Jerry Paffendorf, Community Director at Acceleration Studies Foundation (ASF) spoke on his research interests in the session, "Introduction to Explorations: Brave New Virtual Worlds".
Synopsis: Jerry covers a lot of ground in a short time. He discusses the protypical user-constructed universe of Second Life. For instance, industrial designer, Caven Concord, trys his ideas out in his virtual workshop in Second Life. He can then choose to 3D print his prototypes into "real life" manufacture later. Jerry also touches upon the annotating the real-world planet as well in the second half. What he calls Earth 2.0, the taggable, searchable, skinnable planet via GPS-aware phones, Google Earth, Google Maps and more.
Jerry Pallendorf, Community Director, ASF, "Introduction to Explorations: Brave New Virtual Worlds".
Jerry recommends the book, Mirror Worlds: Or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox: How It Will Happn and What it Will Mean.
Last year Jerry spoke about making things in Second Life. [Last year's talk was entitled Rise of the Virtual-to-Real Labor Force: 5 Free Ideas—from Underwear to Architecture. Notes available at end of Day 1 AC2004 notes here.] Second Lifeis a prototypical universe; it now has 50,000 accounts; most games peak out in user growth within a few months but Second Life just keeps growing.
[In the hallway, an attendee that went to Friday's Tech Night reception tells me that accounts are free at SL now; they realize user attention is a valuable currency itself. And they make more money on real estate anyway.]
If you Google image search on his name, "Jerry Paffendorf" you get his Second Life avatar first in the results. There's even presentations and future salons (blog) within SL. Second Life Relay for Life raised $5,369 for American Cancer Society, Volunteers build donation camps and self-organize their own activities.
Prototype, Rip, Mix, and 3D Burn - design on the edge. An industrial designer, Caven Concord, trys ideas out in his workshop in Second Life. He can then 3D print them into "real" manufacture.
The 3D virtual world is subsuming the browser (i.e. you browse Internet in Second Life) and Firefox is being rolled out in SL.
"I'm not building a game, I'm building a new country." - Philip Rosedale, CEO, Second Life
Real-world Second Life convention October 8-9: www.slconvention.org - colocated with the State of Play conference at NY Law School.
What will a Google Earth search for "Jerry Pallendorf" show you? Mentions the collaborative tracing of GPS-connected folks in Amsterdam. "In the very near future there are going to be billions of people walking around the planet with GPS-aware phones. I used to wonder what kinds of things we'd be able to do with them. Now it's clear: we are going to use them to collectively annotate the planet." - Jon Udell
The taggable, searchable world: Google chipped in to get latest satellite images after Katrina; people could post updates on news, and the situation.
The Skinnable World: Example of 3D model of coffee shop in Great Bear Coffee, Los Gatos. An avatar walks through space - see also Amazon's A9 blockview, Adobe Atmosphere, Google Maps.
Mapping and Sculpting the Possibility Space (possibility space is term that Willl Wright uses in Sims). Players can create player paths in The Sims.
Jerry ends that the ultimate platform is Earth 2.0, a system of the world.
ac2005 gmaps second life virtual worlds mmorpg tagging web2.0
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