The plan right now is to release the "PAX version" of Minecraft ASAP, but there is some crucial work remaining. Sep 8th is a good guess
Demons ask not for forgiveness, for they know not that they are evil #nymwars
It was once said that the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was to convince the world that he/she did not exist. I believe this to be untrue, because I contend that the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was instead not that he/she did not exist but instead that he/she was God.
Think about it.
Would we not have religions that contradict their own words of enlightenment at the expense of others? I feel that our ideals are corrupt and that it is not entirely our own fault. We see these demons among us in many forms, coming to us in the guise of angels bringing our salvation and safety, but after we’ve given ourselves to them, they show their true nature – far after it is too late to change.
However true this revelation may be, I still refuse to condemn the entire human race for ignorance. No, we always search for deeper meaning and salvation, it is simply in our nature. There is nothing wrong with that driving force within us, but it is that which deceives the masses with false hope and promises that is to fault for this.
I blame the Akuma… the demon.
This is not a debate over religion or lack thereof. I merely wish to frame a related situation in terms which many of us can easily visualize. There is salvation, but not without a fight.
I speak of a special sort of Akuma, or demon… one which infiltrates nearly every facet of our lives. It makes us lazy, and increasingly dependent upon it. We grow weak with every passing day as it grows stronger at our expense and few are the wiser for it.
I am wiser for it, and I wish to shed light.
By nature I study and strive to understand the world of technology. It is a blessing and a curse to know the intricate details and force with which it controls our lives. I am a technology forecaster, a futurist, an academic researcher, but most importantly and foremost I am human. What surprises me most in my study of technology is the condition of the human race as a result of it.
Technology is the beast which demands offerings, and feeds upon us more and more. Much like a demon, it begins with the promise of salvation, and when we begin to trust in it, it asks for more. We do not see the dangers in the innocent requests of this demon because at first it seems so little to give for so much in return.
We receive these great devices and services which allow us to communicate, entertain, and access to all the world’s knowledge in a moment. But just like a demon, our technology grows by our submission to it. We give to it all of our lives, we feed it with images, video, audio, personal details of every part of our lives. We trust in this demon to keep us safe, and we trust this demon implicitly.
But just like a demon, it is never satisfied.
A demon cannot know that it does evil if it believes what it does to be good. Maybe it has worn the disguise for so long that it has begun to believe its own lies. It has become so convincing that a great many are willing to give themselves over without ever questioning the motives or intentions.
I speak of a great evil, an Akuma. A demon so powerful that it has control over most of our lives, and we would be nearly powerless without it. Akuma knows this already, which is why it has become so brazen as to no longer ask for our submission to it, but instead demands our sacrifice to it. When we protest the demands, Akuma is crafty in its response for it knows that words are easily twisted to meet its own ends. We do not stop Akuma… we merely slow the progress for a moment.
Blind progress leaves us frail and powerless. To burn bridges as we cross them in pursuit of our technological superiority is more blunder than blessing.
To know the true power that Akuma has upon you, simply turn off your breaker and shut off the electricity in your home. So fragile is your life and well being that a single button can threaten you.
Somebody controls that button, and it isn’t you. You merely have the ability to demonstrate to yourself that such devastation is possible by a mere button. Listen to your home, how quiet and still it has become. Think of how much you rely on that power to keep you alive.
No bombs are needed to kill you. Not a single bullet need be fired. There is no army to raise against you. There is only silence.
Deafening silence.
In this silence is where the seeds of fear are planted, and where our very sanity is engulfed. The demon knows it will not lift a finger save that to give silence, because many will willingly kill themselves and others in that breach of sanity and desperation.
Akuma is bad only because we are careless, it is powerful only because we are blinded by the distractions and gifts it returns, all with strings attached. Akuma is bad only because it knows nothing else to be true and believes it is doing good for us all.
Technology is not bad if we remain in control of it, and do not let it control us. Akuma is evil only because we allow it.
