New World Notes

REGARDING HENRY

MIT professor and uber academic of popular culture Henry Jenkins interviewed me last week on his indispensable blog.  We talk Second Life hype, Second Life hope, Julia Roberts (!) among other topics:  part one here, part two here.

BEING BACCARA AND CHASING AIMEE

It was the ultimate in mixed reality reporting: last year, the esteemed Center for Arts Policy at Columbia College in Chicago invited me to profile a couple major cultural figures in Second Life for their Democratic Vistas series.  These were interviews conducted not just in-world, but in person, at their real world locales.  Which is how I wound up in the meat packing district of New York City, and in a small town (and recurring Sopranos location!) in New Jersey, to spend time with Aimee Weber and Baccara Rhodes, two of the key women who've made Second Life what it is today. 

The subsequent essay is up now, lovingly formatted in Acrobat: get it here.

My thanks to Michael Wakeford of Columbia for his excellent editorship, and of course, to Aimee and to Baccara and her family, for letting me get a first hand glimpse at their lives in both worlds.

HARPER'S SECOND LIFE

I've admired the magazine for decades, and almost had a piece published in it once, but in the end, it took French extremists and exploding pigs to finally make it happen:  thanks to editor Sam Stark, an excerpt of "Fighting the Front" is featured in the March Readings section of Harper's Magazine.

Harper's readers, the entire story is here, with a brief related follow-up here.

SPLASHCASTIC!

A friend with Splashcast, a cool new user-created video/multimedia/etc. service, got me to whip up a compilation of SL videos and commentary to create this demo New World Notes channel.  Thanks to all who let me feature their video in it.

ATTACK OF THE HAMLET

If I understood the crew right (we recorded the segment last Friday), I should be on tonight's "Attack of the Show" from G4TV, debating David Ewalt of Forbes.com on that most perennial of topics, "Is Second Life overhyped?"  Hard to know how I came across, what with my only direct connection to the show an ear bub and a microphone, trying to interject comments into a threeway crosschat, but hopefully I managed to work in a few solid points.  The frustrating thing to me is that I'd welcome a meaningful debate on Second Life's prospects, but so far, it's been largely confined to a poorly-framed argument over user numbers.

MEET ME IN KULA

One more touch of shameless self-promotion:  February 13th at 6pm SLT (i.e. tomorrow), I'll be showing up with my co-authors to talk Second Life: The Official Guide.  Meet me, the urbane Walker Spaight, the unforgettable Aimee Weber, the legendary Catherine Omega, and, uh, Resident-name-unknown-at- press-time Michael Rymaszewski.  Event's at the auditorium on Kula island: direct teleport at this link.

MACHINIMA OF THE PIGS

The UK's esteemed Channel 4 has an extended segment on the in-world protest/
surreal firefight waged against France's Front National.  I help describe the pig-inflected scene with my original reporting, and after we travel to the Front's new location, Channel 4 reporter Ben King manages to record machinima equally strange protest footage.  (I like how SL machinima is gaining acceptance as a genuine news tool for established mainstream outlets.) 

Go here to watch it all.

ALL SIMS CONSIDERED

I made a brief appearance on yesterday's "All Things Considered" from National Public Radio, in a story appropriately titled:  "Visiting the 'Second Life' World: Virtual Hype?"  (Yes, NPR has joined that particular debate, following Clay Shirky in casting deep skepticism on the "two million Residents" meme that the media is usually complicit in.  But not this time.)  Nicely reported by Laura Sydell, the segment actually devotes most of its coverage to Judge Posner's recent in-world appearance, and his Honor himself arrives to offer some trenchant thoughts on the importance of online worlds.  Last year's NWN book club guest Thomas P.M. Barnett also shows up to praise the longtail power of his own appearance in-world.  (Forseti Svarog of The Electric Sheep is on hand, too.)  Taken together, it almost plays like an audio version of my GigaGamez essay on the hype and hope around Second Life. 

Also, the raccoon.   Fittingly, the raccoon lawyer shows up first.  Listen to it all here.

NEW WORLD NOTES IN THE NEWS

Among recent appearances, Channel 4 in the UK interviewed me in-world about CopyBot, while NWN showed up on a French site called 20 Minutes and a Japanese publication called IT Pro.  In the latter, sharp-eyed readers will notice that the account growth chart in Tateru Nino's latest "New World Numbers" inspired a kanji version.

WIRED OUTTAKES: THE LOVEMAKERS

Continuing my series of favorite screenshots which didn't make Wired Magazine's Second Life Tour Guide (Samurai Island screenshots here; Burning Life images here), here's a set featuring Phil Murdock and Snow Hare, the real life couple and owners of PM Adult, a retailer specializing in Mature-rated action animations and equipment.  I profiled them last year in "Making Love", a story of virtual sex and romance as a prelude to the corporeal version, so who better to demonstrate the process of coming together in-world?  To my surprise, shooting these also became a first-hand demonstration of just how viscerally engaging the virtual simulation of physical love can be.  More screenshots after the break, one possibly not safe for work, unless you work in a massage parlor.