Terra Nova

History Version 3

In the beginning there was mud.

We all came from mud.

Me vs The Daily Telegraph

I’m a really irritating person.

 

I irritate myself.

 

I’ve probably irritated you. 

Space: The Boring Frontier

This year I fell for the Mars Hoax. Hard. I bought a telescope and planetarium software to plan a viewing of the red planet with my eldest son. As we scanned the skies using the software, we were able to look at anything and then magnify it into a large, beautiful image. We had a great time. As the image of Mars was growing on our computer, through magnification, we started to pretend that we were in the cockpit of a ship traveling there. "Mars needs women!" I shouted. We giggled with glee. "O Noes!11! we're gonna crash!!! AHHHH!" Great fun.

The software told us that Mars was to rise above Bloomington's horizon at 3:30am this morning, so yesterday we planned a breakfast and he came up with the idea of Solar System pancakes: Whipped cream for the Sun, M&Ms for the planets (Earth blue, Mars red, Mercury orange) and drizzled chocolate for the orbits. Yum!

Last night at about 6pm a friend suggested it might all be lies. Indeed. LIES! Those damn internets.

Now I had the dilemma of explaining all of this to a child.

Is Terra Nova Aging?

Yes it is. Things are not what they were. A reader (who may decide to de-lurk) wrote to us asking why the frequency of posts has declined. A little discussion emerged in the backchannel and it presents a moment to reflect on the blog as well as the subject matter it covers.

The gee-whiz era for virtual worlds has passed, and this changes what happens at TN.

Virtually Eternal: A Positive Pathway to a Healthy and Sustainable Virtual Worlds Industry?

With grateful thanks to John Hengeveld of Intel and others for many concepts and wording

Heady Times for Early Adopters

The early years of a technology is frequently characterized by a boisterous cacophony of players. Each player has a dream, but to realize that dream, they have to build everything from the ground up and develop their own platforms. Early consumers of technologies are limited to a small group blessed with the patience, wealth or time (or all of the above) to deal with the gaps in these home grown gadgets to get something to work. Automobiles went through this phase as did personal computers. The medium of Virtual Worlds finds itself there now.

Slowly, through gradual or mass extinction, industry players disappear or merge together and one or more monopoly powers emerge. Concentration of resources and marketing prowess then creates the basis for mass adoption. This happened in the 1930s with the telephone company once affectionately known in the USA as Ma Bell.

The close cousin of virtual worlds, online game worlds, finds itself further down the road to maturity with several big commercial successes under its belt. Game play worlds have settled into a model not unlike the film studio system of the 1920s, with aggregation of talent around big projects producing a few “hits” generating large returns. The game world studios must always be working on the next potential hit as current box office returns fade to black.

Stuck on Max Headroom Island

I Gamer

Computer games are a catalyst for a generational change in self-identification.

I believe that the notion of being a ‘gamer’ is not merely growing but becoming mainstream. Gamer is no longer a excuse for having bad personal hygiene and no social skills but simply something one is.

A Case Study of Second Life

Innovations is a relatively new journal from MIT Press edited by Philip E. Auerswald and Iqbal Z. Quadir, and it focuses on technology and governance (two frequent topics here), with a specific focus on their policy implications. A regular component of the periodical is the presentation of cases by innovators themselves, accompanied by critical commentaries. The latest issue includes a case study of Second Life by our own Cory Ondrejka, with commentaries by Philip Evans of The Boston Consulting Group, Paul R. Verkuil of the Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, and, well, me. A bit more below the fold; dig in and comment, if you like.

IBM's Virtual Worlds Guidelines

Back in 2005, IBM published a set of  blogging guidelines for employees. The introduction said

In 1997, IBM recommended that its employees get out onto the Net -- at a time when many companies were seeking to restrict their employees' Internet access. We continue to advocate IBMers' responsible involvement today in this new, rapidly growing space of relationship, learning and collaboration.

In so many way, nothing has changed with the adoption of virtual worlds. Last month, IBM's virtual worlds guidelines pointed out that

IBM believes that virtual worlds and other 3D Internet environments offer significant opportunity to our company, our clients and the world at large, as they evolve, grow in use and popularity, and become more integrated into many aspects of business and society. ... IBM encourages employees to explore responsibly and to further the development of such new spaces of relationship-building, learning and collaboration.

There has been a lot of press coverage of these guidelines. An Associated Press article was run pretty much everywhere (here's an example at TIME). Since people are often quick to assume that IBM is clamping down on its employees use of virtual worlds, and that's really not the case, I'd like to attempt to clarify a few things here and give even more of an insider's perspective than I previously did on Eightbar. It may be an interesting discussion for anyone thinking about whether companies need virtual worlds guidelines, why we bothered and what implications they have for employees using virtual worlds on their own time.

Player Vs Player in a corporate environment

Roo and I are very much looking forward to these guest posts we are going to be making here where it brings a chance for yet another voice to be developed. So thank you for the invitation and an obvious /bow to Ren Reynolds.

Before we start I do have to say the postings on this site are of course our own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

Having worked in a corporate environment for a 17 years, but having been a serious gamer for even longer, I have been struck by the similarity in some of the concepts found in games and how they appear to be being played out in a supposedly buttoned down, “professional”, serious environment.

Much of this thought has been sparked by the challenges Roo and I faced in the last 17 months bringing virtual worlds/metaverses, such as Second Life to a corporate environment initially under the banner of Eightbar. We have spent a long time explaining to people that just because it looks like a game, it does not mean that it is. Now I am starting to look at the opposite point of view that business is a game it just does not look like one.

Legs wide shut

I’ve finally found the least sexual, most wholesomely family values orientated part of Second Life.

Yup.

Welcome to Playboy Island.