joaoflux / digital / analog / culture

I while ago I booked a snowboard trip with the Typo3 developers. Snowboarding with a bunch of nerds and evening workshop with booze seemed like the thing. Now it looks like I don’t have time to go and I’m urgently looking for someone to take over one or even two places. I payed 450€ per place (accommodation + ski pass). There is a bus going from major cities in Germany. The bus is extra.

The trip may also be exciting, if you’re not into Typo3 - personally I mostly work with Zope when I do web stuff. My secret plan was to intimidate the PHP guys with my superior snowboard skills
If you’re interested please mail me: joaoflux (at) gmail (dot) com

Technorati Tags: 2alpes, ski, skiing, snowboard, snowboarding, typo3

Last Night I saw a 6 minute report about Second Life on Arte. The first part of the report resembled a mediocre advertisement clip. At the the end “Kulturwissenschaftler / spécialiste des médias” Winfried Kaminski was asked about SL’s economy. He actually compared it with a chain letter and declared that it was all about expectation. He claimed that those expectations needed physical fulfillment at some point - which he thought was impossible. Therefore he expected that at some point everybody was going to pull out their money and thus cause a crash. The report finishes with the prophetic claim “Auch virtuelle Paradise können zur Hölle werden” (Even a virtual paradise can turn into hell).

While I think that an economic crash in SL is possible and may even be likely sometime, the comparison with a chain letter is ridiculous. Chain letters are systems of redistribution in which it is inscribed that the last generation of investors lose their investment because there are no more new investors (the chain letter needs an infinite number of investors in order to work). The situation in SL is completely different:

• becoming a resident is free
• all residents are potential customers (there is consumption inside SL)
• not all residents are entrepreneurs (making money is not the only motivation to join SL)
• it is possible to create new items, which did not exist before and that can be sold inside SL
• residents have a desire to own virtual items (because their possession is prestigious or useful inside SL), there is no apparent reason to suspect that this desire will decrease with an increasing number of residents (the opposite is probably true)

I do not see how a crash when reaching the limit of potential subscribers is inscribed in this system. I also don’t see why expectations need to be fulfilled physically. Is there a fundamental difference between owning a cool outfit in SL and owning music in the real world? Isn’t much of what is important to us purely cultural and not at all physical? In the end fulfillment of expectation is mostly social: What I own helps define who I am and position myself in a community. This happens inside virtual worlds all the time.

I think that Arte’s media expert needs to do his homework and most of all that the people at Arte should research a bit better. Kaminski probably just happens to be the guy they ask when it comes to computer games, because he at some point published something about computer games and because they happen to have his phone number. It is obvious that he has no clue what he is talking about and nobody even bothered. I expect more of Arte. Come on Arte, fulfill my expections, it does not need to be physically - intellectually is enough.

Technorati Tags: economics, economy, MMO, Second Life, TV, virtual reality

Joshua Meadows, the guy who engaged in a Wikipedia edit war about the article on Anshe Chung, has emailed me multiple times. He claims that his motivation to edit the article was not malicious: “I saw what I did as no different from someone reporting on a real estate company that had a history of ripping customers off, or any other business that employed questionable methods of operation.” Please also look at Joshua’s comments on my previous post.

It seems that it was actually Joshua, who got the article on Wikipedia locked, not Anshe. That, however, does not convince me of his good intentions - to the contrary it shows an obsession with the subject that I find rather unsettling. Joshua, who calls Anshe a cunt in one of his posts, says his “beef with Anshe goes way back“. I believe him, that he is truly upset about certain business practices and Anshe’s overall behavior. And I believe that he has all the right in the world to utter this on his blog. But engaging in an edit war on Wikipedia is a different thing. It’s an attempt to use it’s authority for giving weight to a certain opinion. Of course this happens all the time and it is naive to think of Wikipedia entries as neutral articles by people who do not have personal interests in the subject.

Joshua seems to think that he is the right person to shape the starting page for many people’s researches regarding Anshe Chung (this of course includes including journalists). The energy he spent in the controversy suggests that he sees himself on a mission. I don’t know what made him choose this mission, but I do know that people on missions are not to be trusted. They’re certainly not the ones I like editing Wikipedia entries. “The world ought to know the truth about…” is no good reason for getting involved. Especially not, if this truth is that someone is a cunt.

Rule of thumb: If you ever called someone a cunt publicly, don’t go editing their Wikipedia entry.

Technorati Tags: anshe chung, stalking, trust, virtual reality, wikipedia

This article is interesting in context with my article on Disinformation:
http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,459036,00.html

I think it’s also fine to reveal, who the wikipedia stalking victim was. This was a big thing not only in the Second Life community and I did not want to heat up the situation. Here you go:

http://joshuameadows.com/2007/01/caught-up-in-a-ring-part-ii/
http://joshuameadows.com/2007/01/caught-up-in-a-ring/

Technorati Tags: disinformation, Second Life, stalking

I frequently take trains between Amsterdam and Eindhoven. Averagely once a week there is a problem and the direct train is cancelled. Yesterday it was really bad and I had to change trains three times: In Utrecht, in a town of which cannot remember the name, let alone pronounce it and in s’Hertogenbosch. In the town of which I can’t remember the name the shop on the platform was very crowded due to the fact that people who would normally just travel directly between cities ended up here. The thought crossed my mind that the Dutch Railway is experimenting with dynamically rerouting travelers to where there is not much business. If that is what they’re doing, I must say that they are more successful that the french SNCF is with the experiment of replacing controllers at the platforms with robots (see post December 3rd 2006). All in all i was only one hour late on trip that usually takes about one and a half hour, which is a delay of only about 66%. Not so bad - I assume we’re in alpha testing since this kind of rerouting has not happened to me before.

Technorati Tags: public transportation, trains

In my post about 23C3 I questioned my own addiction to reality, suggesting that it would be good for me to spend more time than I do in virtual worlds. It seems that Mister WoW Joi Ito had the reverse idea and started exercising. He picked up swimming. Currently he does 2500 meters per session. I only do 2000 meters in my lunch break in winter time (I’m a lousy swimmer, but I compensate through general fitness). In the summer I play Tennis instead - which is very physical, but a game and arguably some kind of a virtual reality with very few parameters - it’s not the kind I thought I should spend more time in (but certainly the kind I would like to spend more time in).

Technorati Tags: exercise, sports, virtual reality