Second Life: Ramp up to Virtual Reality

I'm completely smitten with Second Life, the virtual world where IBM recently announced they will be opening twelve public sims (sim = a land section of 65,535 square meters) to add to their roster of private sims (they didn't say how many of those they had, but they did say they are planing to support their 330,000 worldwide employee base with them). (One story talks about the IBM CEO Samuel S. Palmisano making his virtual debut with an Avatar that looks reminescent of a rock star in the Yellow Submarine movie).

IBM joins Reuter's, WIRED Magazine, CNET, about about 40 other big-league corporations that have built virtual buildings on public and private islands in the virtual world of Second Life. Clearly, there is some commercial viability here. Other factors swirling in the Second Life soup include:

• Second Life is on the exponential-curve we so often see in successful Internet technologies and systems, growing from 300,000 'citizens' (users) in March of 2006 to the big 2 million mark in December. Wowsa.


• Linden Labs, creators and managers of the virtual worldspace (but not its contents) have announced increases in virtual land - substantial ones. A single sim used to cost US$1,250 to purchase, plus $195/mo maintenance fees. Last month, the price jumped to $1675 and $295/mo fees. The wind says that prices could jump again in Janaury... clearly, virtual property has become hot.


• The first millionaire from virtual real estate - and that's million in US dollars, not game money, has been announced. Looks like we have some business viability here, even though there is nothing real, and it could evaporate tomorrow (if they turned off the switch). Amazing. So the real estate barons operate so that they makes returns month by month, staying away from deep debt and long-term risk. These immediate-return plans have been working.


• The in-world economy, based on a micro-payments system that I'll be writing more about, is not so micro in total impact: over US$600,000 trades hands every day in Second Life - that's roughly L$159 million (in Linden Dollars) in transactions between the residents *every day*. Never have I seens such a clear case of indesputable proof of the power of micropayments. It's as mind-blowing as it is exciting.

Their biggest problem is (and will continue to be) managing perception as the masses arrive. Remember all those movies in the 80's about virtual reality? Well, it looks a bit different than it did in the movies, but really is here, and Second Life really is it. There is a giant caveat, however: this is first-generation virtual reality, running at the max edges of bandwidth, CPU speeds, computer memory, and graphics cards. And it is klunky even with the best hardware you can dig up.

Not only is the overall technology klunky, the virtual world is hardly stable or reliable... this somehow comes to be accepted by the users over time. In the four months I've been a Second Life user, there has been an average downtime (unusable for one reason or another) of over 15%. That's right, the thing is down or broken for at least twenty-four hours every week, either because of scheduled upgrades (for six hours every Weds), attacks on the world by trouble makers called 'griefers', or overloaded sims crwaling at a pace so bad that you can't even walk around in the virtual world.

Sure, much of that is growing pains - and with insider technical experts saying earlier this year that the technology just won't scale past a certain point, the growing pains are harsh and looking to get harsher.

So it is critical to manage the perception of new users to match reality: this is a baby-steps, proto-VR, first-generation technology.

I'll be writing more about how businesses can consider using SL to save piles of money while creating a cutting-edge, fun and functional image. It really can work, but with the current reliability problems, it's shakey and requires back-up plans.

Oh - and the other limitation: so far, I've found that getting a new user just to basic competency of controlling their avatar and navigating the virtual world requires between five and seven hours of time invested. We aren't going to be able to call virtual business meetings anytime soon with anyone that hasn't already ramped-up on Second Life.

Even with all the problems, people are enchanted, thrilled, and investing time and money like crazy. Fortune 500 companies are building virtual headquarters, universities are teaching real classes in virtual classrooms in SL, and more. Clearly, if people are still glued to it with all the troubles and frustrations, we're onto something here.

So much more to say, and so much more to come. I'll reporting to you from the electrified membrane between real life and Second Life.

Zine-ster's Show Us The Way

A ZINE IS SIMPLY a self-published work done entirely of personal passion and usually without any commercial support whatsoever. Zine topics range everything you can think of... from music to travel to cooking to stories to personal life to art to addiction to mental health to just about any geeky hobby. There were over five-thousand zines available in the mid-90's, and after a few years of slimming numbers, the zine culture is bursting forth again.

