• The Times: “At Least The Chicken Kebab Was Real”: gotta love that title! Worthy of the best classics from The Onion (like the immortal “God Answers Prayers Of Paralyzed LIttle Boy – ‘No,’ Says God“). “David Orban, chief executive of Questar, a software firm, thought they could: “I disagree with the idea that it’s not possible to regulate supply. [The goods have] an artificial scarcity, but there can still be a rarity factor,” he said.” That doesn’t sound like me, but I will look at the recording! I recall of having actually quoted Cory, and said that bits won’t become less easy to copy in the future then today. Yes, ‘limited editions’ will be of great emotional value, but their limitedness will have to come someplace else then lack of copiability or unforgeable timestamps… (They originally misspelled my name, and only a friend’s pointing the article out to me let me know abou it. I wrote them for a correction, which they did within
• Tech Digest: Live Blog: “David Orban, from Questar, loads up his Powerpoint presentation (well, the Mac version…he’s been sitting next to me the whole day typing away on his Mac). He talks a lot about 3D printers, and the possibility of owning a good in a virtual world, and being able to print it out and own it in real life, too. Somehow I think this is several years off still!” Well, yes, Katherine, and some of us are actually thinking farther ahead than the end of the current quarter!
• Ugotrade: “Cory Doctorow – A Reverse Surveillance Society” In this fantastic almost-book-length post, Tish, the publisher of Ugotrade, covers many, many areas of the Forum. It is the third time she quotes me in a month, and hope her readers are not fed up with it. There’s more to come, so they’d better not! “In the picture above David Orban shows a delighted Ginsu Yoon his new Second Life viewer an: “Immersive stereoscopic projection of a life size screen covering 180 degrees of vision, connected to the live grid, tracking the avatar with ultrawideband emitters, created by the University of Milan and Eximia, in Italy.” David has posted a video gives a full explanation of “Real 2nd Life” on his blog, so check it out!“. I suggested Tish to list an index to the post, and put anchors in the text, so that people can actually point to parts of it, it is so long…
• Inside the Metaverse: “We managed to get some in depth interviews with the following people: Aleks Krotoski (The Guardian), David Orban (Questar), Corey Bridges (Multiverse), Betsy Book (There), Ginsu Yoon (Linden Lab), Richard Bartle (University of Essex), Robert Lai (CRD China) and Frank Campbell (Mindark). Many different opinions and many diverse views on the future, but always with great nuance and never black and white.” I am very much looking forward to see what comes out of this. At least a teaser-trailer asap, please!
• The Guardian: Talking points from the Virtual Worlds Forum. They don’t quote me actually, but used and credited a photo I shot of the special CSI-themed Onrez SL viewer created by Electric Sheep. All the photos I took, and ever take, are Creative Commons Attribution licensed, so anybody can use them, for commercial purposes as well, as long as they credit me as the source of the photo (if somebody wants to do away with that requirement, that is possible too, under separate special arrangements).

The organizers of the Virtual Worlds Forum also graciously agreed to allow me to post the video of the panel I recorded (Thanks, Sasha!), and I am busy editing that as well. As it is longer then ten minutes, and I am not Google which is evidently not bound by the rules it sets for others posting on YouTube with hour long videos of its own there, I will upload it on Google Video.

I was very pleased with his questions, and hope that my answers were meaningful. Steven is now going to produce a trailer with the material collected, and they are aiming to have the documentary ready by the second half of 2008, and start showing it at various film festivals, aiming for a proper cinema release.

The questions Steve posed were in my opinion very good, and at least according to my sensibilities, are going to lead to a great film, worthy of Kevin Kelly’s ‘True Films’ list. We covered the sociological, and philosophical implications of the widespread use of online worlds, and spread into issues of human nature, future worlds, and the Singularity. That at least was the spread of the gross quantity of recordings taken, with obviously a potentially different end result after the necessary editing taking place.

