The Metaverse: Human Interaction and Culture
The Metaverse question: How to establish parallel context for human interaction and culture? http://eicker.at/MetaverseResearch
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Gerrit Eicker
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Gerrit Eicker
Metaverse Research
Research in 3D virtual worlds and the Metaverse: current status and future possibilities; http://eicker.at/MetaverseResearch
Gerrit Eicker
Easy Marketing is a Myth
Easy marketing is: spam, with no entry barriers, temporary, an escalation of force – expensive; http://eicker.at/EasyMarketing
Gerrit Eicker
Localisation
Pew: How people learn about their local community. Topics, Newspapers, TV news, Internet; http://eicker.at/Localisation
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Gerrit Eicker
Pew: “Contrary to much of the conventional understanding of how people learn about their communities, Americans turn to a wide range of platforms to get local news and information, and where they turn varies considerably depending on the subject matter and their age… Most Americans, including more tech-savvy adults under age 40, also use a blend of both new and traditional sources to get their information. Overall, the picture revealed by the data is that of a richer and more nuanced ecosystem of community news and information than researchers have previously identified.”
Pew: “The local news and information environment is changing in ways that most people believe makes it easier for them to get the specific information they want about their communities. More than half of Americans (55%) say it is easier today to get the local information they want than it was five years ago. … Top Popularity of Different Local Topics: Weather (89%), Breaking News (80%), Politics/Campaigns/Elections (67%), Crime, Arts/Cultural events, Local Business, Schools/Education, Community/Neighborhood events, Restaurants/Clubs/Bars, Traffic/Transportation, Taxes/Tax issues, Housing/Real estate, Government activities, Job openings, Social services, Zoning/Building/Development”
Pew: “The survey indicated that newspapers play a far more complex role in the civic life of communities than many Americans believe. … Younger adults, age 18-29, were especially unconcerned. Fully 75% say their ability to get local information would not be affected in a major way by the absence of their local paper. … [W]hen asked about specific local topics and which sources they rely on for that information, it turns out that many adults are quite reliant on newspapers and their websites.”
Pew: “Local TV (which for the purposes of this survey includes both televised broadcasts and local television websites) is the most popular source for the two topics that almost everyone is interested in – weather and breaking news.”
Pew: “The internet has already surpassed newspapers as a source Americans turn to for national and international news. The findings from this survey now show its emerging role as a source for local news and information as well. … Among the 79% of Americans who are online, the internet is an even more significant source for local news and information. Looking just at this group, the internet is the first or second most important source for 15 of the 16 local topics examined.”
Pew: “Two other factors seem to drive people to the internet when it comes to getting information about local subjects: mobile connections via smartphones or tablet computers and participation in the digital environment by sharing or creating local material themselves.”
Pew: “In addition to the three biggest media platforms – newspapers, television and the internet – the local news and information ecosystem involves a complex mix of other sources as well. And for several local topics, citizen-based systems such as word of mouth (which does not include online social networking), print newsletters and bulletins, and the local government itself make appearances as sources that some residents rely upon.”
Gerrit Eicker
#NymWars
Google Plus‘ identity crises led to #PlusGate and escalated to a war for pseudonymity: #NymWars; http://eicker.at/NymWars
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Gerrit Eicker
Guardian: “Google Plus forces us to discuss identity – Google’s Real Name policy embodies a theory that states the way to maximise civility is to abolish anonymity. … Google Plus’s controversial identity policy requires all users to use their ‘real names’. … [P]roblems include the absurdity of Google’s demand for scans of government ID to accomplish this task and the fractal implausibility of Google being able to discern real from fake in all forms of government ID. … The first duty of social software is to improve its users’ social experience. Facebook’s longstanding demand that its users should only have one identity is either a toweringly arrogant willingness to harm people’s social experience in service to doctrine; or it is a miniature figleaf covering a huge, throbbing passion for making it easier to sell our identities to advertisers. – Google has adopted the Facebook doctrine… There could be no stupider moment for Google to subscribe to the gospel of Zuckerberg, and there is no better time for Google to show us an alternative.”
Gizmodo: “Google, Facebook and Twitter now all have similar products. But Twitter CEO Dick Costolo (somewhat inadvertently) made it clear yesterday that while all three have social networking features and make money from ads, they are in fundamentally different businesses. – At a very basic level, Google+ and Facebook are in the identity delivery business, and Twitter is in the information delivery business. That’s a powerful distinction. It reflects a fundamentally different conception of what’s more valuable: information or identity. It also gets at who is more valuable, advertisers or users. – Google and Facebook’s social products are committed to a real names policy. Both can serve someone up to a network of peers or advertisers with some degree of certainty about identity. – Twitter takes exactly the opposite route towards building a network. You can be anonymous, or use a pseudonym, or even impersonate someone else (as long as you indicate that it’s a parody). It will still connect you to others on its network, and allow you to both serve and receive data. And that’s working well, for everybody.”
