Metanomics presentation screen
Metanomics, a group that gathers in Second Life with a good “2D” Web showing as well, had a discussion March 2 on avatar culture.
The session preview stated that Anthropologists Tom Boellstorff and Celia Pearce are developing new methods and theories about human relationships in virtual worlds and would be discussing how traditional ethnography is being adapted to the study of online immersive environments and how virtual worlds shape identities, economies, communities and societies.
One of Metanomics’ many strengths is its ability to have a regular Web component at the same time that in-world meetings are held.
If you have a signon with Metanomics, you can participate in the chat even if you are not in-world, using ChatBridge.
The Metanomics group makes full use of its Web and its SL presences by delivering rich information in a variety of formats.
The first guest was Robin Gomboy of ReactionGrid, an alternative to Second Life which appeals more to some businesses and educational groups because it doesn’t have an in-world economy (although residents can buy and sell using shopping carts like people do on the “2D” Web) and the rules dictate PG content only. A single sim costs a “hosting fee” of only $25 a month, and a 6-sim private grid is only $75 a month. You can host your own server as well. In the near future they will be adding hypergridding to it (allows avatars to move between privately owned areas without getting a new signon, avatar, etc.).
For immersive education, Gomboy noted that the prerequisite seemed to be that there is not an in-world economy already in place. Educators typically don’t want an in-world economy.
Metanomics’ Beyers Sellers said he didn’t tend to agree but then he comes from a college economics environment and that may be coloring his perception.
Metanomics host Beyers Sellers asks questions of his guests during a discussion on virtual world cultures.
ReactionGrid’s terms of service stipulate that residents have PG-rated content only. There are some software tools which are being built just for ReactionGrid. Experience and leadership are playing an important role to help shape the culture and create trust among the other members, she added.
Advice for “Gridizens”? Remember how hard it was for you to learn the basics of getting around – help others out with teaching the technology, respect others’ meeting spaces, and respect others’ privacy.
ThinkBalm innovation community is a ReactionGrid participant. They decided to ask members to use their real names to increase the trust factor. Instead of using virtual chair and a copy of RL lecture setups, they experiment with 3D best practices in online learning.
First major cross-grid event last weekend. She is the speaker for the TechNet group in SL and in ReactionGrid. She was using HippoViewer and in both worlds at once. She used LiveMeeting to help in her presentations.
Next interview:
Tom Bellstorff, a professor of anthropology at the University of California Irvine, has done research on sexuality, globalization, etc., and cybersociality.
The session presentation screen shared these links:
CDS : Metanomics Messenger: Tom Boellstorff:
http://www.anthro.uci.edu/faculty_bios/boellstorff/boellstorff.php
Celia Pearce (Artemesia Sandgrain in SL) -
American Anthropologist
http://www.aaanet.org/publications/ameranthro.cfm
CDS : Metanomics Messenger: Celia Pearce’s Web sites:
Georgia Tech: http://www.gatech.edu/
Experimental Game Lab: http://egl.lcc.gatech.edu
Emergent Game Group: http://egg.lcc.gatech.edu
Mermaids Project: http://www.mermaidsgame.net
Ludica: http:www.ludica.org.uk
Virtual Cultures: http://virtualcultures.typepad.com
IndieCade: www.IndieCade.com
Celia Pearce & Friends (Design & Consulting): www.cpandfriends.com
Metanomics Messenger: A Ludicrous Discipline? from: Ethnography and Game Studies
http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~douglast/620/tom.pdf
This work defines and discusses three phrases:
game cultures
the cultures of gaming
the gaming of cultures
Metanomics Messenger: The Gay Archipelago: Sexuality and Nation in Indonesia (
http://www.amazon.com/Gay-Archipelago-Sexuality-Nation-Indonesia/dp/0691123349/
), winner of the 2005 Ruth Benedict Award from the Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists
http://www.uvm.edu/~dlrh/solga/
Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human
http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Age-Second-Life-Anthropologist/dp/0691135282/
Tom Boellstorff (Tom Bukowski in SL) – what would have to change in virtual worlds and what doesn’t have to change?
Boellstorff has been doing this research for a little over 5 years. He deliberately set it up to fail by using the classic methods he used in Indonesia and applying it to SL without consideration for the differences between the environments. Surprisingly he didn’t have to change a lot.