14:30 Bjorn from HiPiHi is talking about their world, to be released in Q1 2008, and takes a vote from the audience if they should be High-Pi-High, or Hippy-High.

15:00 Electric Sheep are very, very happy that their setup, and the entire Second Life grid survived the airing of the CSI episode which leads people into SL to keep solving it, as it was left as a cliffhanger, and will be resolved only in February.

16:00 Venture capital panel. I will ask if possible how the VC business itself is changing and adapting.
17:00 I have been able to ask the question! And the answers were actually supporting my view that there is some change, and more is needed.

Closing panel
END!

I am going into interviews, so it is likely that I won’t be able to blog for the rest of the morning, sorry.
Yesterday night there were three separate parties, luckily not totally overlapping, and we had great chats until approximately midnight. Which means that we don’t have an excuse of an excessive wear and tear not to follow

Missed the panel with Ginsu Yoon from Linden, and was told that it was pretty good.

Robert Gehorsam, Forterra Systems “One hour of backed up traffic on a busy highway costs the US 100 million dollars of lost productivity. We are helping with the development of virtual worlds that can help teams quicken the reopening of the highways. Zillionics, as defined by Kevin Kelly: the immeasurable amount of data that is coming out of all the sensors. Information about the world is becoming more complete!”

A really good speech. Meaningful, and well delivered. Forterra is funded by InQTel, the CIA’s venture arm.

12:10 At the end of the panel on “Harnessing the power of virtual worlds for corporate collaboration” I asked the question if the flattening hierarchies of corporations as experienced in virtual worlds are being brought back to the physical world, and if they are capable of adapting.

12:40 I am showing the immersive SL video on my Mac in an unedited form to Gartner, IBM, Linden, and others. Must finish editing soon, and post to YouTube everybody wants to cover it, and learn more.

13:50 Lunch was very good. Just finger food, so nobody had to sit, and could keep shaking hands, and gesturing. I have to start preparing for my panel, so I don’t know how long I will be able to keep writing at this time.

14:10 Kidalicious panel. “Are kids and teenagers the future for virtual worlds?”. Adam, the moderator asks: “Why is it that virtual worlds geared to kids or teenagers are the most profitable apparently?” Answer from the panel “It is a fact that for these kids, they are not even virtual, these worlds are just must part of their day to day lives. They have grown up buying ringtones, downloading screensavers, music, and they are the digital natives.”

15:20 Daan Josephus ABN Amro “You can offer financial services in an online world if it is run within the walls of your own company. And then of course your challenge is to market it to your capte audience.”

16:20 Quoted Kurzweil on the panel “Opensource and nanotech will deliver the goals of communism”.

16:40 Done with the speech and panel about v-tail. Moderator asked “should we be afraid”, answer “yes”. The likelihood of big companies today being able to adapt is low. I recorded the video which I will be posting online asap. Cory Doctorow listened to my speech, asked a question, and after it came and patted me saying “Good panel!” woot!

16:50 The future is blurred panel with Cory Doctorow (aha! Is that why he stayed through mine?)

17:00 Nuanced relationships are key to the healthy development of social networks, within virtual worlds, and without.

Google and Multiverse are building the online world to show 3d models built on Sketchup, but Corey Bridges is not commenting on it, even when baited.

I am in London, about to speak at Virtual Worlds Forum (just realizing that I won’t be able to blog live too much while speaking!), and will try to cover as much as possible of the event, with reporting, photos, and more.