SEW: “There has been a lot of speculation about why the push for real names on Facebook and now Google, with Google taking a much harder line than even Facebook, not allowing for even the simplest derivation of ‘nyms’ (pseudonyms). … Why is a company like Google taking such a hard line on something as simple as a name – even though there is no verification process for the ‘real name,’ so ultimately this policing is currently meaningless. … Google’s ambitions for Google+ appear to go far beyond social signals, marketing, and their efforts to make a better product. Dig a little further and you’ll find something called the ‘National Strategy For Trusted Identities In Cyberspace‘ (NSTIC). … A way to establish identity was never invented, so one needs to be. The difference is that companies will hold the real IDs, rather than the government – companies with ‘identity services,’ such as Google. … Maybe we have a new wrinkle in the reason behind the real ID movement, not the betterment of services for Google, but the government initiative into a real online ID system. … Real ID systems should be of concern to anyone who believes in the Bill of Rights and our freedom of speech and to not incriminate ourselves – to live a life that isn’t monitored by entities, ‘private’ or not. Is Google part of this? You have to be the judge.”
Boyle: “Thoughts on rel=author, #nymwars, ‘identity service’ – Over the past month or so, the ‘nymwars’ have become the thing Google+ is most known for among my circle of friends. This is a problem of Google’s own making: they are suspending profiles based on naive heuristics about ‘real names’ (actually typical two part western names), and demanding government ID to reinstate them. … This is not an effective defence against trolls as was initially claimed; they’re more concerned with ideas about G+ as an ‘identity service’ and a way to ‘improve our products’ than about the wishes of their users or the fact that they’re perpetuating the exclusion of minorities. … I recommend linking together your profile pages on other sites, rather than only linking everything to your Google profile. … [D]on’t just do what’s on the left here, because all those associations will be lost when your G+ profile is taken down. If you do something more like what’s on the right, other identity services / social networks and other search engines will have a better chance of presenting what you want them to present.”
Gartner, Blakley: “Google+ Can Be A Social Network Or The Name Police – Not Both – Google is currently trying to enforce a ‘common name’ policy in Google+. The gist of the policy is that ‘your Google+ name must be ‘THE’ name by which you are commonly known’. – This policy is insane. I really mean insane; the policy is simply completely divorced from the reality of how names really work AND the reality of how humans really work, and it’s also completely at odds with what Google is trying to achieve with G+. … A name is not an attribute of a person; it is an identifier of a person, chosen arbitrarily and changeable at will. … Google+’s naming policy isn’t failing because it’s poorly implemented, or because Google’s enforcement team is stupid. It’s failing because what they’re trying to do is (1) impossible, and (2) antisocial. … Google’s intention in moving into social networking is to sell ads, Google+’s common names policy gives them a lock on the North American suburban middle-aged conservative white male demographic. w00t.”
Botgirl: “Ejecting virtually identified people with active social networks shows that Google sees online relationships as illegitimate. When Google ejects you for using virtual identity it not only disrespects your privacy choice, but also the choices of everyone who circles you. Shunning the pseudonymous makes intolerance a community standard. – Today, most of the privacy we relinquish is volitional. But If we lose the Nymwars we all become permanent residents in a global Big Brother reality house. The expression of identity is multidimensional, aspects emerging and submerging in a fluid dance with the changing environment. … It’s ironic that those calling for authenticity want to make all the world a stage and cast us all as full-time unpaid actors.”
