3D Worlds and Socialising on the Internet

The idea behind a 3-Dimensional Instant Messaging client is to broaden and deepen the communication experience. I must admit that Second Life was something that caught my attention some time ago, when it was featured on Four Corners as the next evolution in online communication and the online community. To be fair, the focus of the article was upon the barter system featured within the ‘game’ and the potential to make serious money. But I’ll get into that later.

Logistically, the download was immense – especially on a primitive Broadband connection such as mine and the sign-up or Character creation was extensive. With expectations of ‘City of Heroes’ and 'World of Warcraft’ two ‘Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games’ – I dived in looking for some action. The first thing I noticed about this 3-Dimensional Online world was that it was not a video game, but more closely: a really dynamic chat room.

Like IM programs such as MSN, Yahoo Messenger or ICQ (going way back), the 3D World of Second Life retains the core messaging concept of typed messages. When someone types their message, it appears in the chat box, and also as a speech bubble above their ‘avatar’s’ head – personalising the experience while blurring the boundary between the virtual and the world. But the big difference was gestures. Actual, physical gestures like anger, frustration, happiness, confusion, boredom, violence, begging, waving and a host of tricks like handstands, back flips, twirls, rolls, hopping, skipping, dancing – the list goes on. What this means is that 3D Worlds, Social interaction and communication through this medium has become clearer, more effective and far more interesting.

IM works on a “Name” basis. In 3D Worlds, like Second Life, people have an appearance. Identity is a crucial aspect to Socialising on the internet and a significant qualitative difference to simple IM. Personalising your appearance helps to define who you are in your virtual world, just like in the normal one.

One of the largest innovations however, is interaction. Conversation isn’t the only key to communication – its actions like physical co-operation through dancing, having dinner, shopping together, sitting in the same car, exploring new locales and love (including sex) that really adds a new level of depth. But on top of this, interaction doesn’t necessarily require another person. As a 3D world, the environment is filed with things to do, buttons to press, ride’s to go on, mechanism to activate. So, if conversation tires you, go ahead and undertake an activity by yourself.

IM clients are based around existing relationships, where conversation is usually with people you already know. 3D World’s encourage you to seek out new relationships and interact with different people as a shared community.

The very concept of a 3D world is that it’s an environment in 3D. The major difference between IM and a program like 'Second Life' is that you can actually create and re-design the environments in which you socialise in. While MSN offers you the choice to change the colour of your chat window, a 3D world will offer you the potential-choice to build a house, a gazebo or a turret – anything that tickles your fancy.

The biggest qualitative differences with Second Life compared to IM clients is it’s currency. An actual, real-world, currency and barter system with reports User’s have made tens-of-thousands of dollars through property and rising land values. After giving the money making side of Second Life a go, I can reveal that making money isn’t by any means easy.

The biggest difference that a 3D world has upon actually socialising is that there is, on the whole, far less of it when compared to simple IM clients. The 3D world is both simultaneously immersive and distracting. There are so many places to see, so many things to do that often, the logistics of creating your character, logging on and finding a highly inhabited area results in far less of a focus on general socialising. In my experience, conversation and socialising is light – subject matter is normally relegated to “What country are you from?” and “What’s the weather like there?” Which answers the question that there are some things that are only possible in one space, and not the other.

I think 3D Worlds like Second Life is an indication of the direction we as “Social Media Experts” are heading in the future. It’s certainly not the easiest ways of communicating, but then it’s not meant to be. If Facebook is a quick an effective means of touching up one’s relationships, 3D worlds like 'Second Life', 'IMVU' and 'Active Worlds' are an effective way of creating new relationships, sustaining old one’s and meeting new people in a fun and immersive new way.

Adam's Lecture: Media, New Media & Internet Studies

The concern of Adam's lecture was upon New Media and the virtual community. What's Virtual Community? Well, we learnt that a virtual community was when "...people carry on public discussion long enough with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships." It was this point in the Lecture when I could see where the next 40 minutes were going: Social Networks and Social Media.

Adam briefly introduced topics such as Web 2.0 and highlighted the equation of Media: Technology + Culturally + Socially = Media. He discussed Shared Interests, which reminded me of my Internet practices 7 years ago when the Internet was really beginning to make an impact in our homes; the memory of ICQ (the old MSN) resurfacing.

