The Virtual Explorer

Second Life not empty yet

2012-02-01T11:18:00.000Z

Though there is not question that Second Life is having some difficult times, its not fair to say its empty yet. Certainly you don't see the same level of mass crowds as in 2007 as thousands of ordinary people came in to see the future, but you still can see a good sized crowd at certain quality events.

The void of Second Life

2012-01-12T11:29:00.000Z

This one picture I think tells the entire story about what is happening in Second Life. The project of Second Life is clearly in trouble, but it has left a large reserve of skills that produce interesting virtual spaces, even when it is just a mass void for sale.

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

Is Second Life entering a Dark Age?

2012-01-12T11:14:00.000Z

Second Life has experienced the closure of a lot of SIMs. So the effort the generate a kind of cyber Empire made up of regions, Republics, and Kingdoms which were to be united in a single Empire of Linden Labs, a purely economic Empire where Linden Labs got rich by providing a platform which was to support millions of users, and a planet of virtual land to extend as vast as a planet, and perhaps even larger than a planet.

Well the great Empire Dream of Linden Lab is dying out. That is not to say that virtual reality is dying, its just that right now the Second Life project is getting smaller and smaller.

But its interesting to see what is surviving. As for activity the universe of SL is becoming more and more dominated by sexual play. Which should not really be surprising. The Internet almost always gets flooded with porn, after all what would you really want to watch on TV? But its interesting to not the kinds of SIMs that seem to survive.

I have notice that the SIMs that survive are not only sexual, but also often Gorian or medieval with castles and AVs wearing Barbarian outfits. It is almost like Second Life is entering a Dark Age, a world dominated by closed inbred communities, castles, and barbarians.

The collapsing SL looking more and more like Western Europe in 800 AD as imagined on the History Channel or some B rate pulp novels. Does this mean anything? Is it the way the players imagine decline? Is it a social reality of declining social structures that they becomes fragmented, paranoid, and feudal, or is it the case that this kind of fantasy play which has always had the great appeal?

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

Clashnagrave Castle, Clashnagrave

2012-01-10T22:09:00.000Z

Clashnagrave Castle, Clashnagrave, a well executed SIM in Second Life

Castles seem to be the primary form that is surviving the current great death of Second Life SIMs, probably the entire grid will look like Wizards of Warcraft in a year or two at this rate.

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

All mixed up in Second Life

2011-12-09T20:28:00.000Z

Smaller project without the revenues from sex generally have to share islands with other projects, which make for some interesting and a bit mixed up islands.

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

Sex Moon on Second Life

2011-12-02T11:53:00.000Z

This amazingly execute SIM is a hardcore bondage role play SIM. One of the things I have noted in Second Life is that many of the best executed SIMs are sex sims. Probably something very Freudian there.

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

OccupySL

2011-11-14T10:12:00.001Z

OCCUPY WALL STREET SECONDLIFE

Perhaps an Occupy movement in a place like Second Life does not make sense, Occupy is about people who normally contact online coming to together in the real world to effect real changes. But this site is s good source of information.

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

Its a very dirty island

2011-11-11T11:44:00.001Z

Leggo My Preggo - Breeder Bondage Babes in Paradise

I would not feel comfortable showing you what goes on inside this SIM. The long distance shot is perfect, the people who made this SIM has good reason to seek out privacy.

I am no prude in Second Life. Consenting adults have the right to create what ever kind of pornographic performances they agree to. Lets be honest, porn is very big on the Internet and Second Life helps people produce more interactive porn outside of the control of a production house or concerns of human trafficing or exploitation that dog online porn.

But there is a great deal of lurid attachment projected in to Second Life's space from the fantasy space of thousands of users. In this way Second Life becomes a kind of shared dream space, a collective fantasy where the more primal desires of many users get played out.

