9/11 Memory: When We Lost the Narrative

Long ago, a world ago really, I and an employee of Reynolds Aluminum refurbished old computers, mostly pre-iMac Apple product, and gave them to teachers, under-resourced schools, churches, other nonprofits, and individual families. What a perfect morning that Friday of 9/11 promised; the summer heat was gone, the sky a sublime French Blue. I was nearing Virginia Commonwealth University, driving to pick up a system with good performance, when I heard that an airliner struck the World Trade Center. It was deemed an awful accident.

My contact was weeping when she opened her apartment door. I said I could come later, figuring that some personal crisis had made her hysterical. She blurted out something about a second plane, and I knew the awful truth. We loaded the computer, and I arrived at work in time to watch both towers fall. I'd heard on NPR the developing story of the Pentagon attack and an airliner crashing in Pennsylvania. 

The world had gone sideways in 30 minutes. It never got back on track, as far as I am concerned. Briefly I was proud of how our nation came together to destroy the Taliban, who hosted the terrorists. Briefly I hoped that unity might last. Briefly I thought we might return to the narrative of consensus and compromise that I recall as marking my mid-1960s childhood.

In 2001 I was teaching first-year writing, and class met that day. One student's father was home sick; his business partner and all their employees died in one of the Towers. The man was wracked by grief and the belief that he might have saved lives had he been present. In another campus building, the bodyguards of Prince Sultan's son (one of his 32 children) rushed him off campus. He'd been a freshman for a couple of weeks. On September 12, I heard from a Kuwaiti that the Prince's plane was the only civilian airliner to fly, heading back to Saudi Arabia. While NBC news reported on some suspicious activities of another Saudi Prince who left the country that day, presumably on the same aircraft, the Richmond connection seems to have vanished from the Web. 

For a few hopeful years that followed, I taught some Afghan women who had come to the US for an education. I hoped we might rebuild that nation and keep our promises to its people. We had the world on our side for a short while. Needless to say, when the US shifted its attention to Iraq, my students' fates were sealed. They could never return home. I've lost touch with them, but I hope they got their families out.

For that reason and many more, I've never forgiven the Bush Administration for their ill-planned war in Iraq, all based upon the lies of Dick Cheney and others who wrongly connected Hussein's government to Al Qaeda. Yet the neocon right was not the only set of fools in a burning house. On 9/11, I upbraided a fellow UR employee who said, angrily, that I was "jumping to conclusions" when I said Al Qaeda had staged the attacks and we'd soon be at war in Afghanistan. His ignorance of geopolitics that I'd studied for more than a decade enraged me. In the late 80s I first read of Osama bin Laden and his apocalyptic dreams of a Caliphate. That era's Left and Right ignored this reality.

In the heat of the moment, just after the second tower fell, I told my co-worker, more or less, that he was a naive, unread fool. In 2003, I told a right-winger on campus the same about his beliefs that we'd just "clean out" the Middle East.

Yet there I was on 9/11, a Leftist giving one of my own hell. But the Left, so focused on identity politics and denouncing the United States instead of engaging in Realpolitik, lost its way. This wandering from old-school Democratic ideals helped alienate working-class voters who put a would-be tyrant into power in 2016 and 2024.

In retrospect, my moment of tongue-lashing a young liberal and all that followed changed us, including peace marches, wrapping oneself in the flag, abuse of prisoners of war, secret courts, TSA screening, and the chest-thumping patriotism by affluent families who would never let a child serve in the military. Consider the thousands of moments like those of my student who turned on the war after a best friend died in Iraq; before that, she was a naive supporter of all we did.

Such events hardened us and set us on the path to the disaster off Iran's shores now, led (if that is the word for from-the-gut decisions) by a President who makes George W. Bush look temperate, wise, and peace-loving. I'm pleased that Saddam Hussein met his fate, but that's about all that pleases me about the debacle of 2003. I suspect the current war will not have such moments of closure.

It all comes rushing back to me 25 years later. Maybe the course we took began with the contested 2000 election, but we are now living in a damaged nation, perhaps one in a steep decline. I don't know that we'll bounce back soon, as we did after Vietnam and Watergate, or even the 2008 Great Recession.

That said, our recoveries from those shocks may have included acts of willful forgetting. I'd like to forget the global events since 2001, though my personal life has been good. I'd like to return to that clear cool morning when I set out to get a computer to help a family connect to the still-novel Internet. I'd love to hear that an airliner had just missed the towers because of a navigation error. I'd like to have ended my morning right there.

Our new feeds today are full of existential dread about AI, climate change, fools who deny climate change, and a rotten President's foolish actions. Maybe we should instead reflect on how we got to this impasse and lost an earlier narrative of getting along, mostly? What sorts of short-term thinking and other priorities kept us from fixing the damage done after 9/11? 

 

A Conversation By Economists About AI

I had the pleasure of attending a "Sharp Viewpoints" event on my old employer's campus, where Dr. Kevin Hallock, university President, hosted two economists with expertise in AI, UVA's Anton Korinek and MIT's David Autor.  The subject, AI and The Future of Work, should concern us all.

I hope not to misrepresent what I heard, but all three experts on stage consider it inevitable that AI will continue to advance rapidly and that it will disrupt careers in fields such as Finance, Computer Science, and Accounting. These have been popular majors for my former students. The scope of the disruption and what happens to wages, as AI takes on more white-collar tasks, remain to be seen. Korinek cited a ninefold increase in the capacity of AI systems annually, from a 2.5x increase in efficiency times a 4x increase in capabilities. 

Korinek warned the audience that we have a small window of time to prepare for resultant changes without chaos in the economy, though Autor felt that if we were to see a gradual loss of a profession, which he called "generational," our economic health could be sustained. He did warn that nothing on the scope of 10% of jobs lost annually could be tolerated without an upheaval. 

Both speakers likened gradual change to, say, automating trucking. The industry would slowly shed human drivers over time, because prior investment in vehicles and warehouses can't be profitably junked overnight. As older drivers retire, however, gradually fewer young people would enter the field and robots would take on the work of moving cargo on the highways. 

