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Election 2010: virtual worlds make their debut

As Australia draws to the end of its five-week election campaign, I’d pretty much given up on the political parties doing anything beyond the odd YouTube or Facebook campaign strategy. As I wrote in 2007, Australia has lagged some other countries in the use of virtual environments for politics, and this campaign hasn’t changed that, with the debate over competing broadband policies about as substantive as it has gotten.

You know for certain that our politicians are truly lagging in this area when the mainstream media beat them to the punch. Channel 9 have announced that their election coverage on Saturday will be centred on a bunch of ‘virtual sets’. As the video below shows, it’s fairly standard green-screen technology, but its an evolution all the same.

Although the interactivity will be limited to manipulating election data, and the communication will be one-way (presenter to audience), it’s a step forward for a couple of reasons. First, it’s provides an in-your-face example of virtual environments as a collaborative and/or information-sharing tool. Second, its use will be a major eye-opener for the strategists in each of the parties, who still appear to be wedded to 2D technologies for campaigning at the expense of everything else. The reaction of the public to Channel 9′s coverage is likely to be mixed, with some pointed criticism likely at gimmickery over substance. That doesn’t matter to a large extent: the cat is out of the bag over at the Fourth Estate. Two of the other Estates (‘the Church’ and the public) already have a good sense of this technology. There’s only one left looking backwards – the one that should be leading the debate or at least actively contributing to it.

Watch the Channel 9 spiel for yourself:

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Discussion on internet filter on Tonight Live is… live!

As mentioned previously, I had the pleasure of appearing on Tonight Live with Paisley Beebe. The topic of discussion was the Commonwealth Government’s proposed internet filtering legislation and its potential impact on virtual worlds.

Paisley asked some incisive questions that helped set the scene for both the challenges and opportunities the legislation may provide. As I say in the interview, I’m confident environments like Second Life won’t be heavily impacted by the legislation, assuming those of us affected ensure the government understands the issue.

Aside from that discussion, there’s some great music from Frets Nirvana and an interesting discussion on virtual pets with Sapphira Laval. Here’s the full show for you to view:

A big thanks to Paisley for the invitation to appear and to Bliss Windlow and AutumnFoxx Sutherland for their assistance in the lead-up. If you haven’t already, do check out the enormous stable of shows that Treet.TV offer: they are an Australian success story to say the least.

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Twinity: intersection of immersion and State

With a new round of funding in the bank, Twinity is on as firm a ground as it’s ever been. The development of virtual replicas of cities has proven a successful formula to date. Singapore is a Twinity stronghold and a virtual Orchard Road is on the way.

twinity-singapore

Two aspects of the Orchard Road announcement caught my interest:

Virtual Singapore was developed in consultation with the Media Development Authority (MDA) and Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA).

and

Twinity is tying up with AsiaOne – the interactive arm of Singapore Press Holdings – to seek retailers, brands and firms interested in promoting their products or space on the virtual ‘Orchard Road’.

Bear with me while I explain some of the intricacies.

The Media Development Authority (MDA) is a government agency that has two main purposes: “The first is to promote the growth of the media industry. The second is to manage content to protect core values and safeguard consumers’ interests“.

The Infocomm Development Authority is also a government agency with the roles of “infocomm industry champion, the national infocomm master-planner and developer, and the Government CIO“.

AsiaOne is a key business within the Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) stable. SPH isn’t government owned, but under SIngapore’s Newspaper and Printing Presses Act, no management shares can be transferred without approval of the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (MICA). This is the ministry that oversees the Media Development Authority.

What this means is that the SIngapore Government has direct involvement in the development of virtual SIngapore in Twinity. Nothing wrong with that at all – Australia’s government has played a role in funding virtual world presences, as have a plethora of other governments. What interests me most is the AsiaOne partnership, which is likely to have an advertising revenue focus. If you’re currently a SIngapore business person, you’re likely to have advertised with SIngapore Press Holdings at some stage as it has nearly 80% of the over-15′s market.

