Reality is Relative

A post for my family. Each of you can decide which video goes to which person.

Neural Nets Simulation

This is a pretty awesome neural nets simulation. This is roughly what the creator imagined our brain cells work like”…organized chaos

Artificial Evolution with Cross-Breeding by Jonathan McCabe’s

The patterns are made by repeated foldings, rotations and shifts, and then each point is coloured depending on its positions during the operation. A process of artificial evolution was employed to develop the final images, involving repeated variation, selection and “cross breeding” of the recipes used to generate the images.

AI Tetris

However I think the future is shaping up like this- we won’t need to play games, we will have artificial intelligence to do it for us. More time spent fishing I guess, although I like Tetris.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Share This

Once again Sam Harrelson talks me into a late night look at Next-Gen Marketing with a few practical examples over at Revenews. Long one- so good time to change the oil on the car (time shift) and listen…some might find it very relevant- no matter what reality you exist in, or think you do.

Sam says: “The podcast runs about 90 minutes and we discuss Wayne’s conception of Next Gen marketing and possible futures of online and affiliate marketing.”

Wayne says: “As usual, this podcast runs about 90 minutes and we discuss science fiction books, Next-Gen, games, my experience with ARGs, multi-verses, engagement from twitter to Second Life, Sam finds value in an OPML file, engagement metrics, incubation of fan bases, engaging smart people, Twitter, personalities, a bunch of books like: The Book of Zines, The Adventures of the The Stainless Steel Rat, Media Virus, etc. Not that many would care, but for the observant we also plod into Assyriology, cuneiform, ancient civilizations and why that crap is important to us. As usual I interrupt too often (why does he always catch me tired?), but we move along and didn’t even touch Mobile Marketing or iPhone stuff or blending it with RSS. At any rate this is sort of what “industry insiders” talk about…sort of.”

Stainless Steel Rats MP3 File

Another good cast, and Pinnacle Best Blog Award Winner- Sam Harrelson, speaks (what are you cloned or what?) at AffiliateFortuneCookies.com giving more clarity as Next-Gen, Virtual, Affiliate, and A Whole Bunch of Stuff Most Can’t Even See are heading for a whacked out, giant ajax-style real-world mashup collision thing. Maybe.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Share This

Rick van der Wal, aka Digado, a blogger I have great respect for, recaps Ren Reynolds lively taxonomy discussion at Terra Nova:

* Game world
* Lucid World
* Metaverse
* MMORPG
* MMO
* MOO
* MUSH
* MUD
* WoW
* RPG
* HUD
* RCE
* RMT
* Synthetic World
* Social World
* Thick Virtual World
* Thin Virtual World
* Virtual World

If you can get past the emergent nomenclature I suggest you read his entire take-away on immersionism and augmentation and the comments.

The Views

He notes and adds, as I believe, they are NOT mutually exclusive…

Immersionist’s point of view

Virtuality is… a new reality, a new world (or as Philip Linden/Rosedale once said - “A country”), a new frontier.

Most common issues: The Avatar as a person, new builds and ‘In-world’ developments, in-world authority, the community and underlying relations, the future (a long-term time frame of 10-25 years from now).

Key elements: Freedom, vision, escapism, trust, recognition, community, immersion.

Augmentionist’s point of view

Virtuality is… a tool - a medium, a game and an extension/evolution/continuation of the internet and communication.
Most common issues: Perception of mainstream media, elevating the platform of Virtual worlds as a tool/medium, how virtual worlds influence the real world - economic, education, entertainment for ‘real people’, the timeframe of now until 3 years from now.

Key elements: Adoption of Technology, opportunity, verification, research, return on investments, benefits of virtuality, cross ‘realm’ communication.

Boiling It Down

1. Immersion and augmentism are not mutually exclusive.
2. Immersionists are a movement based on escapism.
3. Augmentists are opportunists.

Rick I think they are blog worthy issues and thank you…as I have been trying to find a good blend of “not mutually exclusive.” None of these schools of thought are “black and white”. That is why I think VR communities should pay attention to the thought leaders struggling with revenue generation and Web 2.0- and pollution- not to mention concentration risk. See my latest on Revenews.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Share This

“Reality is fundamentally broken, and we have a responsibility as game designers to fix it. We have a responsibility as the smartest people in the world, the people who understand how to make systems that make people feel engaged, successful, happy, and completely alive, and we have the knowledge and the power to invent systems that make reality work better.”

| View | Upload your own

Reality is Broken: GDC08 Rant by Jane McGonigal.