As for me? Whoever or whatever does the driving, I still prefer trains for 90% of the hauling, with a truck doing the final leg of the journey. 

The mood was cautiously optimistic, but I'm no optimist. My dad loved being a long-haul trucker. He was not as happy when he ran a wholesale produce company, though that enabled him to put away some money for when he retired. He preferred "the Road" to the security of a desk, and he passed that love of highway travel on to me.  Driving have him a purpose. Yet dad, in retirement, did not begin to write poetry, learn Greek, or play golf. He watched TV and was bored while living on his social security and investment income.

Something the speakers did not address to my satisfaction: if we do have a future without nearly as many jobs for humans, what do many people without side interests or hobbies or talents do with their time? I'm not a good model: I've stayed more busy than ever since leaving full-time employment.

I ask my question, a Humanist's response, assuming that some sort of basic universal income would arise; Author prefers not a monthly dole but a universal basic investment fund for every citizen, beginning at birth. 

Without it, I suspect we'd have some sort of Butlerian Jihad of the mass unemployed, to smash the data centers, and frankly, I'd support smashing them if the alternative meant vast numbers of destitute folks existing alongside a tiny elite empowered by AI. Our speakers did note how this sort of future could emerge, endangering democracy. I'd argue it already is emerging under the broligarchs of Silicon Valley and our current Administration.

Yet with income for all in a jobs-free future, we might have a lot of folks on a dole, not hiking or painting but watching TV and not contributing to our civilization. In my darkest hours, I also think we already have that, without a dole in the US. 

It's better to have a purpose. I didn't hear much discussion of "what does it mean to be a human?" in last night's one-hour chat. Of course, that sort of discussion has been going on among philosophers for millennia, even before Socrates began to question people at Athens' Agora. 

Both Korinek and Autor did fear a rise in inequality, as wages might fall while AI-copiloted productivity rises. That said, everyone agreed that we will have new jobs emerge, some of them related perhaps to newly found leisure time. Autor reminded us that 100 years ago, 38% of Americans worked in agriculture. Today under 2% do. But a person in 1926 also could not image the types of careers many of us now have. Nor did they have our concept of leisure time. A video-game developer's career would have been as alien as a Man from Mars.

Fair point, but when (according to them, not if) AI and humanoid robots replace most human labor, including game design, what will most of us do to find a purpose?

What will colleges do? Korineck, bless him, as well as Hallock, upheld the value of the Liberal Arts for coming to grips with essential and enduring questions. Autor, while nodding to the value of liberal education, said he'd be more "crass" to note that a college degree also means more income and professional training. I don't disagree with him, yet marrying some careerist coursework to a passion for something seems wiser than choosing a "safe" major in a field that bores you.

The even left me unsettled. If the future they predict comes, I'd begin by having students read Plato's Republic and The Federalist Papers with me, for two explanations of what a society can do to organize itself against chaos.

If you want to see a video of the talk, UR recorded it. Thanks to Fred Hagemeister at Richmond for sharing the link.

Ohio State Takes the AI Plunge

A colleague in senior administration at OSU sent me a notice about their new AI initiative.

It's so at odds, in a healthy manner, with the "just say no, hard no" of the CCCC Chair's April keynote on AI. While I'm encouraged about a new CCCC working group formed on AI, as with so many things run by faculty, it's going to take time to spin up, while administration and industry race (perhaps unwisely) into adopting this technology. I'm going to chuckle at the negative stories such as one from The Columbus Dispatch, picked up by MSN, calling it a "betrayal" and claiming that AI is being "rammed down students' throats." 

Have these reporters even looked closely at student use?

Let's just assume it's nearly 100%. My 3rd annual student survey says as much. We need to address that reality and do so ethically and in a pedagogically sound manner. Maybe that's where we can critique this or similar initiatives. I remain the wary adopter, not an enthusiast.

So what are the broad outlines of the OSU plan, to be unfolded this Fall?

• Units on AI fluency in a seminar taken by all students.
• Support for faculty to incorporate Generative AI into classes. I do not see a mandate for all faculty.
• Building upon an “Embedded Literacy" in all majors. Read more about them here. This will likely be strengthened to include appropriate and ethical use of AI in the discipline of the major.
• Partnership with industry.

So why the pushback? 

Perhaps the details are too vague, the timing too sudden and rolled out over the summer when many faculty and students are away.

Yet this development has deep roots; OSU is a Big 10 and a land-grant; they have long partnered with companies to help their students develop skills needed in the workplaces of their era. Though I taught for nearly all my career at a liberal-arts university, I hear already from adult learners that in their jobs, AI fluency no longer remains an option. New hires are expected to have some fluency or go elsewhere for a first job.

Are we caving to corporations? Only if we let them set the terms of engagement. We have adopted new technologies before our way, by providing open-access Internet resources, releasing materials into the Creative Commons, and pursuing innovations with mobile computing. I still live by those rules, never putting a syllabus into BlackBoard's gated community. My content is on the open Web for all to use. That was the promise of the early Internet. I hope we can do something similar with AI.

I just finished a course that focused on deep-reading techniques for literature. We used AI for two assignments, but the reading journal, done as a Google Doc and commented upon by peers, proved hard for AI to assist. One student leaned too heavily on AI on a final set of journal entries, and it hallucinated quotations that do not exist in the texts the student then analyzed: an F on that assessment proved penalty enough. I reminded the student, in essence, "on the job, you'd have been fired. Here it just reduced the final grade."

The students had to employ critical-thinking skills beyond summary and analysis to find "need to know" questions to bring to class discussion, where 50% of their grades came in the form of participation.

AI cannot do that. But without learning to use AI ethically and effectively, my students won't land jobs in a few years. So there's my pushback: no matter the basis for objecting to AI, college involves helping students start careers. It does so much else, too, but without employed alumni, the entire enterprise of higher ed would fold. 

Let's see where OSU goes with this venture. 

Image: OSU Seal via Wikipedia 

 

What is The Flood? Will It Hit a Floodwall?