Would he use alts or not? He decided not to.
Questions about money and anonymity – have parallels in the real world.
He likes to refer to the non-cyber world as the physical world rather than as the Real World or RL, because he maintains that what you do in SL has real consequences and is real to its participants; just differently so.
IRB – institutional review board. When a researcher does research with people, they have to get approval from this board because you are working with human subjects. It’s about protecting people’s privacy and confidentiality.
He used a research design that was entirely inside of Second Life and didn’t try to get physical world information about the people. He only asked about the person’s SL life and used their SL names.
Pearce said in her research she kept encountering people who were in some way disabled and was surprised by the commonness of that scenario.
Demographics of Baby Boomer Computer Gamers – Players of the game Uru, which was closed in 2004. The majority of these players were baby boomers, she found.
Forums just for baby boomers – like Game Boomers. There is a myth that baby boomers want to play only casual games, but that turned out not to be true. Many of them were replacing their TV watching time with their gaming. They liked adventure games but don’t like to hang around with certain types of groups associated with online games. They want to play with people their own age for a more refined method of relating.
They all were really active in communities. Fav activity – exploring. 2nd fav – helping others learn the ropes.
Baby boomers with young people at home tended not to play with their kids. Most of the players used a PC rather than a console, which they tended to think were for the kids.
The Wii came out about the time her study was finishing up and they actually targeted the baby boomer generation.
Let’s talk about Uru – based on the game Myst – if anyone has a version of the Scarab of Ra on the PC, let him know (Beyers Sellers) because he misses it!
Crap Mariner noted that there was a hack of Myst called Pyst, in which you could see the ecological effects of 10 million users walking through the Myst landscapes. He called it crude, deranged and brilliant, which made everyone laugh.
Those who played in Uru became “Uru refugees” or “diaspora” when Uru shut down. They tried to recreate some of their favorite elements from the world later, which she calls a trans-culturization process.
Like refugees in the physical world, the Uru refugees were kind of moved around and given a hard time for the lag they caused everywhere they went.
Fleep Tuque said: “I’ve written about the total fail of trying to move the BBS community to here, I think you lose a lot when you try to switch platforms if new platforms don’t facilitate the kinds of ineraction that the community formed around in the first place.”
“We aren’t spending enough time in the question space. Sometimes it’s the question that matters more than the answers. There’s often a real interest in design or implementation research but we need to also stay in the question space so that we come up with some good questions to ask before we rush to those solutions.”
– Tom Boellstorff
His book – “Coming of Age in Second Life” – he tries to write for multiple audiences, some of which know a lot more than others about the basics of virtual worlds/online games.
This wonderful new mode of interaction has its problems but shouldn’t be dismissed outright. In The Matrix, the virtual world is used to enslave the humans, so there is a fear factor here towards virtual worlds.
For Pearce as a game designer, when you design games you are also designing cultures, and you may not know what kind of culture will emerge with your game.
AbaBrukh Aabye
I asked one participant, whose background is in anthropology, to tell me what he got out of the discussions:
AbaBrukh Aabye: well, the concept of culture in virtual worlds has interested me since I first was an early beta tester on what became AOL
AbaBrukh Aabye: and it’s clearly becoming a larger part of human culture in general
AbaBrukh Aabye: I discovered SL from a feature on NPR
AbaBrukh Aabye: but when I’ve talked about it to some of my RL friends, they just laugh
The way people think about virtual worlds is varied depending upon their experience and what they want out of life. Having a little imagination is helpful for enjoying the concept of spending time in a virtual world. The fact that real life (RL) is called the physical life by one of the speakers is very telling: real things are said here in Second Life and in other virtual worlds, real relationships are forged (my own present relationship included), and real struggles are fought. Anytime you have a mix of people interacting, that is real.
But it will be some time before a significant part of the Internet-visiting population will feel that way, too.
Aerial view of a Metanomics sound stage
Friday, October 10, 2008
The NPR radio show Science Friday has been airing its shows with an added Second Life component. The team has designed a spiffy outdoor ampitheater and Ira Flatow has an avatar he uses in world to represent him. His producers read the questions and comments that fly by in chat, relaying the more interesting ones to Ira, who will acknowledge the questioner and answer the question on national radio. During this session, I was delighted to actually have him addresss one of my questions on the air. It was my fifteen seconds – hehe!