Akuma goes by many names in modern times. It is called by the demon of information, Google, whom came to us as an angel of order, telling us it would do no evil and now demands all things from us. It twists words and rephrases intentions in order to deceive those which it depends upon for power. It gives privilege to those which submit unto it, and punishes those whom dare defy.
A demon feeds on the lives of others, it collects the souls of its victims; even if it must do so in pieces. A demon punishes those who will not submit unto it when it believes that its power is absolute. It rewards you with things which do not exist, and will steal away from you all that truly matters if you let it. Demons are masters of illusion and lies. They take from you the things you can hold and offer in return the things which do not exist or matter.
More importantly, demons in our lives exist only because we give them the power to do so. We give these demons control over our lives and offer no resistance or alternatives for salvation.
I am not a Luddite. I know that technology and progress have power to make our lives better. It is when we become so complacent in our submission to it and we no longer can offer control over it that technology and progress rule us instead of the other way around.
As Jaron Lanier once said: You Are Not A Gadget. You are bigger than your technology, and only you can find deeper meaning in the interaction and salvation it offers. You alone control whether it becomes a demon or an angel, as it is a reflection of ourselves.
It still remains that Akuma is simply a reflection. It needs us to have any sort of power, and it keeps this knowledge from us in hopes that we should never have this revelation.
Remember this the next time your power goes out, or these demons stop asking you to comply and begin demanding when it believes you have no other choice.
There is always a choice, and it begins with knowledge. Do not be afraid of Akuma, for it is powerless without your submission, and knowledge is its weakness. It is weak against the same things which all demons are – the light of truth and human spirit.
Be not afraid of our technology, nor compelled to give unto it things which would endanger you or remove your control over it. It is you who control this demon, and determine if it remains an angel at our mercy or becomes so corrupt that we are merely slaves.
Jump Jump!!! another name is “Jumping Now”. It is an interesting and skilled game. In the game, you need to let the painted small beans jump up ceaselessly.
Convincing Huck Finn to whitewash the #SecondLife fence.
This is one of those blog posts that will invariably be written from the top of my head, but definitely less technical. It’s about life experience, history repeating, and of course about why I really don’t like “other” grids in SecondLife. I understand very well that “other” grids aren’t necessarily part of SecondLife and it can be argued that they are separate entities unto themselves. For instance, OSGrid, ReactionGrid, InWorldz (which I have a particular distaste for), SpotOn3D (which is probably the only grid that actually manages to piss me off simply because of their arrogance and disregard), and others.
This isn’t to say that I dislike all other grids, however I do keep the whole thing in proper perspective, which seems to be a rarity with those who actually use those grids.
Let me tell you a story about my
first years in virtual reality.
I got my start back in the days of VRML and places like Blaxxun Contact, but the system I was using back then wasn’t exactly Blaxxun. Instead it was a place called Cybertown (which to this day most likely still exists as a digital ghost town). Cybertown could be described under the concept that I became very familiar with over the years called a White Label product, whereby the company responsible for the technology or service would license that technology to third parties without any branding. In the case of Blaxxun (and I’m sure BSContact can correct me if I’m wrong), it was a company that made a good technology product – in that they made a multi-user layer for VRML systems, and that technology was white labeled and licensed to third parties who would then create their “unique” systems powered by Blaxxun Contact technology.
Years later, I encountered this scenario while using ActiveWorlds technology. Their main universe, the Active Worlds Universe, was really of little concern to the company because they made a majority of their money (and probably still do to this day) licensing out their technology to third parties as a white label product and service. Just like the scenario with Blaxxun, there existed in the case of ActiveWorlds dozens or maybe even hundreds of third party “Active Worlds” based universe systems all rebranded with different company names and sold as unique services, all betting on the idea that nobody had heard of ActiveWorlds, or any of the other third party universes to begin with.
Concerning ActiveWorlds, at least they were partially correct in assuming nobody had heard of the parent company responsible for the technology. But during those years I wound up with a sort of virtual world fatigue. I’m sure any long-term virtual environment user will concur, that virtual world fatigue is real and it comes and goes, but often is triggered by oversaturation of similarity.