Put On Your Waders

As part of teaching Ethan Mollick's book Co-Intelligence, I subscribed to his substack "One Useful Thing." I react here to the post, "Prophecies of the flood." The piece covers prognostications by those in industry that we will see see a flood of superintelligence from machines that reason and learn like us, or Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

While still viewing Mollick as too enthusiastic about adopting AI broadly, I also see nuances in his thinking, both online and in the book.

Let's begin wading into the flood with one of his four rules for AI, the most powerful one to me, "Assume this is the worst AI you will ever use."

Yes. Mollick's video about his prompt "Otter on an airplane, using WiFi" reveals how much premium AI has changed in two years. It stunned me.

I've also seen in the same period how rapidly large language models have progressed, mostly for replying to good prompts and for giving feedback. When I revived this blog, I noted my skepticism that AI would even follow the Gartner Hype Cycle. 

Now we have a half-trillion-dollar promise announcement from The White House to fund the next generation of machines. It's nearly twice what the nation spent on Project Apollo's lunar-landing program. Thank you, Google Gemini AI for adjusting costs for inflation. Practicing what I preach to students, I checked the AI's numbers; Gemini seems to have gotten them from The Planetary Society. Good enough for me.

Update: I'm relieved that private industry foots the bill, as a story from Reuters notes. AI makers would put up the first 100 billion, with the rest coming from investors, not taxpayers.

So would that much cash open the gates to a flood of superintelligence? Would we even be ready?

I applaud Mollick for noting that "we're not adequately preparing for what even current levels of AI can do, let alone the chance that [those in industry] might be correct." My students worry about not having jobs, when they face an uneven policy landscape in classes. One faculty member may never mention AI or forbid it outright; another might embrace it, a third encourage it for certain narrow uses. I don't oppose that sort of freedom, but we have not defined a set of competencies for students to master before they get a degree.

Even were those to emerge, however, wouldn't they change rapidly as the technology advances?

Here's where I wonder what may be the technological hurdles AI itself faces on its way to becoming AGI.

Frontier, Fortress, Flood Walls

Mollick refers to the outer edges of AI progress as a "jagged frontier," a useful metaphor for places where we have not fully developed methods for working with the technology. I like the metaphor a great deal, but in my own writing I returned to the more cumbersome "reverse salient" from historian of technology Thomas Parke Hughes. 

 Professor Hughes wrote two books that greatly influenced my thinking three decades ago, notably his magisterial history of electrification, Networks of Power and his study of technological enthusiasm from roughly the end of the Civil War to World War II, American Genesis.

First, we may need to consider Hughes' theory of “reverse salients.” He noted that every major technology hit technical or social obstacles, like an advancing army that encounters a strongpoint that bends lines of battle around it until overcome. For cars to supplant railways, we needed good roads. For EVs, at least until Tesla, the reverse salient involved range. Today in the US, it's the availability of charging stations and the politicization of EVs (one of the most stupid things to make political in a stupid time). For rocketry, the largest reverse salient has involved the cost to get a payload to orbit. For something as simple as a small flashlight, the salient meant brightness and battery life, now solved by LEDs for the most part. My mighty penlight, using a single rechargeable battery, now shines over 100 feet. My clublike 1990s Maglite, with 4 disposable D-Cells, was about as bright but 10 times heftier.

From Hughes' article at National Academies Press, I found this image of a reverse salient for ocean-going ships. For a long time, until Sperry developed a gyrocompass that would be "unaffected by the irregularities of magnetic fields," the older magnetic compass proved a hindrance for advancing ship technologies more broadly.

 

Reverse salients, like a fortress under siege, fall in time. Some tech like nuclear fusion takes longer to become practical. I've written here before about why, in my opinion, virtual worlds did not catch on for educators. Apologies to fans of Microsoft: my rage against the company was at its peak then. I've softened a bit though remain a Mac-OS zealot.

So for AGI? I'd estimate a few flood-walls remain. I speculate:

• The inability of our power grid to scale up to meet soaring energy usage for the hundreds of data-centers AGI would need
• The inability of AI code to reason in the ways promised by CEOs and enthusiasts
  
• A break-down in Moore's Law for semiconductors, as current silicon chips cannot meet the needs of AGI. New materials may conquer that salient
• Social upheaval from those who lose their jobs to AI and turn on firms that support AI development. Why? A new digital divide between workaday AI and elite AI that feeds public anger, legislation under a less libertarian future government, resistance from those who find superintelligence an existential threat to humanity out of religious or political beliefs
  
• Economic troubles as AI makers blow though venture capital and need government support (but keep in mind that Amazon once lost money too)
• Black-swan events such as global or domestic conflict (sadly, not far-fetched a week into the new Presidency).
  

I suspect that unless one or more of these reverse salients will emerge in a few years, if they are going to emerge at all. Most likely? There, I'm as much in the dark as you on this jagged frontier. 

Have a look at Mollick's work for more ideas and inspirations, even if you do not share his embrace of this technology.

Image Source: Richmond Flood Wall, Richmond Free Press

A False Filter in the Drake Equation: LLMs

I read a piece today at Space.com, about a fierce solar storm that hit our planet some 2687 years ago. Another such Miyake event today would likely spell the beginning of a new dark age (looks at wood stove. Better get busy splitting and learn to cut logs without my chainsaw).

The author, Daisy Dobrijevic, goes on, at some length for what I often find a casual venue, to discuss why the stability of our home star matters to our survival as a technological civilization. For once, the comments in these pieces prove as interesting as the source. Those leaving remarks compare Sol to others we observe, noting that our star's orderly behavior could mean that we are a solitary civilization in our galactic neighborhood. These respondents go on to discuss other "filters" to the famous Drake Equation. 

I stupidly had assumed that all stars like our own prove relatively stable. If not, the number of possible civilizations out there could plummet. 

Being alone proves bracing and  calming to me, personally. Yet there exists a difference between solitude and loneliness. If we are the only civilization in our part of the galaxy that seems less about solitude, a healthy thing for many humans, and more about isolation, a terrifying prospect to me.