Those years of slimming were the same years that we all got enamored with HTML and the instant, long-distance, and super-cheap access the Internet provided for the same kind of content as we were publishing in zines. After diving into that technology and learning what it is best at, we once again find paper to be a comfortable and favorite reading experience. Not only no batteries, no wireless access accounts needed, no worries of bending/breaking/scratching/losing our palmtop or laptop computer, but paper has texture, smell, imperfections, things glued to it, stains, and more that just stores history, intent, and mood better than any panel of glowing bits.

So we come away with yet more distinctions around what the net is great for (and we *love* the net, speaking for small publishers, writers, and geeks everywhere) and what paper is great for. And now we remember why we love paper, too.

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THIS LAST WEEKEND was the Annual Portland Zine Symposium, which is the largest in the country. The turnout was fantastic, the people marvelous, the selection of zines and exploration overwhelming. In the workshops, long-time zine publishers talked about their experiences, the people they've met, the years of deep and caring letters they written to each other, and the sense of deep community they've developed.

I was intrigued by the way these people had discovered a community of each other under the surface. I was touched by the way they took a hold of that community and cared for it, fostered it, and made it a primary involvement in their lives. It seemed that out of desparation they would cast out their zine, their thoughts, opinions, dreams, and feelings to anyone that would connect with them. And people did connect with them. Deeply.

The correspondance that formed between zinesters hundreds or thousands of miles away was formative to their young lives. It influenced the next issues of their zine, and several groups connected all together (the grrrrls, for one) to share support and tactics for making it through the world as the people they were. It was deep and meaningful, and a great community.

And it is what many people are missing and desiring today. Everyone wants those kinds of friends and deep connections; those kinds of memories and exploration and support. Why is it so hard to find in our society today? There are many reasons, none of which can't be overcome with a little determination, understanding, and know-how.

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What each zinester did was take a risk and express their deepest selves, first. They put themselves out there in print. A vulnerable position. Every zinester has gotten at least one 'hate' letter from someone who disagrees with something they wrote, or despises the treatment of a topic, or whatever.

But the rewards far outweighed the costs. This demonstrates a prime ingredient and catlyst of community and deep relationships: take a risk put yourself out there. Speak your thoughts and feelings deeply to open conversations and connect with people. We're never going to get there just talking about the weather, folks!

Speaking deeply means speaking in an appropriate way about things that are meaningful to people. Judgements and opinions will divide people, always creating the platform of the opposite and inviting argument and discussion. That's fine for many things, but it isn't the path to a deep, connective conversation.

What is meaningful to all people is our experience, our emotions, our trials and successes, our stories. To speak of these things in the common language of us all is connective. We all have experienced loneliness, joy, depression, exhileration, fear, love, weakness, and strength. Where are those things in your life right now? What are your stories around those things?

The art of conversation is an extemporaneous dance of politely exploring the topics and depth that are appropriate and meaningful for all parties involved. What's too much, what's not enough? Where's the beef? For it can be just as impolite to waste a lot of someone's time talking about nothing but the weather as it is to jump into conversation with some horriable statement of personal hygene problems while someone is trying to eat.

To experience and explore some examples - and to judge for yourself what's too much and what's not enough - check out some of these zines for yourself.

Then talk to someone about them!

The Constant Rider
Stories from the Public Transportation Front
by Kate Lopresti

Fuzzy Lunch Box
Sisters Deb and Laura tell it like it is.
309 Cedar St. #34, Santa Cruz, CA 95060

CAMP MANIA! and
A Bicycle Built for One (two different zines)
by Caitlin, spitshine_nickles {at} hotmail [dot] com

Invisible Radios: remixes, statistics, jokes, etc.
by Kevin Sampsell
Future Tense Books, PO Box 42416, Portland OR 97242
futuret {at} teleport [dot] com

LAZYBONES (fomerly known as KIMOSABE)
by Marc Parker
2000 NE 42 Ave #221, Portland, OR 97213

The DVORAK Zine
Changing the World One Keyboard at a Time!
by Alec, Frunch, and GCB
DVzine {at} gmail [dot] com


A Zine Review Zine:
Best Zine Ever!
Edited by Greg Beans and assembled at the Independent Published Resource Center
which has a HUGE library of zines at their facility in downtown Portland, by the way.

