3d Virtual Worlds: Gen X's Jetpack

Location: Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable

There's no handy generational label for those of us who, as kids, got a dose of 60s optimism that turned sour and dirty in the Malaise Era. We were, as tykes, promised vacations on the moon and jet packs. I'm still waiting, Dr. Von Braun. Then we found out the good doctor had built V2s with slave labor for Hitler's government.

I am proud to call myself a Gen Xer, though, technically, I should be a Boomer thanks to being the last-born of GI-era parents. Yet, if, like me, you came of age in the 70s, you really don't count as a Baby Boomer. After all, Boomers got the muscle cars, the good drugs, Woodstock, the free love. Gen X got the Ford Pinto, "Just Say No," disco, and HIV/AIDs. At least we had punk, grunge, and goth: the music of the disaffected.

As part of a generation that grew up hard and cynical, I worry when I hear clever members of my cohort wax poetic over the future of virtual worlds. We are, after all, their core audience: my Millennial students are too busy augmenting their real lives with constant contact via social networking to want to become a vampire lord, dragon, or Steampunk villain.

Now, a double-whammy.

First, There.com is closing its doors; with a PC-only client, it was no place I ever went, but it did meet some of the guidelines I have long felt essential for a virtual world's mass adoption. Users with modest Windows systems would use There, not only those of us with fast machines and connections. I do, however, agree with "Eddi Haskell" (that puckish wag) in the comments about this at New World Notes:

Without sex, high end content creation, or some other activity to do, virtual reality in its current manifestations is not going to hold on to large audiences for an extended period. I am actually beginning to think that Blue Mars might not make it now because of the lack of usage- no one seems to be there except bots. I put on money on Second Life for making it long term.

Second whammy, specific to faculty users: Sarah Robbins, aka Intellagirl Tully in SL, noted in our Roudtable on March 2 that she, like me, believes that VWs would never attract mainstream faculty. Her reasoning and mine differ. Sarah finds that "faculty fall into a certain type. we like to show off. You can not show off or impress with qualifications" in SL.

I agree that faculty love to show off. I'd fall back on my major claim that the lack of real-world incentives and rewards stymies faculty engagement in virtual worlds, as does the difficulty of SL's and OpenSim's client software. My thinking along these lines has recently been influenced by reading "Press Enter to 'Say': Using Second Life to Teach Critical Media Literacy," by Jennifer deWinter and Stephanie Vie. They note that unlike games, where play is goal-oriented, in virtual worlds:

Players must learn to adapt to their environment, co-exist with other players, and demonstrate mastery of the game controls and rules. Instead of presenting the user with a pre-defined set of activities, however, this virtual world allows users to define their own goals through open play.

Will "open play" be enough for mainstream users? Will the curve be too steep for mainstream faculty? I'd say "yes" and "yes," but some developments in computer graphics or client friendliness may prove me wrong. At least, with the recent changes to Heritage Key, I do see one virtual world developer understanding that goals and rewards motivate players.

For academic researchers, the future looks bright. We already have years of data to mine. Sarah noted that when she began her PhD thesis, there were only three peer-reviewed articles on virtual worlds. That has changed, and even though there is no There there today, we have many other worlds to research. I just hope that for those who really are attached to 3D immersive virtual worlds, the attachment does not blind to their niche appeal for the foreseeable future.

Soon I'll run the transcript of all of Sarah's meeting with our group.

I'm not Dr. Von Braun, thank God. So I won't promise my fellow Xers a virtual jet pack. That is Linden Lab's job.

Stonehenge! In Rezzable's Heritage Key

Location: Collecting Logs, 2400 B.C.

I'd promised Viv Trafalgar that I'd spend time at the Valley of the Kings, and I'd feature a discussion of the HUD for exploring that region. Then I saw the Stonehenge teleporter at Heritage Key's travel center and...well, time-travelers are not supposed to be a cautious lot.

The teleporter took me to Rezzable's version of Irwin Allen's Time Tunnel, a passage to several epochs of Stonehenge's history. Now I wish I could do this in real life:

"Walk straight ahead to the center circle and select a teleporter to be transported to the Stonehenge time period of your choice."

I have a fascination with Neolithic Britain, especially the stone circles, so I had to abandon my quest to explore the Valley of the Kings and meet some of Stonehenge's builders. I began at the earliest era for the site on Salisbury Plain, the prehistoric forest of the Neolithic era. I saw bots in the distance and left my friendly druid guide behind, when I heard this:

"It looks like we've run into some builders! Go and talk to them to find out how the stones were moved. Take some time to explore the ancient forest, too...Help the builder repair his wagon and follow the 'Flora and Fauna' path to win items for your quest."

Both Flora and Fauna impressed me greatly...BIG animals back then!

May I commit what historians call the "sin of presentism" to note how quickly prehistoric people destroyed the forests of ancient Britain? It seems that we moderns were not the only lunkheads...most of ancient Britain was thickly forested. No longer.

I ended up with a wearable falcon and a rather fanciful Druid's staff. I enjoyed helping the builder fix his roller for the Welsh Bluestones. I will use a similar technique, with logs, to move a 1000 pound truck box-body mounted on two I-beams at our family farm, though I'll have a John Deere backhoe and not oxen to help.

A serious footnote about how we learn from history: after reading Rodney Castleden's book about Stonehenge years ago, I moved a 10x5 foot garden shed on large PVC rollers. Call it my version of Redneck-Henge.

Already, Rezzable's Stonehenge build has incorporated the lessons of the Valley of the Kings, and it promises to equal in depth the redone VoK area or the promise of the Nile palace that Viv has mentioned to be under construction.


The build is worth walking for the lush forest prim-eval (sorry, I could not resist that) done with painstaking detail by Rezzable's team. I really felt in another time.

If only Iggyo Heritage could lose the duck walk. Animation override in the works, Rezzable?

Incidentally, how DID I get through a Stonehenge post without ONE Spinal Tap reference?

Go by the Web site from Rezzable and see if you are ready to stand among the stones. Then download the client software and go exploring!

Kunstlerism of the Week: Health Care Summit

Location: Clusterfuck Nation Blog

Vintage JHK, this...and sadly, dead-on right from the experience of several friends without health insurance. One, who suffered a heart attack, is being actively chased by bill collectors now, though he's unemployed.

We are left, finally, with a so-called health care system so cruel and unjust that the Devil himself in consultation with the most demonic lobbyists, and perhaps a little input from historical politicians such as Caligula, Ivan the Terrible, Heinrich Himmler, and Pol Pot could not construct a worse way of deploying the fruits of modern science.

My poor students, in their supposedly upwardly mobile world. I hope they never experience such things. Read the rest of "Winter Mind Games" here. Jim spares almost no one!

Jeff Young Meets the Educators: The Transcript

Location: Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable

Photo courtesy of Sheila Webber

I promised our participants that I'd not edit out anything said by them.

So here is the complete transcript (it ran 29 pages of single-spaced type in Word).

The event grew heated, and at least one participant had enough and simply left. We had, at one point, at least 82 participants at Montclair's amphitheater.

Young's telling remark to this reader: that he was inspired to return to SL to have a look after coming across a widely maligned (and frankly, uninformed) piece about SL in The Guardian.

I'm pleased to say that Mr. Young ran a much humbler, and more informed, post in the Chronicle after our meeting. He focused on what the new SL 2.0 viewer may mean for educators.