Read both article and comments, including speculations as to the number of civilizations likely in our own galaxy. Let's forget, save as an intellectual exercise, those in galaxies beyond. The Deep Dark of millions of light years means that if they exist or once existed, we'll likely never encounter them, barring some difficult-to-imagine technology such as wormholes or other exotica far beyond our race, which cannot yet harness nuclear fusion.

I liked the piece by Dobrijevic and commentary a great deal, but in the comments I found one regret, that "Unregulated-LLM insanity" could spell the end of our species. That sort of claim needs challenging, though I'm not eager to start a flame war with a bunch of anonymous posters. Generally, the terms LLM (and AI) have been bandied about too casually.

When Doomscrollers, Doomers, and Millennial Cultists talk of an AI Apocalypse, they envision the sort of Hollywood fantasy of the Terminator or Matrix franchises. My brain goes right to to origin of these fantasies, Harlan Ellison's poignant and horrifying "I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream." The story does get a visual homage in the first Matrix film. I don't worry about such horrors getting real.

Frankly, current large language models cannot even ask good critical questions as writing coaches. Thus I find it improbable to imagine ChatGPT or Anthropic Claude as planetary overlords, like the nightmarish AM in Ellison's story.

Were General AI to emerge, we might have the sort of "filter" mentioned by the commenters. Some AI companies have that sort of software in mind: a network with superhuman intelligence, able to reason and grow by itself, much as a human does. It could change its "training data," much as we do when we decide on our own to study something new. Like us, it would then we self-aware and have agency beyond answering questions. It could make decisions on its own, contacting us, for instance, with questions of its own. I consider that a new form of life.

Until then, we merely have energy-hungry LLMs in data centers, parsing our words and predicting the next one to appear in a sequence. I'm no neuroscientist, but that's not how a human mind works.

While I'd be a fool to say we have nothing to fear from AI, my concerns are more earthly: unemployment, lack of income, not to mention worries about climate change, nuclear proliferation, erosion of rule of law, regional or global war, civil strife. So I'd tell our forum pundits opining about AI threats this: we have filters aplenty closer to home than some super-intelligence.

Be mindful, then, of the terms used in discussions about AI. We who work with this technology do not want to propagate careless thinking about a very important, and still evolving, innovation. If you are still wishing to learn more about The Drake Equation, have a look at the NASA site where I got the post's lead image.

How Embrace Second Life's Inner Niche? Ask the Crawl-Space Dude

Location: Study-Break From Grading Finals, Butt in Chair

The numbers are trending back down for the number of private regions in Second Life. I cannot speculate about the temporary rebound we were seeing for a few weeks, but soon SL's region count will be lower than its ebb in February 2014.

Let's assume, for a moment, that the venture with OnLive's SL Go client, the coming of the Savior called Occulus Rift (praised be His Holy Name), other improvements by Linden Lab, and other efforts by the newly hired CEO do not stem the ebbing tide.  What then?

I agree with a remark made at New World Notes by CronoCloud Creeggan:

Nothing wrong with being a niche. We live in a finite world, the myth that growth is infinite and can continue forever and that triple digit yearly growth is required for 'success' has got to go. There's nothing wrong with finding a niche market and making steady money off of it, year in and out.

Other than the limited-population OpenSim Grids or walled gardens like InWorldz and Avination, who DOES what Second Life does? Activeworlds? PC Only. IMVU? Just a chat room with avatars. Cloud Party? Gone. High Fidelity? Still mostly a gleam in Philip Rosedale's eye. Unity 3D? Beyond the scope of most faculty and hobbyist developers.

Garry's Mod? Exactly how much technical knowledge does one need to run that thing?

Let me know what else does what SL does: a sandbox for user-generated content that purports to be a metaverse. I'm waiting.

That's the brilliance of finding a niche. If only Linden Lab would exploit that. Others do.

In renovating a house currently, I found myself completely unwilling to undertake needed work in the crawl space. I have done such work before personally, raking out ruts, putting in a vapor barrier, sealing around wires and pipes, installing subfloor insulation. Most HVAC and plumbing companies--mainstream all--would not touch my latest crawl space for a price I can afford.

Enter a local firm called CrawlSpace Ace, whose owner told me that they found a profitable niche, dirty work to be sure, and cornered the market. They do not want for business. Read this thread for contractors to see why, but read it during the daylight hours. You won't sleep well otherwise.

So what would Linden Lab have to do to think like a crawl-space contractor? The improvements  listed early in this post would help. Then they must retain the loyalists. Eventually, they have to lower tier. 

All that has been said. Yet if a crawl-space contractor can make a go of it, an IT firm in The Bay Area certainly can. We are still waiting.

Private Estates Climb in Second Life

Location: Thinking about a new SL Road Trip

I admit that I have had a morbid interest in watching the slow decline in the number of private estates in Second Life, using Grid Survey as my point of reference.

For the first time in a LONG time, the number of private estates has risen.  One week does not a trend make, but a net gain of 16 regions sticks right out.

Have a few folks who hold land in the virtual world, sensing a new direction by Linden Lab's newly annointed CEO, decided to expand their considerable investment? Or is this mere chance?

If we do see an upward trend in region numbers, then many prognosticators, myself included will have to revise a few ideas.

Cloud Party, We Barely Knew You

Location: Prognosticator's Chair

I never spent much time in Cloud Party, though Cyn Skyberg did reach out for a phone interview about the potential of the virtual world for education.

I was my usual glum self about the future of user-generated virtual worlds: I told Cyn that if CP didn't run on mobile devices well, my students would roll their eyes and say "oh please. More busy work." If they could, however, explore the richness of a virtual world between texts and status updates (he says with a smirk) they might not savage me in class evaluations.

Despite my glumness, I still think the technology has a future, and Cloud Party impressed me. Now Yahoo has bought the company and will shut it down.

My glumness about virtual worlds also has a note of regret: I liked Cloud Party's browser-based world and freedom, as in Second Life, for normal humans without skills with Maya or Blender to make content.