GigaOM: “Can gamification help solve the online anonymity problem? – There’s been a lot written recently about the issue of online anonymity, and in particular how Google believes that a ‘real names’ policy is necessary so that the Google+ network maintains a certain tone and level of trust. … It’s not so much that badges or other rewards – Slashdot, a pioneering geek community, has long used ‘karma points’ as a way of rewarding users and selecting moderators – cure bad behavior, or prevent trolls from coming to a site. What they do instead is make it easier to distinguish between what Slashdot calls ‘anonymous cowards’ and those who have gained the trust of the community. Over time, it becomes obvious (theoretically) who is worth listening to and who isn’t… Instead of simply trying to ban or exclude anyone who doesn’t want to use a real name, as Google is doing with Google+, why not try to design a system that rewards the type of behavior you want to see, and lets the users of that community decide who they wish to pay attention to?“
Gerrit Eicker
Rare
Accessibility vs. access: How the rhetoric of rare is changing in the age of information abundance; http://eicker.at/Rare
Gerrit Eicker
Education Gamification
Donahoo: Gamification in education; http://eicker.at/2l vs. Bogost: Gamification is bullshit; http://eicker.at/2m
Gerrit Eicker
Don’t be Evil
Swartz: What does Google mean by “evil“? http://eicker.at/Evil – And a mentionable reply by Cutts: http://eicker.at/NoOne
Gerrit Eicker
Marshall McLuhan
Today would have been Marshall McLuhan‘s 100th birthday: I am busy perceiving patterns; http://eicker.at/MarshallMcLuhan
Gerrit Eicker
Gamification Research Network
Game design elements in non-gaming contexts: great gamification introductory papers for CHI 2011; http://eicker.at/GRN
3D Virtual Worlds and the Metaverse – Current Status and Future Possibilities; Dionisio, Burns, Gilbert: “In the past three decades considerable progress has been made in moving from text-based multi-user virtual environments to the technical implementation of advanced virtual worlds that previously existed only in the literary imagination. …[P]rogressive capabilities enable them to serve as elaborate contexts for work, socialization, creativity, and play and to increasingly operate more like digital cultures than as games. Virtual world development now faces a major new challenge: how to move from a set of sophisticated, but completely independent, immersive environments to a massive, integrated network of 3D virtual worlds or Metaverse and establish a parallel context for human interaction and culture. …[C]entral elements of a fully-realized Metaverse: realism (enabling users to feel fully immersed in an alternative realm), ubiquity (establishing access to the system via all existing digital devices and maintaining the user’s virtual identity throughout all transitions within the system), interoperability (allowing 3D objects to be created and moved anywhere and users to have seamless, uninterrupted movement throughout the system) and scalability (permitting concurrent, efficient use of the system by massive numbers of users). … The first aspect of ubiquity – ubiquitous availability and access to virtual worlds – rides on the crest of developments in ubiquitous computing in general. As ubicomp has progressed, access to virtual worlds has begun to move beyond a stationary ‘desktop PC rig,’ expanding now into laptops, tablets, mobile devices, and augmented reality. … The second aspect – ubiquitous identity, or manifest persona – has emerged as multiple avenues of digital expression (blogs, social networks, photo/video hosting, etc.) have become increasingly widespread. … As long as virtual world developments move alongside general ubicomp developments, moving in and out of the Metaverse may become as convenient and fluid as browsing the Worldwide Web is today. … It is also possible that virtual worlds may take a leadership position in this regard, as virtual world artifacts may be more closely linked to one’s digital persona due to the immersive environment… Interoperability in virtual worlds currently exists as a loosely connected collection of information, format, and data standards, most of which focus on the transfer of 3D models/objects across virtual world environments. … [V]irtual world interoperability is not solely limited to 3D object transfer: true interoperability also involves communication protocol, locator, identity, and currency standards… The wide-ranging requirements and scope of digital assets involved in virtual worlds have the potential of making the Metaverse the ‘killer app’ that finally leads the charge toward seamless interoperability. … Scalability. Virtual world technologies are currently in an initial stage of departure from highly centralized system architectures… Going forward, an integrative phase is needed where the multiple independent research threads are brought together in complementary and cohesive ways to form a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. … Progress in virtual world scalability implies progress in the scalability of many other types of multiuser, multitiered systems. … There are several factors that promote optimism that a fully developed Metaverse can be achieved, as well as a number of significant constraints to realizing this goal. … [A] new generation accustomed to graphically rich, 3D digital environments [both virtual worlds and immersive games offered online and through consoles such as PlayStation, Xbox360, and Wii] is rapidly coming of age and will likely fuel continued development in all immersive digital platforms including advanced virtual worlds. … Along with forces that are propelling the development of the Metaverse forward, there are two significant barriers that may inhibit the pace or extent of this progress. The first pertains to current limits in computational methods related to virtual worlds. … In addition to conceptual and computational challenges, the development of the Metaverse may be constrained by significant economic and political barriers. Currently virtual worlds are dominated by proprietary platforms such as Second Life, Cryworld, Utherverse, IMVU, and World of Warcraft, or government-controlled worlds such as the China-based Hipihi. …[J]ust as the old walled gardens of AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy were instrumental in expanding Internet usage early on, but ultimately became an inhibitory force in the development of the Worldwide Web, these proprietary and state-based virtual world platforms have sparked initial growth but now risk constraining innovation and advancement. … [T]he advancement of a fully-realized Metaverse would likely be maximized by harnessing the same process of collective effort and mass innovation that was instrumental in the creation and expansion of the Web.“