What brought this on in my AW years was this constant insistence by third party universe owners (white labeled universes) that I should leave ActiveWorlds and come join their universe instead. Clearly they were better than ActiveWorlds, would go the argument. They, of course, had essentially bolted on various additions to the browser at the time, maybe set up a novel registration system, or paid for certain modifications to the ActiveWorlds browser or server which made their version slightly different. Many of these third party, white-label universes were small fish in the ocean of virtual worlds and you’ve likely never heard of them before. Places like Virtual Celebrity Islands (Peace City), Virtual U, SpiralMatrix, Vectorscape, Galaxyworlds, Cybernet Worlds, and even the ill-fated Juno Internet Service had their own browser at one point. If you’re an ActiveWorlds user (or an old timer who remembers) those names should sound familiar, but if you weren’t in the ActiveWorlds scene, then it is highly likely none of those systems ring a bell, let alone remembering ActiveWorlds itself.
Part of the third party ploy to attract users away from other systems and from ActiveWorlds itself was to offer cheap land and server space for the object paths (sound familiar?) or tout how they had a better and easier setup and registration process that in some way had different features that made it better than what Activeworlds had offered. Many even introduced their own in-world currency system.
Is any of this sounding familiar to you?
This pretty much sums up what goes through my mind
In the end, the hard truth of the matter was this: No matter how much any of them tried to differentiate themselves from the main company responsible for the technology in the first place, they always fell short and instead were always seen as either short term flash-in-the-pan or (more appropriately) living in the constant shadow of Activeworlds, and thus perceived as a cheap copy.
There was, of course places that exist today like VirtualU, but despite the in-world hacking and paid additions to the software in order to add features and abilities, to this day the idea of a specialized system built for expos and business meetings never seemed to make sense to me (and even if it did, I can’t imagine that business is exactly booming). The modern equivalent to VirtualU today is SpotOn3D, who I’ve had the pleasure of hearing insist to me how they alone finally got this “virtual world” thing right when all else have not – however not realizing that it’s all been done before and has failed, and that I actually know this because I witnessed it myself over many years in the industry before SecondLife even existed. But moreover, the modern equivalent to all of those third-party universes from the Activeworlds white-label process happens to be the scenario by which we have all of these different “grids” and then SecondLife as the main example of the technology.
Just replace the word “Universe” with “Grid” and you realize we’ve repeated the scenario once again, and I’m seeing pretty much the same outcomes and attitudes replayed.
With InWorldz, they remind me of SpiralMatrix or Cybernet Worlds, where the land is basement priced, the service is on par, and the technology is two generations or more behind the main company responsible for the technology to begin with. The users of that system act like a cult from Utah, and insist it is far superior to even SecondLife or any of the other grids, and always cite things like “the land is so much cheaper here!”. Hell, they even created their own currency in world called I’s or whatever. Congratulations to the hard work of the team behind InWorldz, because it does take a lot of work to run and operate a virtual world environment. However, your “grid” is doomed to obscurity in the grand scheme of things, and if SecondLife itself is a niche audience, yours is a niche within *that* niche.
I have the same to say about most “grids” and even to many virtual environment systems on the whole like BlueMars and Kaneva, and (yet again) There.com. Let me address a few “grids” here. It’s not sugar coated, and it’s going to hit a nerve, but at least I’m being blatantly honest and upfront. I’m sure it is likely to offend, because I’m not about to paint a rose-colored picture of where we’re at as a whole.
I’m about to be very candid, and straight to the point.
If you wish to remain unoffended or stay within your rose-colored world where nothing you do is wrong, I suggest you skip the rest of this post, as it will be a realist viewpoint verging on the edge of cynicism. Any comments that are derogatory, flaming or just outright attacking will be ignored entirely. This is just my own opinion and analysis, without any sugar coating – it will likely be very harsh.