What Yahoo does with the Cloud Party team remains to be seen. Yahoo is trying to survive in a hostile environment dominated by Facebook, Google, and Twitter as places where users spend lots of time finding or sharing content.  Perhaps Yahoo will launch games through its portal as Facebook has done well (including Cloud Party).

What an interesting week in the otherwise moribund world of user-generated virtual worlds. With Rod Humble leaving Linden Lab as CEO and Cloud Party running down the curtain, we'll see what comes next. Philip Rosedale has not, apparently, given up on the technology. His High Fidelity project looks like a reboot of SL's utopian promise.

So accuse me of wanting to believe. I don't need virtual worlds to socialize, but they rock for building simulations and DIY roleplaying. Here's to someone getting it right and making it a popular way to spend time!

Commencement 2013: The Avatars Walk!

Location: Robins Center, University of Richmond

image credit: Boston Public Library at Flickr


I have reflected here before on the temporary and invented community that a college campus provides.

Today, my last group to use Second Life for an entire semester graduated. As a commencement marshal, I got to be up near the stage to help seat, direct, and congratulate our newest alumni. It's bittersweet to see them leave, as they were curious and interested students.

When I took my favorite walk of the year, from the ceremony back to my office to hang up my cap and gown, I thought about how time passes.  Today was wistful and perfect day, with light cloud, cool breezes, but warm-enough sun to remind us it is Spring in Virginia, the best time of all here. One colleague nearing retirement said to me "the years pass at first like telephone poles from a car window, then the pickets of a fence, then railroad ties."

As is always the case, the campus is boisterous near the basketball gym where the thousands of parents, staff, and students gather after the last diploma has been conferred. My walk in my academic robes takes me, in stages, further and further from those happy sounds and into the clear light of a quiet May afternoon. Soon the brick buildings--our campus looks like Hogwarts--loom in the clear daylight as if they'd been there for centuries.  Eventually all sounds, save those of Nature, are muted.

It's a ritual I never miss each year.

Next month, I'm going to return to my own alma mater's 30th reunion, partly because of the mark the education there left on me.

Thirty years!

Yes, in time in all becomes a blur. I suspect we'll all look back on the early days of virtual worlds that way, too, and say "that only seems like yesterday!" Moreover, I hope my students recall the strange experience of exploring SL as a possible future for communications, as they struggled to master the art of writing in academic settings.

The Iraqi Game of Risk, 10 Years On

Location: Salad Bar, 10 Years On

I will never forget the argument beside the salad bar.

A conservative co-worker in our Physical Plant on campus knew I opposed Bush's war of choice, and he confronted me as I got my lettuce. Students, largely disengaged then as now from geopolitics, looked on at the two old people fighting in public.

"It's going to happen! We clean out the nest!" He said, emphatically.

"Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan, not Iraq, and that brute Saddam did not attack us on 9/11." I try to reason.

"You don't get it! This will be easy! We will turn the tanks right when we are done, and get Iran fixed too." He was gloating, and the students, the age of those who'd be dying in Bush's Middle Eastern game of Risk, were rolling their eyes.

"It won't be so easy; Iraq is a modern invention, a bunch of ethnic groups crammed together by the old Colonial powers. They'll turn on each other as soon as the brute at the top gets two in the hat."

"You are just spouting the typical liberal line." He was done. So was I. I reached for the dressing.

Ten  years ago, it was still the Freedom-Fries Era, of  salad-bar "Old Europe" vs. red-meat "Real Americans."

I was getting a salad, then wrote letters and op-ed columns. He got a burger and put a flag decal on his huge pickup truck.

What does it matter that I was right in the end? It was not a Risk game, and 4,500 dead Americans and God knows how many dead Iraqis later, that nation is a powder-keg. If it does not explode again, it will be the will of the Iraqi people and the resilience of their democracy, purchased with so much blood, that see it through.

Bush went back to his ranch and oblivion. We have that consolation at least about a man who set America firmly on a long-term decline with two wars paid for on debt, tax-cuts in the midst of those expensive conflicts, and exhortations not to sacrifice but to go shopping in defense of what he called a "sacred lifestyle."

Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their minions who massaged lies into a war did not see prison.

Afghanistan remains a missed opportunity, after an ADHD President and his war-criminal Svengali of a Vice President decided a bigger opportunity loomed. Then a clownish and finally, small man put on his flight suit to declare not just "mission accomplished" but, essentially, "game over, baby."

Except that it's not, and our tanks have come home. Yet the game goes on. Memories of tortured prisoners, religious civil war, and dead civilians will linger in Iraq.

My adversary over the celery stalks just says hello now. That was my last conversation with him and I don't need to rub my correct assessment in.

How's that for some shock and awe?

Sherry Turkle and Virtual Worlds

Location: Prognosticator's Chair

My students are in the midst of Alone Together, Sherry Turkle's jeremiad about the dangers of technology that throughout her book she calls "always on" and "always on you."

Though few Second Life or World of Warcraft users carry these imagined worlds around in their palm, given the beefy nature of the client software, many do spend lots of time in-world. Turkle's subjects mostly find escape there, and she freely admits that one can use these imagined spaces for "embarking on a potentially 'therapeutic' exercise" (212).  Mostly, however, she focuses on gamers like Adam, on the verge of losing his job, or Pete, who cheats on his wife with in SL, having a relationship with an avatar named Jade.  My students had their worst stereotypes of these immersive environments supported by Turkle's book, which otherwise does such a fine job of critiquing the other from of addiction to online activities, the augmented self of texts, apps, and phones glued to the users' palms.

It would be been interesting to see what she'd make of Fran, the 85-year-old Parkinson's patient, who with her daughter created SL avatars. As Wagner James Au reports, Fran was able to visualize herself standing again unaided, while watching her avatar Fran Seranade do Tai Chi or dance. Soon enough, Fran recovered some mobility.

Tom Boellstorff, author of Growing Up in Second Life, has met Fran and her daughter. He and other researchers are studying what has occurred. It's a heart-warming story of the sort rare in Turkle's book.