Then Adam introduced the term Ego-centric Social Network - and I thought, "My God, perfect description for Twitter and appropriate description for Facebook." This simply signifies the movement of Virtual Communities away from groups of people with common interests. And i think I have to highlight the point, just for myself, how bad Ego-centric Social Networks really are. If the 'social' of social networks is removed, and replaced with more of a focus on what the user or the individual is doing, well - there is no communication and thus, no network either. Like the video Adam showed regarding the very concept of "Tweetering" - it's just a whole lot of people shouting out into the darkness.

Outlining Social Media, Adam listed 3 types: 1 Weblogs/ Blogs, 2 Social Network Services (SNS's) and 3 Content Sharing Communities.

Ending his lecture, Adam asked us to complete some Homework. He asked as to investigate who owns the SNSs' and the Blogs that we use. Well I've discovered the Facebook is privately owned and I already know that Google owns Blogger.com / Blogspot.com - and subsequently, has the power to give up my details (if requested. See previous post.) Before leaving, Adam left us with one interesting question: What if the sites we use, closed down tomorrow? In answer: I don't know - it'd be, bizarre.

As Bloggers, be careful.

UPDATE : I found and posted this article before it was brought to my attention by Mark Bahnisch, my Tutor, through Student email.

I've found an interesting article regarding our rights (or risks) as blogger's utlizing this "New Communication technology".

One relates to our status as Bloggers, and the things we choose to publish. Though hardly surprising, a small time blogger in New York is being sued by an ex-Vogue cover girl for defamation. The blogger, Rosemary Port, a fashion student from New York labelled the Model as being "the skankiest in NYC" - the model found the article, went to the media then went to a judge and turned it into a big thing. Port claims her blog is so small, the only 2 people to read her "defamatory" article was herself (when she uploaded it), and the vogue model (who sued). The most interesting thing about the story is that when the Model went to court and won, the Judge ordered Google to reveal the blogger's Identity - and they did.

If that's all it takes to discover one's Identity through Blogging - shouldnt we all be a little concerned? Well, the long and short of it is is that now Port is suing Google for revealing her identity for $18 Million dollars, claiming they seriously failed to protect her ideneity. To quote:

"Our Founding Fathers wrote The Federalist Papers under pseudonyms. Inherent in the First Amendment is the right to speak anonymously.

"Shouldn't that right extend to the new public square of the internet?"

Check it out. If she's small time and getting sued, then we can be too.

Damm Poms.

Here's whats on my mind.

1. There was a deal at 'Woolies' tonight: 3 Boxes of Assorted Twinings Tea for $4. I was quite excited. Im quite a connoisseur. On average, i drink about 5 mugs a day. I like it strong, yet full of milk. My biggest complaint is normally that Tea-bags aren't strong enough. So, imagine my delight to find one of Twining's more experimental 'origin' varities: "Lapsang Souchong" which has a strong, smokey flavour with a dark golden twinkle. It sounds like me! And yet, how wrong I was. To describe the flavour, and this may sound rather inarticulate, but the taste reminds me of the smell that radiates from a box of medical supplies. It's that overwhelming smell of sterilizer. I think I might just stick to Dilmah.


2. Pitchfork Ezine, my favourite Music Mag/ Website has released it's Top 500 Song list. Check to see how many they've picked that you listen to.

3. England's Wicket at 'The Oval' has been criticised for the way it's quickly breaking down, causing the bowling to be inconsistent, and favouring Spin. (Only England has a selected a full time spinner: Graeme Swann.) Look here for what 'Warnie' and Michael Holding Have to say.

4. Lastly, something in the Sporting world which is of great concern to me is Australia's Former Moto Gp World Champion, Casey Stoner's withdrawal from 3 Races due to a 'Mystery Illness'. This pulls him out of the World Championship running, gives Valentino Rossi are clear run to the finish, and makes those 3 Races he's absent from considerably less interesting from an Australian point of view.


Fortuneately, he's back for the Race at Phillip Island Victoria. Fortunate, because my best mate and I have bought tickets to that particular race - and we are making the pilgrimage down upon our Motorcycles. For me, from Brisbane, it's over 2000km's one way. So over 4000km's all up. Quite a lot of riding for me, but something I look forward to.

The Scavenger Hunt - Week 4 Tutorial Task

So, we were asked to find answers to these particular questions... :

1. What did Alan Turing wear while riding his bicycle around Bletchley Park?
2. On what date did two computers first communicate with each other? Where were they?
3. What is Bill Gates’ birthday and what age was he when he sold his first software?
4. Where was the World Wide Web invented?
5. How does the power of the computer you are working on now compare with the power of a personal computer from 30 years ago?
6. What is the weight of the largest parsnip ever grown?
7. When did Queensland become a state and why is the Tweed River in New South Wales?
8. What was the weather like in south-east Queensland on 17 November 1954?
9. Why is is Lord Byron still remembered in Venice?
10. What band did Sirhan Chapman play in and what is his real name?