SpotOn3D – you haven’t gotten anything right. You’re just arrogant and ignorant. All the business acumen in the world didn’t save you from brewing the worst PR sh*tstorm you could have mustered, and a lack of actual understanding for the history and practice of virtual worlds as a whole has you repeating common (yet completely avoidable) mistakes. You don’t seem to understand the merit of how people react to what seems like subtle policies or actions on your part, and that it would cause trouble in the long run. Pride comes before the fall. You haven’t done anything at all different than when I called your idea “VirtualU” or any number of other virtual world environments who thought it was a novel and innovative idea ten years ago to set up a walled garden system to cater to business professionals and schools. You’re heading down the same path as your predecessors, gleefully and completely oblivious, if not outright self-assured. If anything, the recent PR nightmare should have been your wake-up call.
InWorldz – Put a leash on your community. It’s ok to want to grow your userbase, but not through sleazy practices like trying to get people to leave other virtual environments. I don’t hold you, as the company, at fault. I fault your community – but you can make a big difference in that perception by actually coming up with creative outlets to promote InWorldz *outside of the SL community niche* like an actual, honest to god, real company would. Right now, you (and many other grids) are giving off the perception that you’re a bunch of vultures fighting over users. That has to stop if you ever hope to be a brand and service that stands on its own merit, and not in the shadow of others – a footnote in the history of virtual worlds, if you even bother to warrant that much.
Avination: Start with what I just said about Inworldz and add to it this nugget of knowledge: An online marketplace isn’t the reason your in-world land sales falter. Banning magic-boxes isn’t any more of a solution than banning automobiles because you can’t seem to sell horses anymore. The problem isn’t the innovation in marketplace type systems, it’s the lack of added value in having in-world stores. Forcing the issue isn’t a solution. Instead, why not offer education to your business users or entrepreneurs to show them that actually running a virtual business implies many of the same things as running a real business, and that if they insist on making their “store” nothing more than a fancy vending machine, then they should not expect people to treat it any better than that. Having a privately held marketplace system that doesn’t interoperate with other grids unless they agree to a privately held agreement does more damage than good in the bigger picture – and is the same lesson I offer to SpotOn3D as well as Linden Lab, except in the notion that Linden Lab can afford to ignore this for the time being while you and other open grids cannot.
Kitely: While you have a good idea, I don’t believe it has really been brought to your attention that marginalizing and perpetuating the already damaging image of treating virtual environments as disposable and cheap is bad for the industry as a whole. The entire point of the virtual world industry is to try and convince the majority of the public that virtual worlds are a lasting, persistent and engaging arena for all manner of interactions – so much so that it has the potential to supplant or greatly augment current web practices. By offering cookie-cutter, on-demand, throw-away instances, you bring that higher understanding down to the level of “gimmick”. While you are poised to make money in the short term, and even make an adequate business model from doing so, the bigger picture is that the cost of doing so is near irrevocable damage to the overall perception and expectation of seriousness and persistence for virtual worlds as a whole. On-demand spaces serve a very small niche, while perpetuating negative ideals of what a virtual world should be to the masses.
Linden Lab: I don’t even know where to begin. You have a decent system, not the best. There is a lot to offer but it is buried in bad decision making, high employee (and CEO) turnover, and stagnation in innovation. You have a marketing leader who has done little to innovate the perception or lead of your company. Of the 150 brand names in virtual worlds as of 2006-2007 (as reported by KZero), considered the hey-day of SecondLife, possibly 2 exist actively in SecondLife today, while brand names like Dell Computer are a digital wasteland of inactivity, probably flying under the radar of accounting and existing purely on recurring billing. Searching for any of those brand names today is like reading a virtual worlds obituary. You control the most powerful marketing engine the world has ever known called Marketplace in conjunction with what amounts to the most ideal (for the time being) method of immersive experience, and fail to see the connection between real life brands as marketing and prosumer culture by which your system boasts in spades.