Following is my Coveritlive.com transcript of my notes I took live. Please forgive the rough nature of the notes.
1:20
Science Friday host Ira Flatow on Oct. 10 hosted a 2-hour radio show which ran on National Public Radio and also in Second Life, with opportunities for questions from both.
The show included guest Robert Colwell, Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Connecticut.
1:29
Scientists have found a bacterium that is self-sufficient – contains all the tools they need to eat and grow. Here’s a link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080929104601.htm
1:33
Off-duty Linden Prospero Linden attended the show in Second Life. “Self-sufficient bacteria should be able to take over the Earth,” he commented in the chat window during a discussion of the self-sufficient bacteria discovered near a gold mine. “They really CAN kill off all other species without worrying about themselves.”
View image
Visit Science School in Second Life
1:34
Be sure to visit the Science Friday Web site for background information about the guests and the topics discussed, as well as a replay of the show.
1:35
You can listen to the show live online at http://www.sciencefriday.com/about/listen/.
1:45
Bjorlyn Loon, the Science Friday group manager in Second Life, adds: “From Birth to Death and Bench to Clinic: The Hastings Center Bioethics Briefing Book for Journalists, Policymakers, and Campaigns http://www.thehastingscenter.org/publications/briefingbook/.”
1:53
Question: re: Congress getting pertinent information from lobbyists, why can’t legitimate science organizations provide information to Congress in addition to lobbyists?
Answer: There is an increasing effort on the part of nonprofits to provide good information to the government. Example: The Bioethics Briefing Book.
1:54
The Hastings Center is next working on a book about end of life issues like hospice care and palliative care.
1:55
Also, the Hastings Center is working on researching the ethics of performance enhancers such as steroids, etc.
1:56
The chat log is scrolling very fast now and people are vociferously debating the ethics of health care policy and how it should/can be made better.
1:58
*End of first hour**Second hour to start soon*
2:08
A law has been passed which classifies some forms of mental illness as coverable by health insurance. William C. Moyers, Vice President for Internal Affairs at Hazelton Foundation.
2:09
The biggest highlight is that Congress and the President have acknowledged that diseases like bipolar and depression are actual chronic diseases that need to be treated and included with other diseases in terms of coverage by private health care insurance.
2:10
So the bill is a major step in the right direction of acknowledging mental illness as a legitimate illness. This would affect businesses over 50 employees and are already covering addictions treatment. It would require the same copay for that kind of treatment as for other kinds of treatment that are not classified as mental illness.
2:13
Will insurers be able to refuse an application for insurance based upon a family history of mental illness? Moyers said he really didn’t know – it is possible. He said he is a recovering addict and alcoholic and he thinks being able to talk about one’s recovery is a healthy thing and not a negative.
2:13
Is addiction treatment a bipartisan issue?
2:14
The reality is that this is an illness that has reached across both aisles of Congress. We have a terrible problem with the War on Drugs where we just lock people up for being addicts. Governmental leaders are waking up to the idea that we need a different way to handle this by holding addicts responsible for seeking their own treatment for this.
2:15
Correcting an earlier attribution: Not “Hazelton” but “Hazelden” – http://www.hazelden.org/
2:16
Has there been an emergence in this country as talking about addiction as a form of treatable illness.
2:17
Stat: Only 25% of people who need treatment for addiction ever get it in this country. (needs attribution)
2:18
Question: Does the new law limit the number of visits to the doctor for treatment? It’s not a carte blanche and companies need to be able to limit the overall costs of health care, but the point of the bill is to make the treatments for mental illness and addiction treated in the same way by insurance companies (copays, etc.) as other kinds of illnesses, for companies that cover both already.
2:19
Broken: My Story of Redemption and Addiction is the name of Moyers’ book.
2:19
Next segment: Gardening
2:22
Topics
Gardening all year long: four-season gardening.
Most important ingredient for a buffer crop in your own back yard is COMPOST.
2:23
Find out why your compost heap just isn’t working.
