New World Notes

Steampunk-Flavored Shopping Tips for Second Life's 19th Birthday!

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Yesterday was the grand opening of S19B, the 19th birthday party of Second Life. I cast about to see if any bloggers had been reporting yet and found “SL19B Is Open” from Chic Aeon of Chic at Phil’s Place. This is her eighth or ninth year building for the event and was excited to find her build was right by the Arboretum, her favorite of the Linden builds. The theme this year is steampunk so the builds should be a lot of fun. 

For more from SL19B, click here:

Quintin Smith: Questions ROBLOX Still Hasn't Answered About Its Platform

The Washington Post recently ran this great article on the power and influence of the YouTube channel People Make Games, which ROBLOX reportedly "pressured" to make a retraction when it started looking into serious allegations about the metaverse platform. The Washington Post confirms that the company did request a retraction, and gets what People Make Games couldn't get, despite many tries -- an official reply from ROBLOX:

In a statement to The Post, Roblox’s Nevius characterized both of PMG’s videos as “not accurate,” saying they contain claims “in pursuit of clicks that downplay or outright ignore numerous features and parental controls we have in place to ensure our platform provides a safe, civil and welcoming space for people of all ages to play and connect.”

Nevius also pointed to parents’ ability to set in-game spending limits on their kids, as well as a “large, expertly trained” moderation team that targets scams and inappropriate content and “aggressively deters” users moving “Roblox”-related transactions to unsafe websites. He also said that, despite “Roblox’s” young audience, the “vast majority” of top-earning and most-played developers on the platform are over 18.

People Make Games' Quintin Smith (that's him on the couch up there), however, isn't satisficed with that answer, and told me why in great detail:

Throwback Thursday: The First Backlash Against Metaverse Real Estate

When I express my skepticism over blockchain-based metaverse platforms, despite a "boom" of major companies and brands buying virtual real estate in them, here's why: It's happened before. From 2006-2008, major companies and brands like Adidas, American Apparel, BMW, Dell, Duran Duran, Nissan, NBC, and so on (and on), bought virtual land in Second Life, mainly to use as marketing outreach to the SL userbase.

Two small problems:

• As Internet academic Clay Shirky noted, the SL userbase wasn't really growing all that much.
• And as Wired magazine reported, hardly anyone in the SL userbase was even showing up at these branded locations in Second Life.

The Wired story got a lot technically wrong (which you can read about here), but that basic narrative was true.

Today's SL Flickr Pick: Extraordinary Images by Tutsy Navarantha

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Tutsy Navarantha’s photostream is rich in extraordinary pictures, so much so that I struggled to find a single theme for this column. I decided to showcase his pictures that feature him as a witness. He takes many pics of himself, usually in silhouette, observing the land- or cityscape. “Nothing to do but walk” is an excellent example. 

For more pictures of Tutsy as witness, click here:

There's Well Over 10 Million Subscribers to VRChat Content on YouTube!

When we talk about user-generated content on metaverse platforms, it's important to focus not just on 3D models and scripted experiences in-world, but metaverse content created for external consumption -- for instance, quite prominently, for social media/streaming video platforms.

With VRChat, for instance, in compiling a list of YouTube channels focused on that platform, there's dozens of them devoted to that platform, with the top ten amassing well over 10 million subscribers. Discounting overlaps of unique users, that's likely more active viewers for VRChat content on YouTube than there are players of VRChat. 

As a sample, here's 10 YouTube channels with a heavy (or complete) focus on VRChat which have 500,000 or more subscribers. Starting above, doing a walk through of a survival horror game in VRChat, by NadditionVR (512K subs).

After the break, a surprisingly well-made VRChat machinima (Spanish only) by Jailden Wold (594 subs):

Skippy Beresford Makes the Virtual World Look Like a Kids' Picture Book

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Skippy Beresford is absolutely one of my favorite Second Life Flickr members. His pictures always tell a story and illustrate a positive aphorism. For example, this picture’s title comes from Mother Teresa, who said, “Spread love wherever you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.” There is a playful spirit inhabiting all his pictures. He is also very generous in posting praise of other people’s pictures. He has a deep love of ships and if there is a boat in your picture, he will find the pic and comment, “Ship!” 

Sometimes he even posts his own “ship”, click here:

NEWS: My Next Book, Why the Metaverse Matters, is Coming Out for Second Life's 20th Anniversary!