I will speculate a bit here, something I warn my students against since for them, the art of extrapolation from solid data may be safer for their grades.  I'll let you readers grade me.

Alone Together began as Turkle's "letter" to her daughter Rebecca. In Paris, Rebecca had spent her time texting and on Facebook, instead of taking in the city's many delights. Turkle was disappointed and has crafted one of the best critiques I've encountered of our relationship with our machines and the loss of such things as "the rewards of solitude" (3).

I hope that my class will remember Joel, Turkle's research subject who is an SL builder, both of content and community. Yet I fear Pete or Adam will stay in their minds instead. I do not possess the professional expertise to question how Turkle's bias might have influenced her writing about virtual worlds, but as a reader, I would have liked more Joels, and maybe a Fran, to balance the negative and all-too-common stereotypes of gamers as addicted, soon-to-be-unemployed, social castoffs.

In fact, I'd go so far, an an educator who has used Second Life and OpenSim grids and SimCity 2000 in class settings, to make another claim. Whatever the validity of Turkle's data, her method of presentation about gamers weakens for this reader her critique of social media, texting, and other potentially addictive behaviors.

That may be my bias, given the ease with which users of those apps can get a regular fix.

Work Cited:

Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other. New York, Basic: 2011.

2013 Prediction: Sticking Around

 
Location: VWER meeting

Photo credit: Wrenaria

Today, the VWER meets to discuss its future under our new leader, SL's Kali Pizzaro. I hope that the group branches out to discuss more than virtual worlds, since there is a lot of action in education regarding technologies, both established and emerging. There is also a lot of progress to be made because many faculty are still struggling with technologies that seem second nature to me, such as Google Drive and similar cloud-based applications.

I hope to make a plea for appropriate technology. Too much of the educational community is still driven first by technology. No where was this more apparent to me than in educators trying to bolt educational uses onto World of Warcraft and Second Life, instead of starting with pedagogy. On campus, with more traditional technologies, I am seeing that healthy change.

And as for this blog, despite Tenchi's wise advice on focus, I will broaden "In a Strange Land" to talk more about other aspects of educational technology. I think readers will find less about the social and economic aspects of virtual worlds here, though coverage of the technology will continue as events merit it. I doubt this will become a prognostication-free zone.

So before I stop, here are some 2013 predictions about virtual worlds:

• Continued evolution, albeit slow evolution, of non-SL alternatives. Focus will be on Unity 3D and Cloud Party. Most of the growth will be non-educational.
• Continued slide, perhaps plateau, for Second Life's loss of private regions.
• More attention to violence in gaming and, perhaps, SL. The latter will be held up in the US Congress for a place where immorality, even sexual slavery, is present. A right-wing ignoramus will wave around a battered copy of Slave Girl of Gor and show a Powerpoint with slides from SL in 2008 to make his belabored point.

So see you all around in this space, once in a while. My new blog Tractorpunk, on rural life and sustainability, with my usual punkish edge, will launch soon. That and my forthcoming anthology about online communities will keep me more than busy in 2013.

Patterns and Creatorverse: Speculations

Location: Linden Lab Web Site and New World Notes

At New World Notes, I have been eagerly watching, and contributing to, both the discussion about Patterns and the one about Creatorverse.

Now VWER will ponder what these mean for educators. Watch the videos first for Creatorverse, and then Patterns:

A few stabs at what all this may mean:

• I am fond of the term "shared creative spaces" that CEO Rod Humble employs. But creative for whom? Shared by whom?
• Creatorverse, as an iOS app, will give K-5 teachers (in particular) new tools for sharing content. My wife really likes what she sees there. Linden's signature product, Second Life, cannot be used in K-5 and even an "over the shoulder" use means getting the application approved by the censors and finding a rig hefty enough to run it well.
• Creatorverse looks drop-dead easy. Ease will mean adoption, since both SL and OpenSim clients are too complex for my wife's  setting. Teachers don't have time.
• Patterns may be easy, but it needs hardware similar to Second Life to run. My own MacBook Pro does not meet the specs. Not good.
• Patterns also looks a lot like Minecraft. What will distinguish it and lead those in Minecraft to switch? Those  not using it to choose Patterns first?

More on what educators have to say, in light of the VWER discussion, soon.

“Possible, Probable, and Preferable Future of Education in Virtual Worlds”

 
Location: VWER Meeting

Every year, I look forward to this event. In 2009, it is where I first met AJ Kelton and many of the folks to whom I later became close colleagues. The full transcript of the meeting can be found here. It's full of good advice and links for educators.

Now that Iggy, my avatar, has turned five years old (500 years in SL time) it's informative for me to compare the notes by our panel of experts who met on January 5 with my own youthful enthusiasm from 2007.  This year our panelists were not grim, but they advised diversity and moving past a focus solely upon Second Life. Sarah Smith-Robbins, who could not attend our meeting but has been a regular in years past, has a worthwhile and detailed assessment of the situation, "Are Virtual Worlds (Still) Relevant in Education?"

Our answers will differ. For me, "yes, when I again teach a course using 3D simulations, probably in two years."

As readers ponder their own uses of the technology, consider these predictions and observations:

• All of the panelists felt it had been a hard year for educators in Second Life, and that the sector has diminished as faculty look to alternatives that are cheaper and more autonomous of one company's control. 
• Interest in other virtual worlds has not necessarily spiked at the universities represented by the panelists; budgetary issues and the rise of mobile technology have worked against the expansion of faculty and student use of virtual worlds.
• Jokay Wollongong noted that more of her attention has gone to Minecraft, and that the SL presence for Jokaydia has diminished. In particular, the interaction of parents and their children in Minecraft has been transformative for her work in education
• Ken Hubble, of the Canadian Border Crossing Project, will move his work from Second Life to Unity 3D. He prefers the interface and learning curve for Unity 3D, when designing simulations.
• Anthony Fontana was more upbeat about technology, giving us three words: “gamification, mobile, and Web”
• Wainbrave Bernal (Jonathon Richter) notes "I am seeing more researching into practice – applied research. . . . check out the ARVEL wiki for growing body of research in virtual worlds, augmented reality, and games – as well as emerging technology."

