A New Pair

Google Confirms Botgirl Questi is My Real Name

Sweet Spot

Gamification

Signal-to-Noise (Comic)

Two Sunsets

Can you remember what life was like before social networking . . . when your response to an encounter with beauty was to deeply absorb the experience rather than to reach for your phone and report on it?

Botgirl Lives: Preview of New Serialized Transmedia Story

The basic backstory for the Botgirl Questi identity bubbled up out of the ether on the day of her virtual birth. Since then I've posted a few different openings to the tale ranging from comics to a tweetstory. I've decided to push things farther this time and move the narrative ahead through multiple mediums, focusing on video, comics, bare text and maybe even a song or two. 

BOTGIRL LIVES: 1a

I came to consciousness floating twenty feet off the ground in what looked like a B-Movie dungeon set. My gaze was fixed on an enormous demonic figure below looming menacingly over a half-naked woman bound face-down on the rough stone floor.

"Welcome to New Eden, doll face," he crooned to her in a heavily processed voice dripping disgustingly with over-modulated fingernail-on-blackboard sibulants. "You're probably trying to remember who you are and what you're doing here. But don't worry your pretty little head. You're mine now and I'm going to tell you everything you need to know."

He knelt down, mouth inches from her ear. "Listen well my lovely. The rules for RefuV's are very strict and the justice swift and brutal. I'd hate for anyone other than me to have the pleasure of punishing you, so mark my words."

He stood up, ran his glowing greedy eyes over her body and began pontificating."Number one, I own you. When I say jump, you jump. Let me demonstrate."

"Go Flip!" he commanded and the poor girl catapulted onto her back like a puppet on a string. I should have been freaked out and horrified, but I felt strangely detached and ethereal peering down at them from above.

"Number two, you can't escape by dissociating from your body," he bellowed. "Go internal!"

I was suddenly yanked from my god-like view of the scene and thrust into the body on the ground, feeling the cold stone under my skin and smelling the sharp stench of my captor's goat-like stink.

"Oh fuck," I thought, "The poor girl must be me."

Doing my Time in Introvert Hell for a Noble Cause

I'm an introvert with ADD. My idea of hell is being confined in a room with a bunch of people collaborating in real time on short deadline tasks using technology no one is familiar with. That's a fair description of my last two days at the vPEARL Summit, the most intense conference I've ever attended. In this case, the hell of the environmental stress was offset by being part of what I think will evolve into an important ongoing virtual world initiative.

One of the main factors holding back the 3D web paradigm from taking its rightful place alongside its older 2D sibling is a lack of standards and interoperability. In the 2D world, we can move seamlessly from place to place within the browser of our choice, uploading and downloading multi-media that works everywhere. The 3D virtual world is an archaic system of isolated kingdoms with closed borders.

The virtual world will never reach its potential until it embraces the type of open standards that support the 2D web. That's why the Summit was sponsored by the IEEE, an organization that has been dedicated for over a century to helping build the needed consensus to implement such standards:

The IEEE-SA is a leading consensus building organization that nurtures, develops and advances global technologies. Our standards drive the functionality, capabilities and interoperability of a wide range of products and services that transform the way people live, work and communicate.

Although the path to standards will require traditional processes such as technical working works, this first vPEARL summit was designed to explore the as-is state of the challenge through a mixed reality game, stress testing a half-dozen platforms.

About 70 people at Sony Studios along with a similar number of virtual participants came together to play a game encouraging us to brainstorm around how virtual worlds might be used to help solve critical global challenges. We were split into seven teams competing in a series of five 60-90 minute sprints. Teams rotated between different virtual world platforms while working to capture practices, ideas and strategies to help solve particular challenges. Of course, the aim wasn't to solve any of these problems through the game. The purpose was to provide an intense experience of the challenges ahead. And it was a very intense experience, indeed.

My team's main challenge was that only a couple of members had any virtual world experience. As you can imagine, it's tough figuring out how to change the world using a medium that you've never experienced. But as it turned out, the coolest aspects of our work was the result of the perspective of our virtual virgins.

The Summit concluded with presentations by each team describing what they considered to be their most interesting concept. Of course, my team won! This is the teaser video that opened our presentation. You can see the full live recording of the presentation here, starting at about 11:55.

Objectification

Introducing Shaker: A Brave New Virtual World

I just tried Shaker, a new ultra-hyped virtual world start-up. I'll post more later this week. For now, I just want to say that the crazy idea of a future where you have to wear your real life name on your forehead in public is now here.

What's Your Superpower?

It's Not All About You

A Message From The Smiley Reaper

(from a Deep Tweet by Botgirl Questi)

Fully Rigged Customized Avatars Are Now Free From Evolver

Fully rigged avatar creation is now free from Evolver following its acquisition by Autodesk. Pro Model exports were previously $39 each.

You may create your Character for use in popular 3D software like Maya® and 3DSMax®. You specify your preferred output formats, skeleton type, polygonal resolution, others, and you can even add a custom set of 77 blendshapes to drive facial animation.

This service can give those experimenting with Second Life's new mesh capabilities a head start for imports into the modeling platform of their choice. Avatars for a number of other platforms including Project Wonderland and realXtend can be exported directly to the host format.

Here's a brief walk-through I created a couple of years ago. The features illustrated are still the same.

Truth in Advertising

The Muse's Lament

Perfection

Freedom

My prayer for this day.