Find Zines around Portland (and online) at:

Reading Frenzy
921 SW Oak St., Portland, OR
503-274-1449

Microcosm Publishing
311 N. Ivy St., basement, Portland, OR
503.249.3826

Many thanks to the hip Multnomah County Library reference librarians Emily-Jane Dawson and Laural Winter for the cool mini-zine 'PDX Zines: Where to Find Zines in Portland," from which these sources were quoted (and there are more, so get down to the library and find out more!)

A Nation's Looking

NLP (Neural-Linguistic Programming) has models for the way individuals store their experience. As you store a memory or piece of important information, it threads together with all the other reality-maps, experiences, and information you have stored. People thread experiences and information together in different ways: some connect it chronologically, some by relationship (between people), some by concept, some by place, some by emotion or feeling. There are many ways to thread things together.

The dominant method of mapping in a person tends to create 'looking questions', or a question that is always-asking in your mind. Questions can be anything and quite varied, but some examples that will give you the idea include: "What is the meaning here?" "What am I missing?" "What can I control here?" "How can I participate here?" "Who is the leader here?" These kinds of constant-questions, though usually subconscious, guide a person's perspective when interpreting experiences.

The dimension of time also plays a big role in the filtering, interpretation, and internal mapping and threading of experiences and information. Past, present, or future: where do you classify this item, and - most importantly - from which of those time 'zones' are you living and looking?

What I find fascinating is that, usually, whatever we can apply to individuals in this area can also be applied to groups, companies, cities, states, and even nations.

We can then figure out how, say, a nation's attitudes developed - and perhaps what perspectives are missing or over-important - by finding the 'looking' of the nation in the past.

The historical era that first comes to my mind is post-World War II. What a sociologically rich time period! Fresh from experiencing the horrors of the war, we didn't want to look back. If you examine the advertising, movies, and social 'looking' of society in the United States in the 1950's, you'll find that it was almost always future-oriented. We wanted to look to the future, build a better place, and most of all get the horrors of the past out of our daily perception. We wanted our children to have a great life, great future, and great days to make up for the huge tragedies, loss, and hardship that had been the war.

You have to remember that practically everyone in the United States lost a brother, father, son, husband, or uncle in World War II. The world lost 40 million people in that war, and the mood of mourning was deep and bitter. I'm not going to go into the terrible things that people were faced with during the war; you can do some research on what people had to do to survive, fight, and clean up after all the death. You'll find that the plot for "Old Yeller" is almost a comedy in comparison, especially considering the scale and numbers involved.

As a nation, we only wanted to dream up a fabulous future, and make the present moment as Disney-esque as possible. This explains much about how neighborhoods (in general) worked in the 50's. We wanted sweetness, optimism, and 'pleasantville', especially for our children. It also explains how ready we were to jump into the space race and land a man on the moon in the 60's. It was good, clean, future-looking science and it was exciting and good for our kids.

But the drawback to placing most of your focus and consciousness in the future is that you miss most of the present moment. I believe that 'lash back' of the hippies and flower children in the 60's was a complaint around not being present in the real here and now. They were calling 'fake' on the Disney-esque, paint-it-over tactics that were society's healing bandages from the war. These kids hadn't seen the horrors, they hadn't experienced personal loss or hardship in the war. They weren't wounded, and so their perspective wasn't so future-scoped. They wanted to talk about the present and the past, and they were angry with their elders who were not cooperating on that front.

I don't know if, as a nation, we are presently looking from the past, present, or future. Made up of millions of perspectives and minds, the power of a nation is that we really can be 'covering all bases' if we are aware, nurture different points of view, and allow people to process and think and learn as they will.

What would you say is the current dominant 'looking question' or 'sorting question' for the United States? Remember, it is usually at the subconscious level, so "where's the best price on home furnishings?" probably isn't it. What perspectives are we missing in the moment?

What is your personal perspective? Can you tell how you like to sort experiences and information?

