CNN Provides Heritage Key with Good Press

Location: CNN Web Site

I'm really pleased, after the lackluster article in The Chronicle, to see CNN cover, from a "noob perspective," the promises of virtual-world technology. You can see a nicely done video, aimed at the general viewer.

Funny how the announcer notes that Second Life is a "game" but implies Heritage Key is not. That's some of the best backhanded marketing I've seen. Administrators resisting the perceived sex and griefing of SL--a view The Chronicle piece encourages--might say "well, maybe there is a use for this technology on campus."

Soon I plan to look at more strong developments in Heritage Key's Valley of the Kings.

Jeff Young in the Lion's Den

Location: Virtual Worlds Roundtable

Photo by Sheila Webber

Mr. Young is a brave man. His recent story in The Chronicle of Higher Education caused such a ruckus among educators that we expected griefing when he appeared at our weekly event. I was on security with several others for meeting Moderator AJ Brooks.

The only grief was verbal, and it was hot and heavy. Primarily, educators objected to these aspects of Young's coverage:

• He did not have enough in-world experience to adequately cover Second Life and OpenSim worlds
• He failed to visit some of the richest educational content
• He wrote a piece that seemed slanted to editorializing about SL, rather than probing some of the strongest problems--and promises--for early adopters
• He over-emphasized sex and griefing, aspects of SL that have not posed large problems for most of the VWER members.

I've probably missed a few of Young's and our group's main points, but I will post a link in a future post here to the entire conversation. Readers take note that the flames are plentiful in our talk. Kudos to Mr. Young; he says he'll return to SL again to visit classes and attend an upcoming conference. I'm glad he will do so.

More on the Reaction Grid Visit

Location: Back in Second Life

But how often? The visit to Reaction Grid by the VWER group revealed many things about the world and the developers' plan for groups (from an unnamed "partner"), the number of prims available for those leasing a region (large), and other interesting details to be found in this full transcript.

Bad hair or not, Iggy Strangeland will keep looking around this new world.

Photo Credit: Thoth Janzen, posted by Olivia Hotshot

Kunstlerism of the Week: Doofus Smack Down

I bow before your snark, Mr. Kunstler. Virtual worlds never looked so good. I'm just going to stop calling these re-posts "Reality Checks" because that should be self-evident by now, even in the land of Doofus Americanus.

Read the rest at "Rehearsals for a Civil War":

The Tea Party appeals to the swelling numbers of the new former middle class angry at the sudden vanishing of their accustomed perqs and entitlements to a predictably comfortable suburban existence. They're mad at the government and hot for "liberty." But how do they propose to maintain the hyper-complexities of suburban life without taxes to pay for fixing the countless roads their lives depend on or to run the gold-plated central school districts that seem to exist solely to provide Friday night football? As for liberty, a handful of despotic corporations from McDonalds to WalMart have been granted the liberty to destroy the Tea-bagger's bodies and the economic fabric of their communities -- and they seem to want more of that kind of liberty, based on the recent decision of a "conservative" majority on the Supreme Court allowing corporations to buy elections. The Tea-baggers also apparently crave the liberty to push other people around, especially on questions of abortion and religion. That's an interesting kind of freedom.