First guest – Barbara Damrosh, owner of Four Season Farm in Brooksville, Maine and a Washington Post correspondent.
2:25
Maine is very cool, moist climate, but not a lot of sun. Growth is pretty much continuous so right now there is just harvesting going on.
ABCs of fall gardening:
1. Clean up any debris or weeds.
2. Put down a couple of inches of well-rotted compost to begin soaking in
If you don’t have to till or dig you can get started more quickly in the spring.
If you want to get crops in early winter, you have to sow crops in early fall or late summer. Some areas are still okay to start this stuff. Look for unusual greens that do well in cooler areas like asian greens, etc.
2:25
If you’re in the South you probably can leave them in the regular ground. But if you’re farther north you need to use a cold frame in the ground.
2:27
Some of the root crops do very well in colder soil.
Debra Martin on worms and composting. You can set up a worm bin in your home with a plastic storage container of about 14 gallons. Your worms will eat a couple of pounds of kitchen compost per week. The soil should not be too wet but only lightly moist. Martin started her bin with about 200 red worms from a fishing bait store.
2:28
Interesting: red worms like warmer environments like manure rather than wild worms which are for the most part night crawlers and like cooler temps.
2:29
Preparation of the worm bin – drill some holes in it about 6 inches apart for air flow.
Shred some 3-inch pieces of wet newspaper, mix in a cup of compost and a cup of soil to help the worms digest the food.
Throw in a cup of corn meal to start the food. Mix well and add worms.
YUMMY!
2:29
When are the worms ready for the kitchen scraps? Not long – a couple of days. Monitor the bin by lifting the lid – if there is a lot of condensation or the worms are near the top, it may be too moist and you’d want to prop the lid up for a while to air it out.
2:31
Worms don’t tend to like anything with a potential to grow, as in seeds. They like:
coffee grounds and filters
tea bags
peelings
apple cores
bad spots on veggies
egg shells
bread crust
moldy bread
cooked vegetables (not greasy or salted)
NOT onions or citrus
2:31
Damrosh has a compost bin outside.
2:32
Flatow says there is a video on the Web site about how to make a compost tea out of worm compost. I think it is this one: http://www.sciencefriday.com/videos/watch/10112
2:33
Correcting the spelling – not “Damrosh” but “Damrosch”
2:34
Managing larva in your compost bin – scrape them off and remove them.
Bury the food in the compost soil to make the scraps more available to the worms and also to discourage the flies from being attracted.
2:34
Damrosch’s book can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/Garden-Primer-Second-Barbara-Damrosch/dp/0761122753
2:35
Other ways to garden when it’s cool:
floating row cover
wall of water
cold frame
greenhouse
2:36
Martin’s book info can be found here (as well as her Web site with lots more info about composting): http://www.compostgardening.com/
2:38
Martin – on the care of the worms and harvesting the compost :
dump the compost out on a piece of newspaper in a lighted place in a volcano shape. Gradually scoop off the top and sides of a cone. The worms will continue burrowing to the center to avoid the light, and in this way you can get compost for the garden without getting your worms. Use a soil sifter to get the rest of them before putting the compost in your gardens.
2:40
The author of this blog gardened in Oklahoma for 10 years and thoroughly enjoyed it (except for weeding in August!). I got a strange pleasure from handling the worms, but I didn’t know to try out the red worms. I just had night crawlers. But my compost bin was a great design – like two farm pens with a lower dividing section in the center. Both sides had a gate with latch so you could easily turn the pile from one section to the other. Bricks were underneath.
2:42
Can you compost with seaweed? Yes, you can – has lots of nitrogen and trace elements and composts very easily. Shells are also wonderful for the compost bin and will gradually break down. Lobster shells and similar chitin coverings also will compost, a bit more quickly than the clam shells.
2:56
“Worms Eat my Garbage” by Mary Hasselhoff
Great starter book on worm composting.
Can you grow mushrooms in the worm bin in your house? I asked and Ira repeated on national radio. Answer: Yes, we’ve grown mushrooms in worm compost before. It’s worth a try.
3:00
These notes were taken using the online live blogging tool coveritlive.com. If you haven’t yet tried this tool, you really will like it. See the CoveritLive.com transcript and get a link to the site so you can try it too.