Architecture + Second Life = Social Change

Location: Architecture

Profesora Farigoule's students had an assignment "to design a house for a typical Cape Town SA township family," and I had the opportunity to tour the project site shortly before she took the project down.

All designs had to include "sustainable heating and cooling low-energy features." The projects "will result in a 'think book,' but next term we will hopefully produce drawings for real families" for the Uthango group, whose fund-raising bicycle I've been riding in SL for some time.



Professora noted that she "had to work hard to crack the "egg" of their cultural ethnocentrism" and get students to build not what they liked, but what the task required. Once they began building, however, "the SL build helped students see instantly their errors in judgment in that way."

One of her students, Jango, an architectural/civil engineering student at Delaware Tech, took very well to SL. He later went on to join us for a Roundtable talk about students' impressions of SL. As he noted that compared to designing with CAD, "can get soo much more out of it" with SL. He enjoyed walking his avatar through his creation. Like many students who find a passion for something, Jango "was taught the basic builds by my teacher" and then went on to hone his skills for more complex creations.


The yellow beams shown above indicate the angle of sunlight, a key element for passive and active solar designs. While SL may not be optimal for design, because "it has issues in terms of accurate texture mapping vs real life appearance," it is "optimal" for collaboration between groups of architects.

Now maybe I can hire a team of Professora's students to tweak the unmatched seams on my next Frank Lloyd Wrong build.

Oh Lindens where art thou?

Location: Secret Computer Lab deep inside the grid

Iggy and I spent a good deal of time discussing what would be the the best way LL should take in our eyes. While Iggy has already elaborated on the educational perspective he asked me if I could employ my Geek Girl powers to spare some thoughts on the technical part of the matter.

LL faces an immensly difficult task. They have to balance quite a lot technical issues. I am going to venture only in the user part ... the client side. Talking about the server architecture won´t make much sense since I lack the expertise here. I have some ideas though which I will share later.

On the client side however its pretty easy to see which issues are at hand. The main problems to be tackled are the stability and performance on the one hand and the graphical attractiveness on the other hand.

LL obviously tends towards the gamer side of the matter and after windlight the second big updates of shadows is in the pipeline. On the other hand an increasing number of users notes a decreasing performance. As Iggy reported earlier some of the machines in the computer labs of UR were stranded earlier this year already and some of the people I met in SL already stated they are unsure how long their hardware can keep up with "SLevolution".

I have to join in into that chorus. While the machine I am using mostly was working ok with pre-windlight clients, its now almost unusable. The other machine can cope with Windlight but only on medium settings.

Both machines suffer from lag in various regions and the overall performance is decreasing.
I think that LL is misjudging its users. I think that the major part of SL users is not the hardcore gaming type, that has SLI connected graphics cards and is willing to invest money into such material in regular intervalls. In my eyes the majority of users can be rather described as casual users and socializers that have more interest in using SL as a plattform for contact rather then serious gaming. Gamers usually have a hard time finding their way through SL with questions like "What can I do here?" or "What is the goal of all this?". Even when they find the various RPG and other playareas they are usually disappointed and I don´t think that a slightly better graphics engine can make up the gap to current games on PCs and cosoles. On the other hand it will narrow down the basis of users with hardware replacement cycles of about 3 to 5 years (and even larger in the current crisis) which I think are the majority of the users active in SL. Asked for their favorite client they usually pick the pre-windlight ones most noteably the 1.19. Additionally in general polls held in forums I regularly visit the attitude rather goes to fix things first and add features later.

I won´t deny that a new look on SL is something that is not desirable. Absolutely not, but if that means I can barely navigate or not log in at all I would rather have more stability and performance then eyecandy.

The problem of a narrowing userbase for SL is of course the decrease of cashflow for LL. So it should be in their best interest to keep the active user count up. Even though it would mean more work for developement and testing, maintaining two clients would be the way to use. While the classical client could be frozen in the graphics engine the advanced client could be patched up with all the graphical stuff that would make high end users happy. Both clients could receive vital security and functionality updates and just divert in their handling of graphics. This would reconnect a lot of users, who got lost on the way, and reopen the cashflow.

Combined with a focus on bugfixing, performance optimizing and introduction of new useful features that enhence the user experience (like a reliable and transparent search for example) and improve SL´s position as leading Metaverse platform.

Even though this might be a way SL could take, it would only cure the symptoms and not the real problem underneath. One should always keep in mind how old SL actually is and that the old nucleus of it is still active. From that time on additions to it have been introduced and Sl saw a vast growth (especially in first half 2007) which the original core was most likely not intended for. Today SL is a datacenter moloch of a large number of grid servers and connected support servers around it. I guess the best picture for the current situation of SL is the one of a house, that has new parts attached to itself in a wild manner and now the 10 floor house now has 30 floors and some add ons on the lower level and the whole construct sways from side to side, while 6 times as many people which were originally intended now live there. At the same time the janitor tries to keep it up and running.