...without using Google or Wikipedia. And I can now tell you, it was a requirement that proved surprisingly difficult.

1. Apparently, Alan Turing would ride around Bletchley Park on his bicycle wearing a Gas Mask. The information can be found here. I used Bing, Microsoft's new search engine and I just kept scrolling and scrolling - taking me far longer to find the information than I had initially anticipated.

2. Trying a specific search term ("computers first communicate") on Yahoo, it returns a search result that points me to the Southern Oregon's 'Mail Tribune'. According to them, the year computers first communicated with each other was "the same year men first walked on the moon" - 1969. Not surprisingly, the advent of Computer-assisted communication was overshadowed by the Moon Landing.

3. Bill Gate's birthday is on October 28th. At the age of 15 (1970), Bill (along with his friend Paul Allen) developed a computer program that monitored traffic patterns across Seattle. It earned them $(US)20,000.

4. The Internet first began in 1969, when the United States Department of Defense created the ARPAnet, a computer network through which organisations involved in military research could exchange information. It was further developed in a joint project by Computer Scientists from four different universities: the University of California at Los Angeles, Stanford University, the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of Utah.

5. Two prominent computers 30 years ago are the Apple II and the Atari Model 800. But focusing on the Apple II, its hardware specifications are so prehistoric, so meagre, that conventional (digital) wrist-watches would have higher computing grunt. To go geeky for just a moment - the Apple II had a computer speed (in Megahertz) of only 1 [Mhz]; today, computers are higher than 3500 Mhz (and are mostly dual core) - my computer at home (which in itself is over 5 years old,) has 2400 Mhz. If we're to focus only on the evolution of this particular advancement, you could say that computers today are then 24oo times more powerful, and that's not taking RAM, Bus Memory, Graphics Processor's and Hard Drives into consideration.

6. For my next answer, under the segment: Information You Just couldn't Live Without (Joke), the heaviest parsnip ever grown was by Canadian man: Norman Craven, whose Parsnip weighs 5.7kg. I used the search term "heaviest parsnip" and used Bing, and it directed me to the Telegraph's website - it had to be the Brits who knew, didn't it?

7. (a.) Queensland became a state in 1859.

(b.) The Tweed River is in New South Wales because, once (20 Million years ago) it was an area of Volcanic activity, eventually the Volcano died and over thousands of Years, the rain has washed the residue away creating a new rift in the valley: The Tweed River. It once stretched from Nerang to Byron Bay but today, it only reaches as far as - you guessed it: Tweed Heads. I struggled with this question, eventually using the search term "tweed river history" in Bing which put me onto the Tweed Tourism website.

8. According to this article published by the Bureau of Meteorology; the Weather in South-East Queensland on the 17th of November, 1954 was Cyclonic. (This was difficult to find as I spent most of my time trawling unsuccessfully through the extensive lists of statistics on the BOM's website.)

9. Lord Byron, the Poet, will be remembered in Venice because it is where he died - and, before he died, he famously and most poetically whispered to his Lover's: "Make Voyages." This was a particularly difficult find. I waded through pages and pages of search results until i came across an article published by The Sydney Morning Herald, that featured a link to another article, where the introduction began with that particularly juicy tidbit.

10. Sirhan Chapman plays in the band called: The Black Assassins and I believe (through careful scrutiny of some hazy photography) that he is our Lecturer: Stephen Stockwell. Quite humorous..

Lecture 4 (...but technically only Lecture 2.)

The focus of the lecture today, held by Josh, a lecturer from the Gold Coast, began by concentrating on some of the information we’d missed the previous week due to Brisbane’s Public Holiday: The Ekka. The Lecture was titled: Cinespeak – Learning the Language of the Cinema. Josh began by referring to the ‘5 W’s and H’ (What, Where, When, Who, Why and How) and how [exactly] they correspond to the direction of film photography, meaning and narrative. He spoke briefly about some of screens more obscure ‘rules’ : The rule of thirds; Headspace; Talking Room; Shot Sizes and the 180˚ Rule. He discussed the evolution of the ways we use to view film; chronicling films first steps (The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906)) to Nickelodeon’s (theatre viewing for the cost of a ‘nickel’) to Apple iStore, legal and illegal video downloads, ‘iFilm’, ‘atomFilm’ and of course ‘YouTube’. Things really became interesting when Josh introduced the subject of fan films and their absurd popularity – screening the first 4 minutes of Kevin Rubio’s ‘Troops’ (an old favourite of mine) and the more recent ‘Awesometown’.

