Halloween Eve at The House of Usher

Location: Jokaydia Grid, House of Usher Site

Putting up walls and improving textures I made for Second Life is fine, but it's almost the Witching Hour and I want our haunts to work!

I was able to recompile the scripts that worked in SL for the new grid. Copy/paste did NOT cut it.

But now we have our ghosts again, and more are on the way...it's a Poe story, after all.

Happy Halloween!

Mitch Kapor's 2008 "Closing of the Frontier" Moment

Location: On the hunt for a new frontier

image: "Spirit of the Southern Frontier" Web archive at University of Richmond

During the celebration of Second Life's 5th birthday, Mitch Kapor gave a keynote talk that reminds me of Frederick J. Turner's famous 1893 address at the Colombian Exposition in Chicago, a World's Fair that ostensibly (and a year late) marked the 400th anniversary of Columbus' voyage to the New World.

Turner's "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" created quite a stir in news outlets and, gradually, in the popular imagination.

The ideas are too closely linked for Kapor to have not drawn upon Turner. That's a good thing, in fact. Turner's idea was a shocker to a nation that had an expectation, in spite of all empirical evidence, that "free land" was infinite. I suspect we'll look back at Kapor's remarks in the same way about our (to borrow Diogene Kuhr's term) "ephemeral frontier" in Second Life.

So here are part of Kapor's talk. Have a look, two years on, and see if he was right about the post-2008 era in SL. You can find the entire transcript of his talk here. What do YOU think? Is the frontier era in SL gone? What will replace it? Here's Kapor:

The pioneer era in Second Life is beginning to draw to a close. It has been five years and we are at the beginning of a transition and I think it is an irrevocable transition. And I am hoping what you see now is a slide of a technology adoption curve, a classic bell curve that shows early adopters on the left and then a set of pragmatists as we move from left to right and so on all the way over to the right edge of the curve, we show the laggards. This technology adoption curve is well known for the way to characterize the adoption of these disruptive new innovations. [asks for next slide]

When you see this [rezz in], you should be seeing a big red vertical arrow just at the margin between the early adopter phase and the pragmatist phase. That is really where we are today and I think that has some very important implications and I want to talk about that for a minute. So the first is, in the earliest wave of pioneers in any new disruptive platform, the marginal and the dispossessed are over represented, not the sole constituents by any means but people who feel they don't fit, who have nothing left to lose or who were impelled by some kind of dream, who may be outsiders to whatever mainstream they are coming from, all come and arrive early in disproportionate numbers.

It was the way the west in the U.S. was settled. It is the way Second Life has been settled. And in fact those early pioneers find a very arduous environment. In the early days, you really have to want to be here because life in certain ways is very very difficult, in fact too difficult for most people. It is unavoidable in some sense that there will be a very high attrition rate in the early years while a platform is being built out. It doesn't stay that way of course, it can't, but the difficulties of conditions cause those who stay to really bond together, have something in common.

And that sort of arduous frontier conditions really give these environments their charm and their character, but also their challenges. Ad all that is changing as we speak because people are in the process of discovering that virtual worlds have very pragmatic values to them and this is especially true and will be true in the enterprise sector, as businesses seek to be more productive, be more efficient, utilize the latest technology and then you will find lots of pragmatic users off of virtual worlds, in the same way that in the early years of the internet businesses were not big participants, but they discovered in the mid-1990s that it was actually necessary to be on the net in a whole variety of ways in order to be part of the global market system.

Balance Sheet: Sims in SL and Jokaydia Grid

Location: Cipherin'

As Jed Clampett used to say, "If brains was lard, Jethro couldn't grease a pan." Let's see if I can do any better: Richmond Island vs. Nevermore Sim; it's a smack-down!

Prims allowed: 15K vs. 20K (megas are okay in both places)

Setup Fee: $1000US vs. $0

Tier: $150 (soon to be $295) vs. $20US

Lag: negligible vs. negligible

Off-Grid Data backups: By item with Imprudence client vs. by item + OAR region backups

Number of Avatars: up to 100 vs. 10 or so (soon to rise). I will confirm this fact with Jokay.

Group Rights: Yes vs. Soon (with next server upgrade). I will also confirm this fact with Jokay for readers.

Content: homemade + purchased vs. homemade

Other than losing some fine content from SL's vendors, we come out so far ahead in OpenSim that I'll just pay for our region personally. If we need to expand beyond Nevermore, then I'll see if the university wishes to buy an Island at Jokaydia Grid.

Our project does not need media-on-a prim or large concurrency. The former will come with upgrades, and our biggest groups for classes using Usher have been 8 avatars. For tours, we might get up to a dozen.

Groups will soon be possible in Jokaydia Grid. They are vital for giving those beyond the Estate Managers the right to rezz items that persist. While the grid is educational, mistakes happen, especially with megaprims.

Overall, this grid is a great fit for our project and I hope to see other educators coming over, as well as building other edu-grids hyperlinked to each other.

Speaking Of....The League of Worlds Meets Today!

Thanks to Owen Kelly for this e-mail to the EDUCAUSE VW list.

I'm teaching today during this event, but if you are one of those inter-grid pioneers, log in to SL and join the group. The League of Worlds, founded in 2004, is hosting a "Bring Your Own Grid" meeting today! From Owen:

We are planning to hold Bring Your Own Grid 1, a League of Worlds one-hour in-world gathering on Wednesday, October 27 at 10.30 SL time, when we will explain what we mean in more detail, and invite others who share our vision to join us. If you wish to join, or to find out more, you are invited to attend.

Confirmed attendees, so far, include:
* Scott Diener (Auckland University, New Zealand) of the New Zealand Virtual Worlds Grid
* John "Pathfinder" Lester (as himself), owns an OpenSim region on jokaydiaGrid
* Steve Bronack (Clemson University, South Carolina) of the Carolinas Virtual Worlds Consortium
* Owen Kelly (Arcada University, Helsinki) (new OpenSim grid under construction)
* Lindy McKeown (University of Southern Queensland) aka Decka Mah in Second Life (new OpenSim grid under construction)

Location
The gathering will be held on the island Terra Incognita in Second Life at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Terra%20incognita/157/107/33/

Look for the signs at the landing point to the meeting in Spotter Square.

Don't forget, its at Wednesday, October 27 at 10.30 SL time. Check your time at http://tinyurl.com/23zb8fw

Our Alpha Prim in Jokaydia Grid

Location: Nevermore Sim, Jokaydia Grid

Well, Iggy Strangeland teleported over from the Reaction Grid Main Grid with gifts for Roderick Usher. At this point, building will be limited to checking where we want terrain, the footprint of the House, etc.

The 200 hours of work done in the summer of 2009 won't be wasted. We could have a House rebuilt in a quarter that time, given the experience with the earlier build.

But just to goof off, Roderick had to rezz a cube. And so it begins!