Category Archives: Second Life

Second Life | The Second Life® Brand Center

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Ding!

I’d read that Second Life developer Linden Lab was prohibiting the press from using its logos, and thought that was ridiculous.

Behold:

Second Life | The Second Life® Brand Center
Guidelines for Press Use of the Second Life Hand Logo

(These are excerpts–mb)

Never use a Second Life Hand Logo (or any part or version of one):

in any name or logo of a business, news program, or publication, including any website or blog, in a header or banner of a website or blog (so far so good, right?–mb) in the title of … without……in any manner…

in any manner that tarnishes the Second Life brand name or the Logo. (My emphasis–mb)

In other words, you may not publish this logo (below), and say it looks evil.

Little RASCALS stir up Second Life

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(Caution: Four-year-old Eddie might just tear your heart out. That’s because he’s built on an AI framework for the military. Images: RPI)

Cognitive scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute claim to have created a Second Life avatar with the reasoning skills of a four-year-old child.

The artificial child, “Eddie,” runs on an RPI supercomputer, and comes from a lab funded by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Selmer Bringsjord, leader of the RPI research team that created “Eddie,” says applications for the tyke might include “homeland defense.”

That’s because Eddie also goes by the name, “Edd.”

And Edd (below) is a baddass homeland security robot who looks like the villainous machine in the film, Robocop. Both Eddie and Edd are based on the Rensselaer Advanced Synthetic Architecture for “Living” Systems, or RASCALS, an artificial life form platform created for military and intelligence operations.

Eddie’s supercomputing descendants will be much more capable of mimicking humans than he is.

“Truly convincing autonomous synthetic characters must possess memories; believe things, want things, remember things.” – Bringsjord

The Pentagon and Homeland Security would then be free to use synthetic characters as spies inworld, for example. There they will able to operate undetected, and unhindered by the pangs of a truly human conscience.

Bringing Second Life To Life: Researchers Create Character With Reasoning Abilities of a Child

Troy, N.Y. – Today’s video games and online virtual worlds give users the freedom to create characters in the digital domain that look and seem more human than ever before. But despite having your hair, your height, and your hazel eyes, your avatar is still little more than just a pretty face.

John Craig Freeman inworld, and at Park Street Station

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Emerson prof. and Second Life artist John Craig Freeman appears in this video to be working on a way for a Second Life avatar to poke around Boston.
In a recent blog post, Freeman said he hopes to develop an open source virtual world.
clipped from johncraigfreeman.wordpress.com

What's wrong with this story?

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“Second Life” employee enjoys second life as a reporter; reads like a psyop

snapshot_002.jpg I’ve been trying to enjoy Second Life this week, as Markbaard Meredith. (That’s me visiting the Star Trek museum.)

Bt first: I am mystified that this is what passes for an embedded journalist in SL:

W. James Au
From April 2003 to February 2006, I was a contract writer for Linden Lab, creators of Second Life, primarily hired by the company to cover SL as an embedded journalist in an emerging society– its controversies, its personalities, its innovations and ambitions, along with larger themes of identity, social norms and organization, and cultural expression important to online worlds in general.

That contractual relationship has ended, but the story continues here.

That means Au was a paid marketing person for Linden Lab for almost three years. Yet he has kept his title seamlessly through his rebirth as a journalist.

Au continues to publish a positive overall message about the brave new world he helped to build.

Au (below) appears to have to have we-make-money-not-art charmed.

A blogger quotes Au: “SL is an international cutting edge creative space with high barriers to entry.”

In other words, the message is: Second Life is where the cool people hang out. Anyone who has explored SL knows this is preposterous, although there are excellent artists like John Craig Freeman working inworld.

But Au’s challenge, and invitation, should make more inworlders out of us.

Docs to fight stress in Second Life

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I learned this while researching this Boston Globe piece (link, excerpt, below): Dr. Joe Kvedar, director of the Center for Connected Health in Boston, says cognitive-behavioral therapy is “the next logical step” for clinical testing in-world. (In-world is where Second Lifers say they are, when they are logged-in.) Kvedar, below, addresses a conference, in-world.panel-shot-3.jpg
MD to fight stress in Second Life – The Boston Globe
In another sign that Second Life is beginning to resemble the first, doctors are stepping into the virtual world to reach patients they might otherwise miss.

A Massachusetts General Hospital neurologist, Dr. Daniel Hoch, wants to learn whether therapy administered in Second Life, the virtual world created by Linden Lab, can have benefits in the world that we share with our spouses, kids, death, and taxes.

In coming months, an instructor from Mass. General will lead 20 to 40 Second Life recruits through guided meditations designed to reduce their stress levels.

Note: They are teaching their subjects the Relaxation Response, which I believe is based on Transcendental Meditation. — mb

Now, it's psyops for your Second Life

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More than one way to skin a cat: Users of the Sentient World Simulation can use graphs, charts and even alternate reality avatars to visualize their information.

U.S defense, intel and homeland security officials are constructing a parallel world, on a computer, which the agencies will use to test propaganda messages and military strategies.

Called the Sentient World Simulation, the program uses AI routines based upon the psychological theories of Marty Seligman, among others. (Seligman introduced the theory of “learned helplessness” in the 1960s, after shocking beagles until they cowered, urinating, on the bottom of their cages.)

Yank a country’s water supply. Stage a military coup. SWS will tell you what happens next.

The sim will feature an AR avatar for each person in the real world, based upon data collected about us from government records and the internet.

The Defense Department is already running sims of Iraq and Afghanistan, China and dozens of other countries, as it prepares for a future of house-to-house urban warfare.

Here’s a link (below) to my story about the Sentient World Simulation at The Register:

clipped from www.theregister.com
Sentient world: war games on the grandest scale
Sim Strife
By Mark Baard
Sentient World Simulation (SWS), it will be a “synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information”, according to a concept paper for the project.”SWS provides an environment for testing Psychological Operations (PSYOP),” the paper reads, so that military leaders can “develop and test multiple courses of action to anticipate and shape behaviors of adversaries, neutrals, and partners”