In this way SL engages users in their fantasy lives, while TV on the other hand tends to distance people. We all have guilty TV shows we like. I love to watch Sex in the City and 16 and Pregnant because I hate them so much. We project emotions and desires in to TV and in this way we consume our own desires, we thus get the illusion of detachment from our desires. Second Life on the other hand allows us to act out our desires, which mean we can't disown them and sometimes are forced to confess that the desires being acted out our our own.

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

SL 11-11-11

2011-11-11T10:20:00.002Z

Remembrance Day touches the virtual world of Second Life.

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

Pirats - Art Galleries, French make the best Sims

2011-11-10T20:23:00.000Z

Pirats - Art Galleries, an French art project in Second Life. French SIMs are often so well executed. This one is artistically one of the best.

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

Shemales on the beach

2011-11-10T13:58:00.000Z

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Abbey%20Island/118/132/45

The Abbey: Shemales, Demons, Pub, Dancing, Dungeon, Beach

The fact that bondage shemales on a beach have such a interesting and well execute SIM shows you how Second Life's virtual world is evolving outside of the media spotlight. Long gone is the ugly virtual suburbs of endless ads. Uncool Second Life is developing in to a rich complex environment.

Now for something beyond cybersex to do with it!

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

BBC News - World of Warcraft suffers subscriber slump

2011-11-10T12:16:00.000Z

"Almost a million people have stopped paying for World of Wa
rcraft in the last three months.

The sharp drop in subscribers was revealed by Activision Blizzard during talks with analysts about its latest financial results.

At the end of September, WoW had about 10.3 million subscribers, down from 11.1 million at the end of June.

Experts put the decline down to competition from new titles but said WoW was still very resilient."

BBC News - World of Warcraft suffers subscriber slump

Though this can be read as more proof of the fall of Virtual Worlds as a viable business, and there is some of that in this, it can also be taken as proof of the rise of the overall virtual worlds market offering more people more options. So a limited number of hard core virtual world users have an ever growing range of options.

Creating World's with Open University

2011-11-03T23:14:00.000Z

Sometimes a very simple implementation of an idea brings home just how powerful that idea is. There is a well established idea that building and using virtual worlds can be tools in education. Open University Inspiring Worlds is a fun and easy to use app which illustrates how we construct a world can help us understand what areas we would like to study and explore.

The simplicity of the tool really illustrates who virtual worlds can help us to find areas of interest. Inspiring Worlds lets you build your own world. You can fill this world with various icons and images which you can put in various relationships. The tool will then analyse what you world says about your areas of interest.

This analyse is not the Facebook analyse were seemingly random links are thrown at you out of almost nowhere. The two worlds I created really did reflect my own interests in life long learning. I have taken courses in science, humanities and art, and I have a strong interest in sustainable development.

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

Flying over New Babbage

2011-10-27T18:16:00.001+01:00

Floating over New Babbage. New Babbage is a well established steam punk community in Second Life, one of the most developed communities I have seen in Second Life.

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

Professor Ewing's Emporium

2011-10-25T23:10:00.001+01:00

Professor Ewing's Emporium

Steam punk is one of the most creative cultures in Second Life, and one that normally does not involve a lot of sex. Steam punk have created some of the most interesting and well executed Sims in the entire Metaverse, and this is one of the best.

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

Proof we live in the Real World and not a Matrix

2011-10-11T11:12:00.002+01:00

These two graphics show the geo-tagged tweeting over a several hour period. We have displayed the tweets "Matrix" style, with green dots on a black background. Just like the way the core Matrix was shown in the movies.

What you can clearly see is the outline of many major cities and even coast lines in the United States and Western Europe. This shows clearly that unlike the movie our Internet is coming from the world. That the creation of data to the web is conditioned by real space which is itself governed by the sociological and climate conditions of our world. You can clearly make out the consequences of real history forming the way open community data is being published to the web, with certain places and cultures producing more geo-tagged data than others.