Despite a rough year behind us, none of the VWER guests were pessimistic. As Fleep Tuque (Chris Collins) notes about the year to come, "the focus will be less on a specific platform than on how we can bring together various technologies. My focus more on helping faculty and students learn."

And that sounds right to this blogger and educator.

A Political Post

Location: Waiting for a Vote

This began as a reply at Tateru Nino's blog. I'll share my thoughts again on this debt debacle.

The USA is a plutocracy with its paid politicos in both parties; the GOP is merely more naked about its ambitions. Many Democrats kowtow to old Counterculture ideas, but that part of our culture never had a unified agenda beyond ending the war in Vietnam, whatever the right claims about Socialism etc.: the US Counterculture was a coalition of utopian dreams (many of which I cherish, foolishly perhaps).

Our plutocracy was only under serious threat in the years between Teddy Roosevelt's Progressive movement and the end of the Vietnam War.  Then, starting with Eastwood's and Bronson's pop-culture vigilantes acting out against coddled criminals, the pendulum began to swing back to the right.

Finally, Ronald Reagan set us back on track to let the plutocrats rule again from behind the scenes. Now the rich rule more openly. Corporations are people by Supreme Court fiat and can make unlimited donations in complete anonymity.

Given this brutal set of truths, it's best to stay quiet and live a productive life, then retire.

Marcus Aurelius was correct: "What is even eternal fame? A mere nothing. What then is there for which we ought to take serious pains? Only this: to have thoughts just, acts social, words which never lie, and a disposition which gladly accepts whatever happens, as necessary, as usual, as flowing from a principle and source of a familiar kind."

Few men other than Aurelius, in his era, knew something was deeply wrong with the Empire. Just as then, history will remember US libertarians, liberals, and fundamentalists, even as the sands of time bury them all.

Our time will pass.

Rebranding A Troubled Name

Now that the news is out that Linden Lab wants to rebrand their signature product, I'll toss my tophat in the ring along with other more famous pundits. Who knows? Lindens may glance at this blog for chuckles…not long after I mentioned Savage Worlds game system's motto of "Fast! Furious! Fun!" in a post, Linden Lab rolled out their "Fast, Easy, Fun" campaign.

Okay Lindens, here are some names and metaphors for Second Life's rebranding:

Serious Ideas: Back to Our Roots:

Linden World: It began there, so let's get back to basics. It is YOUR server cluster, after all. I'll take my mesh version of a Primitar now, please.

Your World: This gives residents a sense of autonomy even though you still own the servers. I'd like a name of this sort best, along with "Your World, Your Imagination" as a revived Motto. It would appeal to educators.

Metaverse / Utopia: Try a name that merges your origin with the idea that SL is better, in some regards, to the world of flesh. Neal Stephenson won't sue you guys. You could call it "Lindenverse" or "Lindtopia" if you wish. Or give Philip Rosedale his due and call it "Philtopia." Most of us have a little utopian streak; even my old nemesis Microsoft made good with me and other Mac OS users with their Mactopia site, a useful spot for MS Office software updates and tips.

Frontier: I'm fond of the metaphor. We've been denied the "final frontier" of space, unless one means cyberspace. Facebook, which I'm coming to accept as a way to stay in touch with a few RL friends, is decidedly not a frontier. It's a virtual pub, at best. A virtual world with user-generated content certainly is a frontier.

Dubious if Accurate:

Sandbox: This is what SL is, after all. Even some hard-core gamers who would otherwise sneer at SL's graphics and lag admit that the platform is a place to make things.  The problem with this theme would be how it sounds to an audience beyond gamers. I think of kids with plastic pails and shovels when I hear "sandbox."

Names / Metaphors to Avoid Like the Plague:

Eighteen Again, Forever: I saw this motto once in an SL shop. Nothing suggests flabby 50-somethings like it.  Okay, I'm a trim and outdoorsy 50-something, but I don't want to pretend either. While "Dress Up for Grown Ups" seems to work for IMVU, would it for SL?  Why just be a fancy chat room full of fashionistas?

Otherworld: SL is a world apart from the one of matter, but to make folks see it as an extension of their lives, much as any other hobby might be, avoid the idea that we are in an "other" place.

Second Life: I've written how toxic the rhetorical implications of the name can be. Ditch it ASAP.

Luring Back Educators: A Different Revenue Model for Second Life

Location: Prognosticating

I see a very different shadow from the dynamic ones in the new viewer. Some weeks, every other post by Hamlet Au is a "Deathwatch." Recently we have lost, or are about to lose, The Virtual Globe Theatre, the Minoan Empire, The Lost Gardens of Apollo, and the Numbakulla quest-game region. All of these have been long-promoted landmarks in the history of Second Life, as were Rezzable's famous creations.

In each case, the tier structure of Linden Lab's world became an issue, if not the sole issue leading to the loss of content of note. Linden Lab cannot give its world away if it wishes to keep the servers running, but they are losing good content, and I have no idea yet--though it merits a follow-up to my earlier survey--how many educators have left the world or at least reduced land holding substantially. I've a hunch, from our VWER membership, that land ownership continues to decline.

Other worlds survive on a subscription model, and I cannot comment on an appropriate model for other users, something Senban Babii essayed in a reply to Au's post about the end of the Minoan region. I'll consider a model that that might be educator-friendly and emerge to replace tier for that population of users:

• Free 30-day trial with an avatar of decent design, a working if basic animation override, and some inventory good enough for a professional meeting.
• Education-only orientation and welcome areas, with a mentor program, on a new education continent zoned for General and Moderate regions.  On the continent it would be "invitation only" to those not affiliated with education, as it is on our campuses.
• Lower regional pricing than is currently the case, yet higher than OpenSim (in consideration of the excellent content SL can provide).
• A monthly subscription after the free trial ends, $10US for educators and $5 for students. The student price should not amount to more than a cheap textbook, to avoid too many complaints that would discourage use by education. If the student decided to stay after the end of the term, that would be fine. I could see giving educators one alt account with their memberships fee, students none. Adding more alts to either would cost more.
• A small plot on an educational continent with building rights, that might be merged with other plots so faculty and students could design simulations. Plots could be traded to make land adjacent but they could not be sold. Abandoned land would revert quickly to the pool for new accounts.
• Movement toward becoming the de facto standard for all grids, by first leveraging the Linden Dollar and SL Marketplace for use across approved grids.
• More work on the abandoned interoperability initiative: Perhaps for an extra monthly fee, selected inventory might reside outside the avatar and be downloadable as an IAR file on grids approved by Linden Lab and a consortium of grid-owners.