7 Kinds of Intelligence

In Thomas Armstrong's "Seven Kinds of Smart", he proposes that there are actually seven (with variants, nine) kinds of intelligence that are created in our human minds & bodies: Word smart (Linguistics), Picture smart (art & spatial), Music smart, Body smart (athletic & dance), Logic smart (math and logic), People smart (Interpersonal people skills), and Self smart (inner sight, self-knowledge, self-awareness and seeking).

The idea has critical validity, especially when educating our youth. It astounds me that the usual training and certification for out teachers doesn't include this sort of distinction and knowledge. Well, hopefully, in the 21st Century, it does.

Then there is Daniel Goleman's "Emotional Intelligence", which is about understanding, observing, and growing with human emotions. Another fine work, and should be required reading for every family, pre-teen, and teenager.

This morning, my co-star sends me a link to Independant Means, Inc., a company with the purpose of providing young women (well, anyone, actually, "family-centered" as the site says) with modern education (information, tools, and role models) in the domain of finances.

This is a great thing, and is much needed. It also points out how irrelavant our schools have become. (NOTE: I'm pretty down on our public schools system these days. My public school education was pretty poor, and my current teacher friends keep me updated on the status quo - which seems to continue to be poor, despite the good intentions and efforts of many teachers.) Our schools don't really teach much that is relevant to modern living. In fact, to me it appears that our schools don't even teach kids how to learn. There is value in the social tribal, hardening-via-peers and dealing-with-dunderheads that one does learn in the public school system, but it really adds up to less than 20% of what you need to lead a great life and create thriving community.

I have an adorable nephew who is almost three years old, and he has me thinking about ways I can suppliment his public education with the skills, tools, and knowledge (STK) that he'll really need. Spinning from the two books mentioned above, I see a few critical areas of STK. I think if you weave STK together with practice, you get domain 'intelligence'. So, I'm going to call these areas of intelligence.

Financial Intelligence - how to manage your personal money, and how the world's money tools and trade work. Beyond how to balance your checkbook, this would include financial instruments, real estate, banking, the time-value of money and compound interest. Compound interest is a thinly-understood concept these days. Did you know that many, many years ago, we had a different sort of consumer protection? Loans beyond seven years were simply not considered valid. There was also a cap on the maximum interest that could be charged. This is because our forefathers knew the compounding power of money. We understand it today as run-away credit debt and a world-record high rate of bankruptcies, causing distress and broken integrity throughout our society and economic system.

Social & Civic Intelligence - how to behave and interact with groups of people to create thriving trust, trade, and a great place to live.

Emotional & Relationship Intelligence - from friends to lovers to oneself: how to understand feelings, what they mean, how to manage them, and how to effectively communicate, demonstrate, and participate in relationships.

Business Intelligence - how to participate in and create win-win trades and exchanges, as well as how to track your dealings, plan and negotiate, and how to learn/find what you need to know legally and locally to operate a business.

Health Intelligence - skip the guidelines of the food pyramid; having health intelligence means being able to generate your own food pyramid. Being in tune with your body, your health lifestyle, nutrition, cooking, and understanding through experience the flexibility, plasticity, adaptation, healing, growth & care of your own body. This may also extend to health concepts for groups of people, from weekend camping to cities and nations.

Spritual Intelligence - this isn't about any particular religion, rather, it is about learning how to ask questions that led oneself to answers, and how to evaluate those answers for validity and truth in ones own life. This is about the skills, tools, and knowledge to be able to competently spiritually quest for ones entire life.

Systems Intelligence - observing and understanding the interaction and interdependance of components in a system and their effects. Concepts like emergent behaviour, synergy, and system evolution. This is critical for understanding the (huge) problems of modern society as well as understanding the frustrations of your own town.

Hopefully, I'll be able to provide some way for my nephew to first know that these domains of skills, tools, and knowledge exist, and then provide ways for him to gain access to them. And practice them.

A Score of Years in Common

I just returned from the American Institute of Architects 2005 National Conference (Continuing Education Services track) where William Draves, co-author of "Nine Shift: Work, life, and education in the 21st Century" was the keynote speaker. He gave a terrific presentation that was interesting, very "scoping", and hopeful in - let's face it - a decade of turmoil.