This post is going to be updated for some time, then I will switch to an other for the afternoon, and the same for the second day. Please reload the page for updates regularly (maybe every 10 to 20 minutes is optimal…). (I also put some stuff on Twitter as soundbites…)

09:10 Lord Putnam “Since achieving consciousness umankind has lived in a virtual world”
09:34 “People in virtual worlds have agency”. “An eminent historian told me a couple of weeks ago that he would have written his works differently had he had access to virtual worlds. This is a very important indicator from a very serious observer”. “Virtual worlds have very little sense when you are alone”. “I am old enough to remember that cinema, and television received the same treatment of virtual worlds now regarding the possibility of addiction. Online gaming is almost certainly not as addictive as it has been reported. The conversation has to be very nuanced, and deep.”
09:39 “I promise you that it is only question of time for a serious crime to be committed under stimulation by an avatar.” (Wonder if he heard of the CSI episode about to air which involves Second Life, and exactly this scenario.)
Lord Putnam’s speech was very, very good. I hope that the transcript is going to be available as well. (Looks like it will…)
09:48 Lord Triesman is Minister of Intellectual Property (!) He is talking about his Ministry’s work, and about IP Crime (!), the WIPO, and I am waiting for Cory to jump on him
10:04 “As a government we have to embrace these technologies” Well, it looks like they are.

10:08 Paul Jackson of Forrester and Jess Mulligan from Cyber Sports converse about Virtual Worlds (definitions, markets, and there will be also Q/A.

10:09 Jess “Virtual World is any connected computer space, with an avatar (not necessarily human), persistence, and persistence of your growth”. “Twenty percent of the Ultima Online players who started with the game which is ten years old now, are still participating, playing every month!”

10:20 “Issues looking forward are legal mainly, with governments worrying about a lot of stuff, but it all comes down to making sure that it can tax the income.” The presentation was very dense with data, and the slides should be available for further analysis.

10:25 Paul is using cartesian plane of engagement vs game/social axes to plot the various worlds.

10:40 Jess “The elephant in the room is Google. They hired all our friends to do their stuff, so even if they are not talking we know they are about to release an online world. What will that do to the rest?”

Coffee Break and Networking

11:15 James Au Wagner is moderating a “Consumers or Community – what is the direction for brands” panel. He says “The fashion reporter for our blog went to the Armani store in Second Life, and she was not impressed. The suits, and apparel designed by an independent couple of residents with a similar fashion style as Armani were much better!”

Each member of the panel is showing short videos. I don’t even bother to watch, and wonder how to others. The backchannel is more interesting any minute, then smoothed out corporate machinima.

11:47 “We are quickly seeing the move from 3D worlds to the 3D operating system”. “An other SL fashion designer is getting her clothing made into physical products by a Chinese textile production house”.

Chatted with Bjorn from HiPiHi, and I am really looking forward to see their platform launching next year. It is very ambitious!

12:30 Vivox CEO confirms that they are bringing voice changer functionality to Second Life to better match the avatar’s voice to its image.

There were a lot of very good speakers at the World Business Forum, and I was glad to be able and attend some of the sessions, and also to mingle with the other speakers. I met Eisner, from Disney, Chizen of Adobe, Perez of Kodak, Ray Kurzweil, and Colin Powell, well, of Kleiner Perkins, he says….

There were no open wifi connections available. It was like “digital kidnapping” as http://www.leeander.com/ says, but I could twitter a little through my 3D connection (even if I do not like t9 too much). You can read the river of tweets over there.

There is an interview in UgoTrade blog bridging the digital divide of virtual realities in World 2.0 with Ben Goertzel of Novamente and me, talking about Artificial General Intellige, and Genetic Algorithms in Second Life.

The ‘San Francisco Chronicle‘ has a front page article dedicated to the Singularity Summit, entitled “When Machines Think“.

Is it a good thing when a meme enters the mainstream? Is the meme of Singularity ready for the exposure?

On Chris Anderson’s “The Long Tail” blog in these days there is a great post about why he doesn’t believe in SL’s value to corporations as an advertising platform, and a very good response from Wagner Au, author of the “New World Notes” blog. The quality of the analysis at both ends is very high, and I am not going to repeat their arguments here, which you can read. But I am sure this is a great example of the clearheaded reporting that we need about the metaverse, if we want to avoid excessive hype, or unreasoned rejection of the new 3d web.