What do you do when SPH’s sales team phone you to negotiate your next advertising package and mention you can now advertise in Twinity? If you don’t know that the government have funded the Twinity presence, the less well informed may see it as a gimmick and decline. This is where it gets really interesting: if take up of advertising in Twinity’s virtual Singapore isn’t as great as expected, what happens next? I won’t be surprised if Singapore becomes the first sovereign entity to have virtual world advertising as a standard option for its business owners. The initial acceptance may be limited but the incredibly close government involvement combined with substantial influence over SPH makes for one fascinating and potentially controversial case study of virtual worlds and business. There’s no criticism of Metaversum intended – they have operated as one would expect of a commercial entity. It’s wider issues of politics, media and governance that invite further discussion.

I fired some questions on the issue through to Metaversum’s Managing Director, Jeremy Snyder:

TMJ: Does Metaversum see the Singapore model of government funding combined with a media partnership to drive advertising as one it’s likely to explore in other markets.

Singapore really offered some unique opportunities for us. Their drive to stimulate and showcase innovative companies in the IDM (Interactive Digital Media) space. The media partnership that we entered here is a strong endorsement of our vision. We do see a lot of value in similar strategic partnerships for other markets.

TMJ: Does it see this model working as well as it may do in Singapore where SPH’s management has a close relationship with the government?

Twinity: The relationship between SPH and the Singapore government was not part of the decision process for entering that partnership. Negotiations for funding in 2008 & subsequent negotiations with SPH were entirely different excercises.

TMJ: Does Metaversum have any concerns that potential success in Singapore may be as a result of the unusually tight control on media in Singapore, which may ensure widespread adoption of virtual world advertising as indirect government policy, making it a case study not easily replicated in other markets?

Twinity: Singapore’s media policies in the Internet space really don’t have any affect on our business. Similarly, we do not plan to apply any different standards for content in Twinity’s virtual Singapore than in other locations in Twinity. We feel our success in Singapore and elsewhere will still come back to the core values of Twinity – the connections to real life, the content available, and the strength of the community.

What do you think: is virtual Singapore likely to provide a unique social experiment?

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Protest in Second Life: the current Gaza conflict

Over on DIP’s Dispatches from the Information Age, SL resident Eureka Dejavu has posted some pics of a protest held over recent days. The focus of the protest is the current flare up of hostilities between Hamas and Israeli defence forces. Specifically, the protest is against the current Israeli actions in the Gaza strip. This has caused some angst in some quarters, with accusations of one-sideness.

gaza_protest

Although I deplore in the extreme Hamas’ actions to date, I’d be surprised if the protesters were there primarily to support Hamas. Isn’t the distress focused primarily on the loss of innocent human lives in the midst of it all?

Yes, Hamas use appalling tactics of placing themselves in civilian areas, but that doesn’t negate the right of those concerned for those civilians to be outraged at their death? As Eureka summarises in her post, that’s exactly the perspective encouraged at the protest.

For mine, this view expressed in the post says it all:

The gathering is an example of the rich, textured opportunity that 3D immersive spaces like Second Life offer for people to express their concerns about present day issues

Click here for the full photo set (from which the above picutre comes) and judge for yourself. As always, comments are welcome – was this a one-sided protest, a rightful platform to express sorrow at current events, or both?

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Australian politics and virtual worlds – no momentum

It’s coming up to a year since the change of Federal government in Australia. In Second Life, there was an election night party.

At the time there was lots of excited talk about the ALP’s broadband policy and the promise it may bring – there is progress on that front but it’s fraught with problems. Then there’s the internet censorship issue bubbling along. All in all, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy hasn’t shone in his role to date. There’s a real perception that we’ve got a government with 20th Century views on some distinctly 21st Century challenges.

In the year since that Second Life election party, there’s been zero interest by either political party in virtual worlds. There’s certainly been significant forays by both sides into social networking via YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. The US presidential primaries this year saw Second Life play a role, and Barack Obama’s supporters kept that going through the campaign itself. Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull have obvously been watching the US Democrats’ online campaigning efforts, but there’s no inkling of a virtual world foray at this stage.

We’ve previously queried our pollies on their thoughts with no response – it appears that the current Minister is no more cognisant of the opportunities and challenges than his predecessor.