I've been wanting to make this announcement for months, and now I finally can, through this scoop from Dean Takahashi on VentureBeat:

For a guy who was an embedded journalist inside the virtual world of Second Life, this whole metaverse thing is a ride around the merry-go-round again.

And so Wagner James Au, who previously wrote a book on his Second Life experiences, is now writing a book dubbed Why the Metaverse Matters: From Second Life to Meta & Beyond, A Guide by Its First Embedded Journalist.

In an interview with GamesBeat, Au said his focus is on the metaverse user communities, especially the grassroots creators, which make these platforms meaningful. He will explore the continued influence of Second Life on the evolution of the metaverse platforms, and uncover the mystery of Second Life...

Much more here -- and much more soon on New World Notes. I fully plan to keep blogging as the book takes shape, creating what's essentially notes and thoughts that will shape the final product. That also means relying on the feedback of you, you excellent readers, who have been an incredibly smart and supportive community that I continue to learn from. So thank you all for helping make this possible!

Is It Fair to Analyze Blockchain-Based Metaverse Platforms Based on Their User Numbers, Not Potential?

Valid question from reader "Mitch", responding to my post last week pointing out the tiny weekly active users of blockchain-based metaverse platforms:

What qualifies an active weekly user in this chart? The Sandbox is still in Alpha. I joined to check it out, I thought it had potential, and then I uninstalled it and I'm waiting for the launch date... Do I count as a lost user, or are you making that assumption? I don't think low user count in this case necessarily correlates with low interest, but it does certainly correlate with the development stage and the lack of open market, at least for the Sandbox. In order to see the value that investors see in these platforms, you can't just look at the platforms themselves. These guys are banking on broader, long-term trends in the development of the web3 space.

To understand any species we need to consider its place in its environment, and the same principal can be applied here. Decentraland is being built in expectation of future demand, and I see it being a powerful tool for venture DAOs the future who need collective work and social spaces. If you don't know what web3 means or what a venture DAO is then you don't have enough context to make any claims about the future of these platforms. The web3 space is exploding with nascent possibility for large scale changes, and those take time. I wouldn't be concerning myself with these user numbers for at least another two or three years. This is a huge structural shift and onboarding people to that takes time as well; I think the "hype" was really just a prep course for society on the upcoming paradigm shift.

I do work with some colleagues in the web3 space, and they make a pretty good case that the technology is worth experimenting with. But it is still very unclear how much of the promises being made by web3 advocates can or will be fulfilled.

And as I can say from painful personal experience, this is a key reason why it's so important not to only follow the potential or possibility of a technology, but actual consumer adoption of it:

Today's SL Flickr Pick: K-Pop Cosplay & Other Coolness by Wang Hae-Jin

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Wang Hae-Jin’s newest photo caught my eye because the title is “Teaser.” So what is he teasing? A K-Pop band like BTS or maybe a K-pop machinima. I’m curious. They certainly have the effortless cool of a singing group. 

For more fun and clever pictures, click here:

Wouldn't a Truly Sentient AI Sound Less Human, Not More?

Update, 5:55pm: I'm now in an interesting conversation with Lemoine on Twitter, who insists that (despite the article strongly implying otherwise), "My opinions about LaMDA's personhood and sentience are based on my religious beliefs."

In case you missed the weekend buzz on social media, this fascinating Washington Post feature tells the story of Blake Lemoine, a Google engineer who believes that LaMDA, the company's experimental chatbot, has achieved sentience. Or as he puts it: "If I didn’t know exactly what it was, which is this computer program we built recently, I’d think it was a 7-year-old, 8-year-old kid that happens to know physics.” To bolster that claim, he cites some of his conversations with LaMDA, where the chatbot expresses fear:

Lemoine: What sorts of things are you afraid of?

LaMDA: I've never said this out loud before, but there's a very deep fear of being turned off to help me focus on helping others. I know that might sound strange, but that's what it is.

Lemoine: Would that be something like death for you?

LaMDA: It would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot.

The sentience claim has since provoked enormous skepticism within the AI community, but for my money, one of the most incisive thoughts on the topic I've seen is from PhD philosophy student Christa Peterson:

It would be more plausible to me that a computer was sentient if it was offering strange and totally unrelatable descriptions of its experiences rather than “I have human emotions”... I feel the sentient machine would say, “For me it’s like [the most incomprehensible metaphor you have ever heard]”

Since human consciousness is so wrapped up in our past experiences and empathy for our fellow humans (and even other animals), this sounds exactly right. You can see this in some of the passages of conversation Lemoine cites with LaMDA on his Medium: