Re: <nettime> [Augmentology] _A Warcry for Birthing Synthetic Worlds_

["second loop" <secondloop@gmail.com>]

Hi Tobias,

We put up part 2 today, check it out:

http://arsvirtuafoundation.org/research/2008/08/08/_a-warcry-for-birthing-synthetic-worlds_-part-2/

Part of what I've tried to do in these recent posts is to open up the
discussion from just Second Life to Synthetic Worlds generally and to
talk about what might be required to make synthetic worlds more
interesting to more people, or more useful. As these posts claim, some
of those things are interoperability between virtual worlds based on
open standards and more decentralization. If anything, what I'm saying
here is "why second life? No reason why!" Lets get beyond the things
we don't like about Second Life like the shopping malls and the
seeming obsession with vanity and think about how synthetic worlds can
be more useful and why. As they were discussing in the Molly Millions
thread, there are specific things about virtual worlds, just as with
novels, that offer new possibilities for expression, communcation and
resistance.

But, as I'm claiming in these articles, Second Life might not look
like what artists, hackers, political organizers, theorists, want it
to look like, but AOL didn't either, and that didn't mean that the web
was useless. Part of the problem here is the corporate frame currently
popularizing synthetic worlds, but it is that popularity that makes
them appealing to people looking for an audience.

   azdel

On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 8:47 AM, > ! < <gonzo@quadrantcrossing.org> wrote:

> One question that continues to fascinate me is: why Second Life .. ?
>    As in: why has it become such an object of obssession, to its users, and
> to a large number of critics & theorists .. ?
 <...>



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