Above is the data flow through the Matrix as show in the movie. This is a data space of constant data streams which create the illusion in persons of a real world. But you can not see any sight of the real world from the stream itself. Reality as lived by the people in the Matrix is not reflected in the data architecture of the Matrix itself, in the movie.

What we do see looks more like the map above, which shows the United States as seen from space on a perfectly clear night. So the world we see around us everyday and which we take for reality is conditioning and forming the emergence of the world wide web.

We would even say thinking in terms of cyberspace is misleading. The web is an extension of real space, and how real space is used and 'constructed' in our everyday lives.

So we can be pretty confident that we not only don't live in a Matrix, but that the web we are creating today does not behave like the virtual world imagined in the movie The Matrix.

moon

2011-10-08T22:23:00.001+01:00

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

3D of New Babbage SL

2011-10-08T22:15:00.000+01:00

A 3D Photosynth of New Babbage, Steam Punk simulation in Second Life

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

Open Collar, Open Sourced Slavery?

2011-10-07T23:31:00.001+01:00

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

Wexner Center for the Arts doing Augmented Reality

2011-10-07T15:04:00.001+01:00

The Builders Association HOUSE / DIVIDED from Wexner Center for the Arts on Vimeo.

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

Images from SL Burning Man

2011-10-07T11:57:00.000+01:00

Images from this years Burning Man in Second Life.

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

Burning Man in Second Life

2011-10-07T09:36:00.001+01:00

Barbs Burning Party Tent

Party, rave , psytrance, goa, progressive ,techno,live djs. All the music your burning heart desires!

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

State of the Art SL

2011-10-07T09:17:00.002+01:00

With my new iMac I have discovered a new world of SL. Long gone is the grey boxes and 40 meter universe. On the new generation of machines Second Life becomes more like a Xbox with a DVD.

Some pictures showing the current state of the art.

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

Slavoj Zizek - The Reality of the Virtual -Part 1

2011-09-09T15:19:00.000+01:00

Slavoj Zizek provides a brilliant analysis where he points out that we already need to construct virtual avatars to function in society. I can only interact with others because I ignore their biological reality and construct them as a virtual avatar.

The missing piece of SL? Or does SL need the missing piece?

2011-09-02T11:37:00.000+01:00

What I really find a bit odd is the following conditions of Second Life.

Firstly Second Life is full people doing sex RP. There are also high end interactions for people playing sex games that allow people to take control of animations, other people AV or let technology take control of them.

There already exists plenty of vibrator technology that can be connected to a computer.

It would be rather easy to connect a Second Life interface to a vibrator.

So why is everyone not doing it? Why are you not being invited to make a AV come in RL by clicking on a control?

The answer, I suspect, lies in the psychoanalysis of symbolic reality. I have been reading the brilliant theorist Zizek's theory of cyberspace recently. Zizek is far from the clearest theorist, but one point emerges from his approach of cybersex. For Zizek the pleasure from second life is not a simulation or approximation of sexuality. Rather the pleasure is of a symbolic nature always separated from the animal desire of direct sexuality.

Lacan said that the sexual relationship for humans was impossible. I would say this means that we are so lodged in our symbolic world of language and meaning that we have no conscious access to what ever it is animals seem to feel in sexuality. Part of the sexual act is the presence of this strange animal that is actually doing the act which we are more watching then doing. Perhaps this explains the popularity of pornography while people do not get pleasure watching other people eat or do drugs.

In the sexual act our thinking mind is always just an observer. The observer needs to learn to have a pleasure distant from the physical experience which language separates it from.

The joy of Second Life sexuality is precisely the symbolic mind's joy of the idea of sex, rather than a simulation of sex. Engaging technology to make real physical contact would have no impact on the actual joy that we feel.

That is because our joy is a kind of joy of denial. This is what you see often in domination play, where a domme gets and gives a satisfaction by denying sexual pleasure. The sub who is ordered to not touch themselves is getting joy out of the denial of pleasure. Which is what happens in Second Life.