and "Facebook" in the years 2006 to 2008, Second Life's peak in 2007 is dwarfed by Facebook: (Remove "Facebook" from the search to see that the time range actually includes Second Life's peak.)

Instead of a virtual community of strangers, Facebook was offering a connection with your real-life friends, relatives, and their lives. Compared with that, Second Life wasn't standing a chance. I can't help but thinking that there is a lesson to learn for Horizon Worlds and other metaverse apps.

This is true. I recall how much excitement Facebook generated in its early days. For many people, it was the first time they were in something like a near-real time virtual "space" with others, even though avatars were just thumbnail pics of people they knew IRL.

Which also brings us to a Monday Memory: Back in 2006, Second Life was generally considered to be the future of socialization online. To the point where a Linden Lab VP shared a stage at a San Francisco Commonwealth Club forum on the topic, “Online Personas: Defining the Self in a Virtual World”, with some college kid named Zuckerberg:

Female Users of Virtual Worlds Get Bodyshamed About As Much As They Do Offline (Comment of the Week)

Great rant from reader "Nadeja", leaping off from my interview in CNN about prejudice against non-attractive human avatars -- specifically, on how it impacts female users in virtual worlds:

Sadly, it's true.

Also it's more than just being fat or slim.

I had messages from guys commenting on the physical appearance of my avatar (i.e. various body parts) and my outfits too, grumpily and selfishly comparing that with their own personal tastes, [as] if the only purpose of women's avatars (and I suspect also the purpose of women in real life) were to please them.

That "no fat chicks" sign, too, was indeed targeting women: nobody cared if guys were fat or slim. I don't mean that guys have no issues looks-wise (as [reader] Penny says, height for them), but there is a lot of pressure on women in terms of what they look like.

Although I usually receive compliments, my avatar has been bodyshamed for my thighs being "too fat".

Someone else bodyshamed in a very paternalistic way my same avatar for being "too much skinny".

Therefore, besides being selfish, is also foolish, because beauty standards are so subjective.

But it is worse than that.

If you make your avatar based on your real life appearance and you have little self-esteem already, that social pressure and comments don't help and you may end up looking at yourself in the RL mirror, feeling insecure and wondering how much obese or anorexic you look, even though you are neither. When you are exposed to this in real life, some girl ends up actually anorexic. But even if it's only a virtual world, it contributes, especially if your avatar is like yourself. Another drop, and another drop... So it's also toxic and can have consequences.

Since it's silly, you can ignore that, right? It's not so simple.

Nadeja explains why, also addressing my point that the most popular metaverse platforms, Fortnite and Roblox, do not have realistic avatars, but cartoonish or LEGO-like ones (respectively): 

Best Laptops For Second Life: Recent MacBook Air Model Runs SL Surprisingly Well (With Some Graphics Settings Tweaked)

Thanks to reader "dkronfeld" for sending this photo which effectively demonstrates a pretty surprising point he made in a recent open forum: With the right settings, Second Life runs pretty damn well on a recent model MacBook Air! Pictured above is his 2020 MacBook Air with an M1 processor, 16GB RAM, and the 8 core GPU. (This one here, with a starting price of $999.)

Emphasis on "right settings", though, as dkronfeld explains:

Best Laptops For Running Second Life: ASUS - ROG Zephyrus Recommended for Great Graphics & Power, MacBook Air for Lightweight Access

Above: Whiskey's laptop running SL  -- photo courtesy Whiskey Monday

If you're looking for a new PC gamer laptop that runs Second Life well, acclaimed metaverse artist Whiskey Monday recommends the ASUS - ROG Zephyrus 16":

"This is my new laptop and it's light and ridiculously powerful in Second Life," she writes in Comments. "I can run Second Life and Photoshop at the same time and while the fans are loud, it runs like a champ."

It's currently selling for under $2000 on both Amazon and Best Buy so definitely worth a look. As for the loud fans, that's a frequently reported side effect of the Firestorm viewer grunting and groaning to process all those high end graphics. (For what it's worth, my Dell G5 15 gamer laptop runs the official SL browser pretty well without heavy fan action, but then again, I generally don't run it on maximum graphic settings.)

Above: High-res image created on Whiskey's Zephyrus laptop (via her Flickr)

"Light" by the way, might be a relative term, because (as reader Mondy notes), the Zephyrus is just over 4 pounds. That plus the AC adapter may get you in 5-7 pound range. Which might not seem heavy, but if you're planning on taking it many places, I'd definitely recommend a good backpack that distributes that weight well.

Speaking of weight, longtime reader "dkronfeld" recommends (somewhat surprisingly) the MacBook Air, which weighs in at under 3 pounds. However, that comes with a graphics hit and settings to adjust:

Here's Why Midjourney-Generated AI Images Can Be Called Art

Really smart points by reader "Liv", on whether AI generated images like Dr. Nettrice Gaskins' Midjourney-based works can be called art:

Like all artforms new technology comes along, and equivalent debates arise in different fields. “Is electronic music really music?” Same question.

Some people will always value craft (or instrumentalism, in the music case) and so for them no it won't be art. And that’s fine.

For the rest of us art is about ideas. Brian Eno talks at length about how he allows machines (or software) to create sounds. and how his role becomes that of a curator. When the pseudo-random oscillators create a pleasing result only then does he mark that recording as one to keep. And what order does he edit and present them in? That is the art that makes his ambient music interesting.

Or consider another form of art where it's also possible to cheaply and quickly generate many, many digital images:

No, Virtual Reality is Not In Its "Early Days" (Comment of the Week)

Above: Nintendo's consumer VR launch in 1994 

Is the market for VR headsets small and active usage apparently low (especially among Gen Z) because virtual reality is still in "early days"? Reader Nadeja thinks otherwise:

I don't think we are in the early days of VR. The earliest HMD were made in the 1960s. NASA worked with HMD in the 1980s, Nintendo had something too. [See above - WJA] Then there were several commercial releases in the 1990s. Now we are in the 2020s.

I rather think that VR headsets aren't so practical and human-friendly. I'm not talking about the technical limitations, the lack of peripheral vision, nausea, the risk of hitting or stumbling on anything as you have essentially a blindfold... but about the HMD device itself.

You could say that someone can wear a HMD for hours, but in general sunglasses and eyeglasses are probably about as much as one can take, and some people still prefer contact lenses.

We need a paradigm shift around HMDs. When VR will be as widespread as smartphones, we would likely not use HMDs, but something else.

Fun fact: In 2015, Mark Zuckerberg predicted that VR HMDs would replace the smartphone by 2025. With the smartphone market currently at about 6.5 billion, compared to VR's total install base of maybe (and at most) 30 million, I'm sort of guessing that's not going to happen.

The categorical mistake, I think, is not realizing that unlike VR, mobile phones had an immediate and obvious broadly valuable use case from the very beginning:

Since Only 5% of Gen Z Uses VR Every Day, is Meta Wrong to Promote Virtual Reality Like a Mainstream Technology? (Comment of the Week)

Responding to our question on how many active users on the Quest VR headset there are, a reader points us to a recent market survey which suggests that use is quite tiny, especially among Gen Z:

Piper Sandler completes 43rd semi-annual Generation Z survey of 7,100 U.S. teens...

While 26% of teens own a VR device, just 5% use it daily. 48% of teens are either unsure or not interested in the Metaverse

This prompts reader "lieisacake" (LOL) to observe: