Texter or Gamer: Which Are You?

Location: Solitary Pursuit Called Writing

I'm a hermit by inclination. Whether it's real life or the shimmering and consensual hallucination called a virtual world, I like my quiet. I don't appreciate the random IM, the unsolicited chat-request when I'm replying to my electronic mail. Lots of folks who fancy themselves writers seem to be that way.

This reaction is a long-term one that built over many years, but until I read "Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction" in the New York Times, I did not fully understand why. Writer Matt Richtel notes that what Sherry Turkle has called "always on, always on you" technology has created new social types on campus, "not the thespian and the jock but the texter and gamer, Facebook addict and YouTube potato."

My colleagues who gather to discuss education in Second Life, and who post to blogs about it, often confuse these types. There's a conflation of ideas that runs like this: our students live virtual lives already and virtual worlds are an inevitability for them.

This is a mistake. Mediation and virtuality are separable to them, if not to us. There's a huge difference between the augmentationist who is always on Facebook or texting people known already and the loner who chooses to get immersed as a alter-ego, then connect a guild or a few distant gamer-pals through an MMORPG. Most Richmond students, who tend to be socially adept and careerist, are not loners by inclination and they've been scared by stories of gamers who end up where they began: mom and dad's basement.

Ironically, they hurt their grades either way, as the NYT story shows.

In my case, I escaped the basement, though I never had my bedroom down there. We had a nice dry cellar with 1970s wood paneling, and, yes, the D&D group met there in the 70s and 80s. I even escaped the lure of online gaming because of the massive amounts of time needed to be good at a game and the inability to make one's own game; I've long been the game-master type rather than the player. Academics and folks who write a lot tend to tilt that way, too.

But I'm neither traditional texter nor gamer. So are many of those who made SL what it is today.

It's possible that Linden Lab's recent move to stress the social aspects of Second Life over its creative aspects is a wise move: there are more texters than gamers out there. This leads me to think about which social networkers they want. If my students are any indication, they already have all of the social network they need; it consumes enough of their time to hurt their intellectual work. They have no patience for a non-intuitive interface such as SL's.

Will my colleagues who buy into triumphalist narratives about the course of networked technology "get this"? Not until they come to understand the shaping power of various technologies and the habits of use of various generations. There will be exceptions; one colleague is just as wrong in claiming that the Linden-Lab ideal customer is a bored housewife.

Finding a sweet-spot demographic is Linden Lab's problem to solve. Since I'll likely not be teaching in SL again, but only in focused-and-directed simulations in OpenSim, I have time for other worries. I ask a neo-luddite's questions about our networked lives and worry more about the next generation of young people. They are even more addicted to portable devices and easy connectivity than the ones I now teach.

How on earth can they be taught to listen to what silence can say?

A 3D Trick of the Eye for Novice Builders

Location: Counting Prims

I'm writing a longer post for the VWER Web site about the lessons learned from nearly a month in Jokaydia Grid. Here's a tip I learned as I rebuild a superior version of the Virtual House of Usher.

Roderick has many familial heirlooms noticed by Poe's narrator, "sombre tapestries of the walls. . .phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode." The tapestries are easy. What about those trophies?

I could MAKE a suit of armor with my 20K prims, right?? Um, no.

Instead, I did this Shadow-box trick, until I got some mesh armor for Roderick’s family collection! As a drawing teacher told me not so many years ago, "trick the viewer's eye." Here's my technique:

1. make shadowbox of two prims. The back prim is a flat rectangle; the top prim is a hollow cube aligned to show the back prim.
2. color the inner surface of the box black and give its outside a wooden texture.
3. put your “model” (some armor, a skeleton) on the front surface of the back prim at the rear of your box. I used Photoshop to simulate, in the 2D .jpg, the 3D interior of a box.
4. I'm still playing with how to tilt the back prim inside the shadow box to make the 3D effect most realistic. From close up, of course, it vanishes.

