Second Life Assignment 2

The first place I visited was Kannonji Zen Retreat. I love it there. It was so beautiful and peaceful. I almost gave up on finding someone to talk to and then I finally ran into someone! The traffic thing said there were over 100 people there so I was confused as to why I couldn’t find anyone. But I don’t know. I was lucky enough to run into the owner of the place. We talked for a while. He was really cool. He showed me around and we talked for a while. He is a Buddhist in real life but does not really practice much I guess.

Here is a picture of the owner showing me the falls

The next place I visited was Terra Catholica. Again the traffic said it was in the 1000’s but I can’t find a single avatar anywhere! I’m so confused. Here I visited St. George church. I flew all around the area and there was literly not an avatar anywhere.

Here is a church I found there

I searched nonprofit commons and 2 things came up. I chose the place called aloft nonprofit commons.. I’m not sure if this is the place we were supposed to go but I went here. This world took a very long time to load, I don’t know why. Again, no one was here. But I did explore a bit and I learned of one of the non-profit organizations that is called NSW Animal Rescue Inc. This not for profit organization works to keep animals from being put down. There is a donation bucket in front of the building.

Here is a view of the whole place I took while flying

The next place I went was apollo harbour which is where I ended up when I searched for the lost gardens of apollo. Again no one to be found anywhere. I feel like I’m doing this wrong! I don’t know what is going on. I could not figure out how to do tai chi and there is no one here to ask! I came across 1 avatar and I tried to talk to her but she didn’t respond and then disapeared…

Next I went to Stanford. I actually found someone here! I tried to talk to her but she did not respond either. She at least didn’t run away, but I think she was idle. Her avator looked like she was sleeping. I took a picture of my avator trying to talk to her. She had a book in her hand and I couldn’t make out what was on it but it kind of resembled sheet music.

The girl I tried talking to..

Me attempting to fly whatever this thing was. It didn

Then I went to the virtual hallucinations place. It was pretty creepy! I kept hearing mumbling. And things kept appearing/dissappearing. At one point my hair was gone and I was bald. Then it just came back all of a sudden. I was about to take a picture but then it came back too fast. I found “someone” but I think it was a fake person.

Me right after my hair came back.. with a creepy statue in the background

The fake person I tried talking to

After trying to find a coffee shop, I realized that I am officially sl challenged. I could not find a coffee shop that actually had anyone there to save my life. Everything I found were just empty rooms. But fortunately I was somehow automatically given a free coffee and even figured out how to drink it!

Me drinking coffee in the empty coffee shop

Finally it was time for the dance club. Just for the fun of it I changed my clothes to obnoxiously skanky clothes.. or the best I could do. I still haven’t figured out how to actually find clothes, I only know how to make them. This was the only place that actually had a lot of people there! It was really exciting. Only when I got there people kept saying I was sitting down when I was really standing. And they kept telling me how to fix it but nothing was working. So I just gave up and called it a night.

Me talking to the guy who was trying to help me with the

Final Project

For my final project I will use second life as well as blogging. I will go into second life and try to convince as many random people as I can that I am someone they know in real life. I will be careful in doing this however. I will try and avoid the close friend/relative/co-worker areas. I will try and convince these avators that I am someone they met briefly so I do not end up interfering too much with anyones life. After each encounter I will blog about it so I can keep track of everything. I also plan to just mess with people in general, in unplanned ways. The goal of this is to test the limits of what I can get people to believe. For my presentation, I would like to go into second life and demonstrate what I have been doing. Also I will explain my results and discuss what this means socially.

In Response To Janet’s Post: “Avatars as Art”

After reading Janet’s “Avatars as Art” post from Nov 3rd I started thinking. The way that people communicate in second life and online in general is not just who the person wants to be but it is kind of who they truely are in a way (that’s excluding those who make up completely fake characters just for the fun of it). When communication is not done face to face it allows people to let their gaurds down. Also there’s only 1 channel that communication is being communicated on, so distortion ocurrs less often. It gives people the time and clarity to choose exactly what messages they intend to send. This goes for all forms of internet communication: myspace, facebook, AIM, second life, e-mail..