1. Satisfying work to do
2. The experience of being good at something
3. Time spent with people we like
4. The chance to be a part of something bigger

My favorite takeaway was- Why care about games? Because life is crap. Life is crap, and the ONLY thing that makes it worth living is art – and play.

and

“Games are the ultimate happiness engine”

and

and this lively slide : “Reality is broken. • Can we fix it? YES. • Should we fix it? HELL YES. • Will we fix it? I HAVE NO F’ING IDEA”.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Share This

Well only for a few perhaps, and we are far from it, but let’s look to the future through the eye’s of a futurist…

Virtual reality and reality to merge says Ray Kurzweil.

“Computers the size of blood cells will create fully immersive virtual realities by 2033,” leading inventor Ray Kurzweil has predicted. If so this sucks for me. I am to late. Death = phail.

“Today you can put a pea-sized computer inside your brain, if you have Parkinson’s disease and want to replace the biological neurons that were destroyed by the disease.”

He said a billion-fold increase in computing performance and capability over the next 25 years coupled with the 100,000 fold shrinking, would lead to “blood cell-size devices… that can go inside our bodies and keep us healthy and inside our brain and expand our intelligence”.

He said the blood cell computers would be able to “produce full immersion virtual reality from inside the nervous system”. People have more freedom in virtual worlds. He said the games industry had to be thinking about the future development of computing now.

“The games industry fits in well with the acceleration of progress; in no other industry do you feel that more than games.” Mr Kurzweil, who invented the flat bed scanner and text-to-speech synthesis, said the virtual world was a misnomer.

“In virtual worlds we do real romance, real learning, real business. Virtual reality is real reality.”

He added: “Games are the cutting edge of what is happening - we are going to spend more of our time in virtual reality environments. “Fully emergent games is really where we want to go. We will do most of our learning through these massively parallel interactions.”
“Play is how we principally learn and principally create,” he said.

Mergers Take Time

The merger is already occurring…in very small steps. Here we get a glimpse of conversation on discordant issues. Avatar to Avatar or human to avatar- anyway you want to slice it.

…often cannot be measured, let alone seen. We can only measure some of the after images.

Many messages are never heard because they do not rebound back or recurse to the media in a plain or readable format…nor can the impact be measured accurately due to hidden impediments. No other commentary from me. This is a hidden conversation made open. Anonymity assured. Tiny alterations made. You normally would never hear any of it. You would only see the after images… I am not going to make any comment on what it means. e.g. FIC.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Share This

Sam Harrelson ferrets out the kind of stuff that really interests me with a take on Darmik.

Rather surprising, as I recall the ZeFrank issue too. Google Checkout appears to have opened their doors…and I like it as transactions seem to go as low as 10 cents US. Nothing like pushing pixels…can someone hook me up with the Google Base guys?

Darmik is an incredibly profound and interesting experiment in selling, music sharing, job listings and virtual economy.

Last year, Ze Frank was booted from Google Checkout for attempting to sell virtual duckies on his popular video show because he wasn’t selling a real world product or service. PayPal allowed him to do this, but Google Checkout had a problem with his actions. That was later remedied and now Checkout allows for the selling of such virtual “services.”

Darmik throws that to the wind and opens the doors of virtual commerce and classified listings…

Using Rapleaf for reputation management no less…more on Darmik.

Darmik gives sellers of digital content the ability to credit rights holders as well as rights holding organizations with funds from the sale of digital content

Darmik can be used by companies and organizations that need a fast, easy and flexible way to sell or distribute real world products, digital content, and listings internally or externally.

Sam goes on to say:

However, with the growth of MMORPG’s such as World of Warcraft, Star Wars Galaxies (my favorite… yes, I know it’s a horrible platform but I still enjoy it) and EverQuest along with developing virtual worlds such as Second Life, these sites could continue to grow and expand in popularity.

Perhaps one future of affiliate marketing is selling less of virtually more. Content creation will continue to become democratized and PayPal can’t handle the load in a monopolistic fashion forever.

For the many who scoffed or wondered months ago what or why I cared about virtual worlds- well now you have a clue. Sustainability is the next equation and I am getting close to solving that one- I think.

Virtual or Real…Virtual IS Real. It is all negotiated.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Share This