The premise of the book is that a comparison of the social, industrial, and thought-trends of 1900-1920 and 2000-2020 reveals astounding parallels. From this analysis, we can identify the nine major shifts that are occuring from 2000-2020 and predict the directions and ways the present turmoil will settle out. It is fascinating and revealing.

While he does identify several major trends and shifts that would be recognized as community building, I see a separate but obvious trend toward community gaining momentum. I've now heard 'regular folks' in several different industries talking about community, and friends and locals are all demonstrating a yearning for thriving, connected communities in many ways.

I met a man this morning who is another techy Internet guy who builds web sites and helps people protect and recover from spyware, malware, and viruses. He and I have each been in the computer/Internet industry for over 25 years. He was also quite excited about building thriving community, and when I mentioned "Personal Exchange Economy", he seemed to know exactly what I was talking about (there are so many ways we can exchange with each that aren't related to money... think about the term 'social capital' for a moment. What social capital do you have? How much social capital does your community have?)

My conclusion is that we tech-Internet guys, who have spent 3,000+ hrs/year behind the computer screens for a decade or two, are so done with the 'me generation', and now we want the 'we generation.' I can say that, because I was a member of the 'me' generation. I lived it, defined it, and preached it. I spent my disposable income to make catering the 'me' generation an economic peak; I trained my generation and those right after in the 'me' lifestyle. Been there, done that, took it to the limit and at maximum velocity.

Now an entire wave of techies (and other folks that lived thru the 90's boom) is right behind me... we are tired of the 'me' factor and are now interested in - no, more than than that! Lustful and desirious of - the 'we' factor. We are hopeful, captivated, and hungry to discover the strengths and powers of groups, communities, and togetherness.

Glad to find all the friends and netheads that I've been emailing, IM'ing, BBS'ing, chatting, and posting in Msg Forums with coming out into the sunshine and real world with me. Great to see you all in person!

Wrap-around Concepts

One of the big problems in talking about trust is the lack of a common, popular vocabulary that has a good level of resolution and precision. How do you have immediately useful and compelling conversations about trust methods and practices with people when every other concept has to be defined?

Perhaps there are other paths to connect people to talking about trust. Sure, there is the structure of trust. Recent years in linguistic work has even seen the development of the structure of emotion. Is there a structure of relationships? Would that bring people closer in to talking about these important things?

The words "structure of friendship" hit me like lightning when my girlfriend came up with the idea a few days ago. "Whoa!" I said. Perhaps this is the big wrapper that will let people frame and reference structure of trust. Truststruct can seem disconnected from direct day-to-day life... although trust is related to *everything* we do, an abstraction model of trust relates to nothing in particular (kind of the flip side of the design of a general model).

I'll keep tinkering and thinking.

Please, I invite your ideas and comments!

Northwest Lingustics Group

I'm forming a new linguistics group in Portland, Oregon: The Noon Academy. The first meeting is Saturday, January 22, 2005, at 12pm (more details at The Noon Academy web site). I've done study groups before, and my girlfriend/co-star has done a wonderful job starting and growing the Portland Chapter of the Church of Craft. She has over 200 members and the group has been meeting just over 14 months (once a month). She is definately at the right place at the right time: spritial crafting is big and is just getting bigger. A lingustics and ontology club, however, is a much narrower niche. Portland has some great people and projects going on. Portland is the headquarters for Linux, after all, and many smaller OpenSource and Linux companies like Tripwire. The arts community is thriving, there are more live theaters per capita than any city I know, and the live music scene is absolutely incredible. Any kind of music you want, live, any night of the week, and week-long music festivals where 300 bands play over 5 days at over a dozen venues all over town. It rocks. But how many linguists are there? The NLP Meetup group has only a few members, and only one that replies to email or group postings! I'm determined to keep the meeting schedule month after month until I get a core group of fellow language geeks together. I'm guessing our direction will be primarily determined once we have the core group. I do have ideas on experiments and development that I'd like to do, not the least of which is continued research into social networking software design and human transaction process design. I'm anxious to see the turnout. I have over 2 weeks to get the word out. I'll be ready! And if I'm the only one that comes, then I'll just have lunch and read some Searle.