The online self that people create is very different from the in-person self. Society has redefined communication with the invention of the internet. Internet communication has almost no form of unconscious or accidental communication. There are certain things like tone and word choice, but when you’re using the internet you have much more time to think about these things than in face to face communication, which greatly decreases the chances of sending the wrong message once you understand the social expectations. The communication people do on the internet is deliberate and is done to portray themselves as they want to be portrayed, ie. in a way that appeals to their senses/emotions. This fits prefectly with wikipedia’s definition of art:

“Art is the process or product of deliberately and creatively arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art

The difference between face to face communication and internet communication is the aspect of deliberatness. When you portray yourself deliberately, it becomes an art. Face to face communication does not allow for this level of deliberatness.

The Experience of Embodied Space in Virtual Worlds

I find it interesting that all of these people in second life came together and created a world based on a book. That’s a part of second life I never considered before. Instead of just using it to talk to people, you can actually create any type of setting you want. And for the people who really get into it, it might give them a chance to “live” in a place/time they’ve always wanted to be a part of. These worlds are extremely detailed. The setting of “Ithaca” was made to match that of the book it was based on. The slave thing kind of confuses me though. I mean I realize this world was created based on a book, but why would anyone choose to be a slave? I know it’s not real life but still. I would not want to be a slave even in a fantasy world, plus it seems like one of those politically incorrect things that people just stay away from.. I don’t know.

The point of this article kind of went over my head a bit. I know the article was based on space in the virtual world and I didn’t respond to that aspect of it because I didn’t really understand what they were saying well enough to respond to it. I mean, I get it-ish, I just don’t have anything to say about it.

Saving Democracy With Web 2.0

I wish I had read this article sooner. Throughout this presidential campaign I have been struggling to make a decision. Partly because I don’t yet have opinions on some issues in general, I don’t know what I feel is right yet. But mostly because I don’t know what to believe. Everytime I hear something about a certain party it’s always contradicting something else I heard. And it’s not just with people I have talked to, it’s websites, tv reviews, and debates themselves. Everything contradicts something else so that leaves people like me just lost and confused. I gave up on trying to figure it out and decided not to vote. As everyone around me keeps drilling into my head, I’m wasting my right that was fought for. But I can’t help it. How can I vote if I don’t know what information to believe or where to find detailed accurate information about the plans of each candidate? This article provides websites that are actually helpful. These web 2.0 sites seem to be the start of something amazing. One of the things the article talked about was tracking financial records of campaigne and even tax spending. That would clear up a lot of my confusion about some of the issues involving the presidential candidates. These websites will hopefully someday go further and help situations like this even more.

I’ve never clicked this much with anyone in my life…

This article compared computer mediated communication with face to face communication. I agree with a lot of what it talked about. Part of the article talked about how face-toface communication is awkward with someone you generally talk to online. I have experienced this myself.. I don’t do the whole, meet or talk to random people online usually (just don’t see the point). However I met a cousin of one of my best friends at a party once and then we started talking on facebook and AIM. This went on for almost a year before we ever started hanging out in person. There were actually several occasions when we ended up in the same place at the same time due to my friend/his cousin and for some reason I felt extremely awkward and tried to avoid him or pretend not to see him. I wasn’t trying to be rude, it just felt really awkward to me. It was kind of immature, and I have no idea why it felt that way, but it just did. We finally started hanging out though, and now things are normal. But it really is awkward to meet face-to-face with someone you generally only talk to online, at least for me.