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Linden Lab’s CEO to testify before Congress

At 9.30am on the 1st April US Eastern Time, Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale will testify before the US Congress. I don’t have any further details at this stage aside from determining that it’s the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. More specifically it’s the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet Hearing. The topic of the hearing is ‘Online Virtual Worlds: Applications and Avatars in a User-Generated Medium’

If you’re super keen you can view the live webcast. It’s likely to be a fairly mundane event although with any political process there’s the potential for fireworks. Ageplay, gambling and financial services are obvious areas but we’ll have to wait and see how wide the focus becomes.

Update: a text summary of the hearing can be found here on Virtually Blind.

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The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

Note: Philip Rosedale stepping down from the CEO position at Linden Lab is a dominant story in the news at present, which we’ve covered here.

1. BBC News – Virtual world for virtually Irish. “The world likes to drown the shamrock at this time of year, and for the first time plastic paddies can really get in on the act. Tourism Ireland is hosting a virtual St Patrick’s Day parade on Sunday in the internet world of Second Life (SL).”

2. Al Bawaba – eGames Targets Tourism & Education. “With e-Learning on the rise, the search is still very much on for the most effective way of delivering online courses, and encouraging interaction between participants at a distance. Second Life (www.secondlife.com), is the newest, hottest thing in the online teaching world suggests David Wortley, Director, Serious Games Institute, Coventry University and presenter at Knowledge Oasis Muscat’s (KOM) annual eGames Conference (31 March – 1 April, Muscat Hall, KOM). Wortley will deliver two presentations at the eGames Conference that will consider the opportunities offered by Second Life to education, tourism, heritage and culture.”

3. The Daily Telegraph (UK) – Virtual vogue: Second Life wardrobes. “Who pays real money for unreal clothes? Enough people to make digital dressing-up big business. But is virtual fashion just another teenage craze or is it the end of clothes shopping as we know it?”

4. The Times Online (UK) – Has the internet killed jobs fairs? “THE recruitment fair seems to have gone the way of the dodo, the zeppelin and the space hopper. Its moment seems to have passed. Caroline Weeks, head of delivery recruitment at BT Global Services, rather misses the old recruitment fairs where companies used their collective power to lure candidates to meet them face-to-face.”

5. Science Daily – Real And Virtual Pendulums Swing As One In Mixed Reality State. “Using a virtual pendulum and its real-world counterpart, scientists at the University of Illinois have created the first mixed reality state in a physical system. Through bidirectional instantaneous coupling, each pendulum “sensed” the other, their motions became correlated, and the two began swinging as one.”

6. The Brown Daily Herald – Donahue ’11 cashes in as virtual arms dealer. “Before setting foot on Brown’s campus, Evan Donahue ’11 made thousands of dollars creating weapons to summon damned souls and create rifts in space-time fabric to suck in adversaries. The weapons systems were for the virtual world of Second Life, a popular online role-playing game. But the money – more than $20,000 – was very real.”

7. The Bangkok Post – Socializing goes big in 2008. “Enhanced collaboration and Web 2.0 tools, such as social networking, will continue to be integral components across Asian businesses in 2008, say industry analysts. Claus Mortensen, principal for emerging technology research, digital marketplace and new media at IDC, predicts that more companies in Asia will create and maintain corporate profiles on social network sites.”

8. The Huffington Post – All Politics is Virtual. “Will the next election season’s big caucus battle look like a videogame? Web strategist Michael Whitney recently revealed the contents of a Hilary Clinton campaign survey on the Huffington Post, and among the usual questions about political leanings and election contributions was this seemingly odd query: Which of the following have you visited or played online?”

9. Wired – AI-Based Virtual Child Plays in Second Life. “This is how it always begins in the movies. Some well-meaning scientist-geeks create an artificial intelligence, and set it loose to see how it learns and behaves. Next thing we know, he’s taken over the nuke launchers and threatens humanity unless someone brings him an ice cream cone. In this case, the AI was built at Rensselaer Polytechnic, and gets to play in the Second Life MMORPG.”

10. The Australian Financial Review (subscription only) – Aussies lose interest in Second Life. “Australian usage of much-hyped free virtual world Second Life has not returned to highs experienced in mid-2007, according to data released by the system’s US-based publisher Linden Lab.”

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