If you try this technique, send me the pictures! If you are in Jokaydia Grid, stop by for free decor. Both suits of armor are full perm so help yourself to a copy.


Extra credit awarded if you put the shadow box behind an archway. I made one of those with a single prim as well, using alpha-layers and other geeky Photoshop tricks that require their own post, if not a full-on tutorial.

The Case of the Premature Linking

Location: House of Usher

On a weekend of illness, reading, and being housebound, The Virtual House of Usher 2.0 in Jokaydia Grid has spawned a mystery worthy of Poe--vanishing walls, shifting images, and spooky apparitions that bespeak my recent fever, if not an overdose of Laudanum.

In texturing a wall above a hidden passage (all of this linked to the main build), I'd hoped to align the wallpaper patterns perfectly on two prims to hide the secret behind the walls. I'd had no trouble doing this on other walls, where, however, I'd not yet linked the prims. I'd also been able to shift horizontal and vertical repeats on already-linked walls without problem.

Now, however, when I try to re-texture or shift the repeats on one particular prim, it fails.

If I resize it, it vanishes! If I go back to edit the rest of the build and then move my camera back to the vanished prim, there it is again!

If I try to unlink it, it fails. For the love of God, Montresor!

Moving to another part of the House, I found I could unlink all four roof prims and then manipulate them. For my perverse prim, however, it's linked to too many others for me to consider.

Today.

I think I'll unlink it all and fix my spectral wall tomorrow, the the cold light of day when the shadows near my chamber door do not loom so large...only that, and nothing more.

Lessons Learned:

• When building in OpenSim, get textures on prims to-be-linked aligned and perfect before linking them.
• Consider doing a large build in sections, so if unlinking has to occur, it only alters 10 or 20, not 50, prims.
  
• Count your blessings. In Second Life, our build of Usher had reached over 2000 prims by this point in construction. I have just hit 300, including prim-heavy props and furniture. I think we'll keep the entire thing under 1000 prims and then move on to the family graveyard and other Poe-themed areas on Nevermore.
• Do not read too much Poe (or Poe-influence Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk) too close to working with a Poe-themed build.

See if you can spot the Imp of the Perverse Prim! Go to Jokay's shiny new Hypergrid Directory and scroll down to Nevermore. I hope you don't land in the dark tarn of Usher.

Update, Nov. 15: The mystery spawned in night's drear domain has been solved. Once I unlinked the House I could modify the errant prim.

I then relinked the House in sements and took copies into inventory. Other prims that were linked still could be edited. I think, however, that this impish prim of the perverse will remain autonomous until the final tolling of the bells of doom.

Virtual Theorists' Project: Meet the Faculty & Students!

Location: Talking to Dr. Freud About my Klaus-Kinski Nightmares

If you do not follow the SLED list, you might have missed AJ Kelton's note of this talk / open house. I find the project to be one of the best examples of immersive education in Second Life and it's well worth your time, especially to chat with students who have worked with the build. I've posted before here about my tour of the project (my students in Fall 2008 and 9 also toured and reviewed it).

To quote AJ about the current event:

"Teaching Counseling Theories in Virtual Worlds - Student Perspectives"

Wednesday the 17th, 5:30-7pm eastern time (2:30-4pm SL Time)
SLURL: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Montclair%20State%20CEHSADP/77/198/23

Edina Renfro-Michel has been teaching counseling theories in virtual worlds for around two years, this event is an opportunity to showcase Edina’ students perspective and the work they have produced.

One of the key elements of Edina’s teaching is to facilitate the students building of environments in Second Life that contain and reflect various counseling theories and their originators. There are now 9 houses built by students, each dedicated to different theories including those of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Carl Rogers.

We will begin with an introduction to the students themselves for about 20 minutes and then use the remaining time to tour the work of the students.

Edina is utilizing a highly innovative learning environment to combine powerful audio and visual resources to help students learn, assimilate and demonstrate complex theoretical propositions.

This event is an opportunity to get to know the students experience of this learning environment.