Leaping Into Cross-Gener Role-Play

This article was kind of a bore. I was confused as to what exactly the point was. It just seemed to go on and on about the ways that the two genders differ from eachother. I did not really see the connection to gaming cross gender role playing. I mean, it was mentioned but I could not make the connection to why they were saying what they were saying about it other than the fact that this happens in gaming as well. But I do not feel as though if someone chooses to be the opposite sex in a game it definitely has something to do with them wanting or not wanting to do that in real life. And the comparisons they used were based on real life gender roles.. So, I just didn’t get this one. Also, some of the gender differences they talked about did not seem completely accurate. They seemed more like things that guys or girls generally do but that’s not necessarily how things always are. I know a lot of girls or guys that do things mentioned in the article as something the opposite sex would do and have no desire to actually be the opposite sex.

A Rape In Cyberspace

Let me just start off with a disclaimer: The things described in this article were absolutely disgusting, no doubt about it. If these things were done in real life, the person should without question get jail time or at least serious psychological help. But…

it was fake…

No one that was assaulted in second life physically felt the pain, or was emotionally damaged. Or at least there’s no reason for this to have caused serious emotional damage. I feel as though if it did, that’s a definite sign that the person is way too into this virtual world thing. The only exception would be if this was done to or wittnessed by someone who has never been exposed to rated R movies, especially children. If a child was any part of this then that’s an entirely different story. But I’m going to assume for the sake of argument that a parent wouldn’t allow their child use this type of program.

I feel as though this article was written as a piece of art more so than an article. It’s almost so exaggerated that it makes me think there’s a possibility that the point was to sort of mock the ridiculousness (is that a word?) of the situation. Yes it was disgusting, yes it was disturbing, yes it was inappropriate.. but the fact that so much attention has been drawn to it is incredibly ridiculous. If anyone who has ever actually been assaulted in real life read this, they would be extremely offended.

Second Life is a fake world. You don’t feel what the avatars feel. If something is done to the avatar it is no where even close to the same as it being done to you in real life. I can’t comprehend that people would even compare the two. If this had happened to me, I would have laughed at first. Then I would have been creeped out when I realized how disgusting things got, and I would have left or blocked the character. And that’s it. It would have ended there. It would not have emotionally “scarred” me.

Flash Mob

The methods I used to inform people about the flash mob were email and text messages. I emailed 5 people and explained the assignment and asked if anyone would be able to make it. I only got 2 responses and both of those were telling me they couldn’t make it. I also sent out a text message to about 5-7 people. Only one person responded with “whoa that’s kinda weird”. I did not see anyone that I invited at the flash mob. I also am not sure what to say about it’s success. When I froze I was facing the ATM which was in the opposite direction of the crowd of people. So I have no idea how many people actually froze. It did seem pretty quiet during that minute though. So I guess if I go by that I would say it was a success! But I’d really need to see the video to know.

I think the limitations on informing people made it difficult. It is hard to remind people of things when you can’t talk about them in person. I actually almost forgot about it until I passed through the Cyber Cafe that day, then it dawned on me. I also feel as though people may not have known what a flashmob is or why it is done, and that is difficult to explain over the internet. My guess is people read the message, were confused, and dismissed it entirely. Though my attempt to spread the word wasn’t successful, it was still a fun assignment. It was really interesting.

Avatars, Second Life, and New Media Art

I enjoyed this article. For a while now I’ve been hearing about this second life thing and I had no idea what it was. After reading about 1 page of this article it finally clicked. It seemed really interesting to me so I actually went and created an account. I don’t know what I will end up doing with it, but it was a learning experience either way. It reminds me of the game The Sims, only more interesting because you can interact with real people instead of computer genorated characters. The article was absolutely right about the avatars. You really do create sort of an alter ego, or the person you’ve “always wanted to be”. I didn’t do much in the actual second life game(?) (Is it considered a game?), but the first thing I did do after reading the turtorial was change my appearance. And I sort of made my character look as close to myself as I could only I fixed everything I don’t like about my appearance. It was kind of fun. After that I just walked around a bit and said hi to a random person. Then I left. I’m interested to explore this more when I have more free time just to see what it’s all about and figure out what this money making thing is.