You literally have an army of content creators who would bend over backwards to accommodate your company in the unlikely event that you implemented an IP system which rewarded users for creating content on behalf of brand names instead of punished them. This should be your focus, and not expending inordinate amounts of time and money chasing down DMCA requests and playing virtual worlds Whack-a-Mole. Instead, your marketing director has spent the last year “getting acquainted” with SecondLife and has enacted what constitutes business as usual – all the while seemingly not understanding that SecondLife is far from business as usual and by no means should be treated like a video game. Instead of implementing a prosumer based solution to your dilemma you continue to approach this issue in brick and mortar methods; separation between producers of content and consumers – you’re thinking like a video game company and not like an open ended virtual environment company. In the process, you continually invoke the Streisand Effect, shutting down one or a group of IP infringing creators, only to have twenty or more pop up shortly after either on your marketplace or bypassing your gaze and selling directly in-world. Your IP “Pop Quiz” that every person needs to take and pass before they are allowed to upload content via Mesh is the thinnest veil of a solution, demonstrated by the Back to the Future Delorean Mesh car replica sitting on the Beta Grid – not just one, but half a dozen of them.
Instead of wasting money and time playing cat and mouse, or covering your ass in the thinnest excuse for IP protection action you could muster, it’s time to use your resources to work smarter and not harder. You need to give those brands a reason to come back, and this time actually stick around. You need to do this in a manner which celebrates the fact that you have an army of prosumers who are more than eager to do your bidding and win sanction for those brand names, to do the work for them, and hold their heads up high as the official outlets of those products in your virtual space, while giving those brand names inexpensive and viral capacity for marketing in the virtual environment. It’s time to turn your perception of negative into positive and use it to your advantage. Clearly Linden Lab didn’t give them a reason the first time when they had all the world as a stage, so you had better be willing to roll up your sleeves and work on being innovative and enticing to those brands that you lost, getting them (and far more) back into your system. It’s not as hard as you’re making it out to be, trust me.
When you said you didn’t understand why SecondLife had staying power, or why it continues to be popular, I knew you weren’t lying. It clearly has an appeal that has yet to be effectively quantified for you or your staff, or how to actually use that to your advantage. Just ask your marketing director, who doesn’t seem to have any more of an idea than she did a year ago when she began. Mr Humble, in all of your experience in the video game industry, even you have to admit that it didn’t prepare you for SecondLife – in many ways this digital nation is leaving you baffled and perplexed.
What you need, Linden Lab, is somebody who can explain this to you and give you a clear path to raise the bar. Somebody who can easily lay it out, and explain why consumer versus producer thinking doesn’t work in your business, and what is more likely to work in your favor instead. The problem is that the person you are likely to find for that position isn’t going to conform to your preconceived notions of who you think is best. They should be willing to tell the hard truth, and not sugar coat it. It should be a person with multitudes of experience in virtual world environments, not just SecondLife but across a very broad range of virtual world environments over the course of many years spanning almost to the dawn of virtual world environments themselves. You’re looking for people who have experience in technology or video games, but seem to not understand that you’re hiring people for the wrong job. SecondLife isn’t a video game, and hiring people with video game industry experience is a mismatch. Hiring the right person will be the hardest decision you’ll ever make, because your very core of being will scream and tell you not to.
That, however, should be your clear indication that you are about to get it right. I don’t really care who you hire, as long as they are capable of meeting or exceeding those requirements, however unconventional. Virtual Environments like SecondLife are new media, cutting edge, and there aren’t any degrees from any college that will prepare somebody for dealing with it – that is your first mistake. Mr Humble, you’re the CEO of Linden Lab and even your own years of experience at a video game company didn’t prepare you for SecondLife, so it’s time to start looking for people who meet unconventional and realistic expectations for the situation at hand. You should be hiring for that based on actual virtual environment experience in a business sense, not whether they can pull a college degree out of their butt on demand.
I’ll say to you what I’ve told countless other virtual environments and even game companies before you: You have the potential to be something far more amazing than even you can imagine right now. Unfortunately, potential is only one part and is often overshadowed by lack of action or understanding. It would be a shame if your potential were wasted like so many others in the history of virtual worlds. Just ask all the white label spin-offs who the world has wholly forgotten, and will continue to forget today.
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