The problem with SL is that it is a grown structure that is hard to manage since every change introduced might cause problems with other parts of the system, that have not been inspected (like the janitor sweeping the floor and accidentally knocking away the ladder of his colleague, who was trying to change the light bulbs).

The most sensible thing to do in my eyes would be to freeze SL in the current state and just fix the worst bugs and performance issues which still exsist.

The massive amount of data that could be collected over the time should give LL a pretty good image of what the plattform actually needs to look like in order to satisfy its users needs, attract new users and provide a scaleable and reliable plattform for future growth. This data could be compiled into a roadmap for (if you want it to call it that way) 3rd Life which would be a new Metaverse in itself.

One of the major aspects to the success of such an idea would be to migrate the assets from the old system to the new one smoothly. I agree it is a very idealised picture I am drawing here but I have another one for the opposite case.

Imagine the current developements reaching maturity while SL on the same hand becomes more and more exclusive driving other users away. It will only take one Metaverse which reaches maturity and allows user generated content to be set up in this world pretty much like it is the case in SL. The results will be noteable at once since people will very much migrate within months once the the word has spread and SL will go down and most likely close since there are better offers around.

At the moment this exodus hasn´t yet started since there is no alternative but there will be one (and I guess not in such a remote time) and if SL continues to develope the way it does now, it will most likely end up the way I have drawn the picture. The time to act for LL is now, or they will further jeopardize their userbase rather then widening it. This would mean ultimate desaster for LL but would make sense if they plan to grab as much cash now as they can while they are the only ones on the field before the real competition starts and simply close their doors once the rivals show up successfully. I doubt that this is the case but if my doubt are right then SL will most likely not stand the competition.

Margram in Metaplace: Watch that Dangling Modifier!

Location: Margram

I've been asking about for education-related content in Metaplace. I came up with this (tip o' the Mad-Scientist's tin-foil hat to Cuppycake):

Welcome to Margram, my opening foray in creating a fun game that will help folks learn grammar. The idea is simple: create a magical world where all the spells you cast have to be grammatically correct: else, they will backfire! And heck, words like "subjunctive" and "participle" already sound like arcana to most people -- might as well treat them as truly magical!

I figured I might do well at the game. After all, a PhD in English knows everything about grammar, right? All those years of Father Raymond's steel rod on my shoulders or arms taught me lots of things, including how to spell O-N-O-M-A-T-O-P-O-I-A. One stroke was delivered for every letter, when spelled incorrectly.

Ah, the good old days of eduacation as Dick Cheney might have designed it...but back to Margram. If you have a Metaplace account, visit Margram yourself and try.

The world is very much a-building, but the idea is to go on an heroic quest and, along the way, use correct grammar to solve puzzles, cast spells, and advance in general.


I met a bunch of "fuzzies" there, some of whom are said to respond to text-chat. I understand that more puzzles and levels are coming. Right now, Margram is more a factory for what will be there, and the creator welcomes suggestions for spells and weapons. I thought that a monster that could only be defeated by correctly using semicolons would be perfect.

Good grammar CAN be fun! Moving up with the command of it in a game, as a way to gain rewards? It's not too far from how formal English works in the world of flesh. Use it well, and advance in the circles of power and prestige. Eventually...next stop...Oval Office.

Wait.


You'll certainly do better at Margram than George W. Bush. Maybe I should send Pappy over; W. did not even get past the first level at Margram.

When the Machine Stops...

Location: Garden

It was a perfect Richmond weekend: warm and not humid. We even had rain, during the night. Nothing will be this perfect again until Fall, when a different sort of beauty--that of what is soon to pass--appears before our eyes. I did a bit of gardening and, today, built a stretch of fence.

The hot months ahead may be a good time to park oneself in front of a keyboard and monitor, but I'm going to resist temptation. Lately, when I log on to Second Life I notice the same folks online. Every time I log in, they are there. Metaplace is too new for this, for now. Give it time.

What would these folks do if Linden Lab closed its doors? If you are one of these always-online folk, be it in SL, Facebook, Twitter, or somewhere else, consider some lines from E.M. Forster's magnificent, and terrifying, story "The Machine Stops" (the image is from the 1965 TV version). Read the rest of the story (or listen to it at Archive.org):

• There was the button that produced literature. And there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.
• By her side, on the little reading-desk, was a survival from the ages of litter - one book. This was the Book of the Machine.
• People never touched one another. The custom had become obsolete, owing to the Machine.
• By these days it was a demerit to be muscular. Each infant was examined at birth, and all who promised undue strength were destroyed.
• Those who still wanted to know what the earth was like had after all only to listen to some gramophone, or to look into some cinematophote.
• But there came a day when, without the slightest warning, without any previous hint of feebleness, the entire communication-system broke down, all over the world, and the world, as they understood it, ended.

It felt good to use my muscles today, to move wood and soil and tend thing that, later this summer, will be part of our meals.

I invite you to consider how you spend your fleeting time in the world of matter. Enjoy your summer.