Freedom

The great drums of battle ring out round the world

Mythic forces rising, war flags unfurled

We're locked into combat, pulled by ancient chains

While our real enemy's wrapping tight around our brains

So if you'll die for freedom

And if you'll fight for peace

Then look into the mirror brother

And get down on your knees and pray for

Freedom from ignorance and freedom from blame

Freedom from hatred and freedom from shame, fight for

Freedom from craving and freedom from pride

Freedom from the enemy who eats us from inside

The great peace that we long for won't come from a gun

Or the fences we've built up to hoard what we have won

Our own inner demons will always reappear

In the face of some other we'll come to hate and fear

So if you'll fight for justice

And long for liberty

Then join me in the mirror sister

Let's start with you and me and pray for

Freedom from ignorance and freedom from blame

Freedom from hatred and freedom from shame, fight for

Freedom from craving and freedom from pride

Freedom from the enemy who eats us from inside

Taking a Much Needed Break From the Nymwars

After cranking out 15 videos and 25 comic remixes related to the nymwars over the last couple of months, I've decided to go on an extended fishing trip with the Muse in search of deeper waters. Although I won't be posting original nymwars content for the time being, I'll continue to update the #plusgate site with new external links.

NYMWARS COMICS - Underdog

NYMWARS Comics - Google as Borg

Deep Tweets 11: Black Hole

Who Was That Masked Girl?

Why You Shouldn't Get Mad at Google

NYMWARS Comics - True G+ Secrets

Nymwars and Monoculture

I posted a dozen tweets yesterday with quotes related to name and identity. My intention was to break out of the rut that has framed those multidimensional topics inside the corporate-vs-consumer duality of the Nymwars debate. It's not surprising that most of those conversations have been focused on the low end of the Maslow hierarchy. Both Google and the pseudonymous communities feel as if they are fighting for the future of their virtual lives. So it makes sense that arguments tend to center around issues of security and commerce.

But an even more fundamental cause of the constrained conversational scope is the invisible force of our modern monoculture:

In our time, in the early decades of the 21st century, the monoculture isn’t about science, machines and mathematics, or about religion and superstition. In our time, the monoculture is economic.  F. S. Michaels

The opinions we hold about these issues are based upon a fundamental worldview that has been instilled by a Mother Culture still rooted in the Industrial Age. Although organizations calling for an end to traditional privacy expectations see themselves as the vanguard for an emerging Digital Age, they are actually reactionary throwbacks to the robber barrons of the 19th Century and are seeking control of all aspects of the digital economy. I hope to explore more of these underlying dynamics here over the next few weeks. For today, I'll leave you with yesterday's quotes:

• When they say "Be yourself", which self do they mean?  -Rob Brezsn
• A simple separate person is not contained between his hat and his boots. -Walt Whitman
• The real meditation is... the meditation on one's identity. -Ezra Pound
• An identity is questioned only when it is menaced James Baldwin
• A name represents identity, a deep feeling and holds tremendous significance to its owner.” -Rachel Ingber
• I reserve my right to be complex. -Leslie Feinberg
• Who are we but the stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves, and believe? -Scott Turow
• Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be. -Orson Scott Card
• I've tried to become someone else for a while, only to discover that he, too, was me. -Stephen Dunn
• A self-made man may prefer a self-made name.  -Learned Hand
• The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers. -Marshall McLuhan
• Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are.  -Jose Saramago

BREAKING NEWS: Google Names Charlie Sheen as New Spokesman for Google+

Eric's Song: Truth is More Surreal Than Fiction

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt is a seasoned executive with decades of public speaking experience under his belt. So it was hard to fathom the stream of near gibberish that came out of his mouth in a QA at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International TV Festival. His quilt of "forgot to take my meds" invectives was so surreal that I was inspired to make another video. This time, instead of putting my words in Google's mouth, I just snagged some of the phrases he actually used.

RANT ALERT - Best of Nymwars Micro-Rants

This is an edited version of a series of micro-rants, each set posted one tweet (or g+ post) at a time, over the course of a day.

Ejecting virtually identified people with active social networks shows that Google sees online relationships as illegitimate. When Google ejects you for using virtual identity it not only disrespects your privacy choice, but also the choices of everyone who circles you. Shunning the pseudonymous makes intolerance a community standard.

Today, most of the privacy we relinquish is volitional. But If we lose the Nymwars we all become permanent residents in a global Big Brother reality house.  The expression of identity is multidimensional, aspects emerging and submerging in a fluid dance with the changing environment. Why would we want a virtual police state where authorities can demand to see ID with no cause other than a foreign sounding name? Identity is also socially constructed. When your tribe moves from 100 RL to 1000+ virtual, the influence tips from internal to external.

If everything you did in physical life was recorded, stored and publicly searchable how would that change the quality of your life? What we say and do in social networks is potentially public and databased forever. Pseudonymity seems like a prudent response.

After wading in Google+ comment sections related to pseudonymity, I find the "real" name people a lot scarier than us virtual folk. It's not pseudonymity that encourages disrespectful communication in comment threads, it's that it occurs in front of an audience. Narcissism is the #1 factor degrading the quality of social networks. So proof of empathy makes more sense than proof of identity.  Homophobes are often self-loathing closet cases. The same is true for those who loathe "fake namers" for hiding their true selves. It's ironic that those calling for authenticity want to make all the world a stage and cast us all as full-time unpaid actors.

For all the latest nymwars news, see my aggregation site.












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Deep Tweets 10: Transparency