The educational continent, something that was a dream of ours for a while and a rumor just before the massive and unfortunate layoffs at Linden Lab, would be a powerful incentive to get educators like me more involved. Many of us pay nothing beyond a premium account fee.

The new CEO has wisely tried to get more "buzz" for SL with virtual pets and other flashy innovations. Will Linden Lab find enough revenue there to stay in business, as its older creators and creations vanish? And will the CEO renew any efforts to woo back educators, who do make financial commitments likely to persist longer than the latest crazy for cute pets?

Waitin' For the End of the World

Location: Unpenitent

I'll take a break from invented worlds on screen to one that is happening in the flesh now: the myth of The Rapture. A Unitarian-Universalist like me, who disbelieves in Hell or Satan, who feels all faiths lead to the same destination though along different error-strewn paths, scratches his head at the invented world of The Rapture.

But some folks believe 100,000 (or so) souls will be taken up tomorrow, and Twitter is abuzz with jokes. I asked William Gibson if he is "taken up," could I have the typewriter he used to compose Neuromancer?  Pranksters in large cities are going to leave empty suits of clothing here and there on the sidewalks.

My one Rapture Tweet: "You got Raptured and all I got was a lousy 1983 Chevy Cavalier."

Even when I was a Catholic, I learned that this notion of Rapture is not only a Protestant "heresy" but also a recent one not based upon biblical ideas. The notion started in America.

I won't belabor the point or even allow comments on this post. I'll just editorialize one point: whatever holy books (inspired by God, edited by humans) say, any god who would create a hell and then cast people into it is not worth worshiping. I do believe in a God of love, not an angry old man on a throne who would cherry-pick a few humans. Perhaps oblivion awaits the evil: that's a mystery to me. Enough Catholic teaching remains with me to be comfortable with the idea of Sacred Mystery.

I believe that we were given this good Earth as a gift and it won't go up in fire and Tribulations unless we bring them down ourselves through poor stewardship. And if that occurs, I feel that God would be the first one to weep.

So see you all on May 22, while the End-Times calculations get reset yet again.  And we can get back to the cheerful nonsense of our daily lives.

Update May 22, 2011: The sky did not roll back like a scroll as farmer Iggy (real Farmville, not the game) mowed a field and worked on the backhoe yesterday. The earth did not open beneath my wicked feet as I sipped a beer and listened to the whippoorwills at nightfall.  No final trumpets sounded as I filled an old briar with "And Now to Bed" pipe tobacco, blended on the Isle of Jersey. I plan to go there one day.

Midnight came and went, and those awaiting the Rapture had to recalibrate their Doomsday clocks.

As my pipe smoke wafted up to the stars, so perfect beyond the light pollution of the cities, I gave quiet thanks, which is about all a Deist can do before a Creator who put matters into our hands. I gave thanks for this life, this world, and human ingenuity.

As for human foolishness and the desire to live in special times? As for a not-so-subterranean wish to see others not like oneself suffer?

I did not dwell on those things.

Collateral Damage: Dusan Writer on Military Use of SL Enterprise

Location: VWER meeting

image courtesy of Lolly's photostream


Last week, our special guest Dusan Writer covered a great deal of territory in his interview with AJ Brooks. They spoke in voice, and we transcribed this to text chat.

Among his many topics, Dusan noted that when Linden Lab ended its Second Life Enterprise product, the US military was hit particularly hard. At least two dozen military groups were "heavily involved" with SL Enterprise, and suddenly they had a dead-end product on their hands for training.

This prompted a "risk averse" attitude toward virtual worlds in general, though now these military organizations are pursuing a mixed-bag of virtual-world solutions for training: 8-10 different platforms including OpenSim, Forterra Systems' Olive, and their remaining SL Enterprise servers.

Dusan implied strongly that Linden Lab missed a great opportunity by ending their Enterprise product as they did. Now heavyweights like Lockheed Martin have begun "using web GL to deliver VW in browser at a massive scale."

You can read the transcript of the entire meeting here.

Downward Spiral?

 
Location: Not Shopping Anywhere

I have been critical of Linden Lab here, but I'm a bit blind-sided by the slew of blog posts about the gradual decline of Second Life. Tateru Nino's charts, showing concurrency dropping faster than new residents can replace those who leave, are depressing. Just last week she was optimistic about the future of SL!

Everyone reading her numbers will point a finger here or there, but let's consider the entire virtual world as an complex system of linked parts. Here's just one of the downward cycles at play:

• Lag forces us to shop less in-world (those pesky textures never load).
• Meanwhile, Linden Lab sets up Marketplace to head off competition and rake in a % of each transaction.
• We buy something at Marketplace instead of in-world.
• Merchant in-world sees little point in keeping a shop to pay tier for a empty store.
• Merchant closes in-world shop, puts land up for sale.
• Land does not sell; merchant abandons land. Tier income now zero for Linden Lab.
• Linden Lab must keep server running to support remaining plots in region.
• Visitors to SL (the few who make it past their first log in) see more empty and lonely sims, decide to leave.
• Fewer residents to support Marketplace, Linden Lab loses their cut of those transactions.
• Linden Lab has less cash on hand to hire staff to address problems of lag and cannot lower tier.

We can second guess the Lab until Doomsday, but had the Lab worked on a reducing lag or setting up an economic model that would have permitted lower tiers, well...it might be different.

There are many other cycles at play, but for now they point in the same direction.