Just because its new, doesnt mean it's better.

Some of my first memories of social networking surrounded my sister. There she sat, in her dark stuffy room, the glow of her TFT monitor lighting the oil on her skin, hunching herself over the keyboard. She was scanning through hundreds of photo's of people she knew through other people. So...it became logical that when my friends suggested that I too should join MySpace, I was opposed to the idea. For months I resisted, and for months they insisted until it got to the point where, without my say, a MySpace page was created for me. Today, I take after my sister...sitting hunched over my keyboard, scrolling through people's photos I only know through other people. But it's Ok...everyone's doing it right?

I predominantly use Facebook to stay in contact - not so much with my closest friends (I physically talk to those people) but with distant friends, associates and those I've met through travelling. I wasn't convinced by MySpace, except for the discovery of new music, however, the longer I've been using Facebook the less opposed I've become. My little frustrations come down to having to sign in to my email, to be told I have a notification on Facebook to read, to which I further have to sign in [to Facebook] to get to. From that perspective, can't we just cut out the extra step and can't my friends just send me a sentiment directly? But then, one can't deny the power and influence of Facebook, it is ingenious - and it all comes down to the 'comment' system. Comment on photos, comment on one's status and comment on 'Uncle Bill's' party invite. That's definitely something email's too clunky for. How often do you send a 3 word email? Never.

The concern about privacy for me centres on advertising. We're at the point were our information is being manipulated to a degree where advertising has become far more closely marketed - and far closer to what interests us. I realised that I've arrived at a particular state where when i walk down the street, I look for words: words on bus stops, buildings, servo's, clothing, bill-boards - because legislation concerning the limits of marketing and consequently privacy, are slowly, but inexorably folding. Partnering with television, the Internet has become just another way of getting ads directly on our screens and up our noses. Privacy concerns? - hell yeah.

The Nokia N97

On the subject of New Communication Technologies, the very new Nokia N97 is the latest (and so called 'greatest') of next generation touch-screen, 3G Mobile/ Computing technology with the aim to knock the king the crop, Apple's iPhone of it's perch. Apple, having now set the bar high, company's like Samsung, Sony-Ericsson and Nokia have been reeling in their efforts to respond. The unofficial video above is a first in-depth look at Nokia's new "iPhone-killer" - note the shift in Nokia's attention to style and design in the N97 - a characteristic often lacking in Nokia technology.

The Ekka. The Headache.

The Ekka's first show was held on the 22nd of August in 1876 - showcasing the latest technologies in farming, animal parades and champion breeds, a sideshow alley, woodchopping, cooking contests, fashion parades and entertaining crowds with carnival rides and junk food, its a Brisbane tradition that has lasted 133 years. In 1876, the Ekka ran for 4 days, but today the gates are open for 10 - an indication of the events rise in profitability (significantly boosting Brisbanes economy) and overall popularity - today over 600,000 visitors attend the Ekka, held at the 'Brisbane Exhibition Ground'.

My Mother bought me a ticket, along with the whole family. Previously I had no intention of going, having never expressed interest or curiousity - agriculture was never really the sort of thing that tickled me; these shows never do. And considering who I am, leaning far more to the Arts faculty - farming equipment, cows and sheep fail to catch my attention. But then, judging by what I've heard and by what I've seen showcased by the half-hour Nightly News Broadcasts, the Ekka looks to be a rich, positive and memorable expeirience. Having moved to Brisbane from a small New South Wales coastal town a year and a half ago, our family really never had anything to do or go and see. We became a family whose outings became synonymous with the consumption of food and drink - small town culture. Only now, having moved to the big smoke where there's opportunity, events and things to see, have we changed the reasons for our outings.

So on the Sunday, when it was time to go. I stayed in Bed. Hungover.

Reporting In for Duty.

I'm not new to the blogging scene, but that being said, I wouldn't consider myself a regular, experienced blogger. I first used blogging on blogspot.com when I was enrolled in my first university degree at Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga, but blogging quickly became something I enjoyed and utilized to publish other elements of my non-academic life. Take my trip abroad: I backpacked with my best mate around the UK and Europe and used a blog to publish our reflections (once) instead of sending (several) people individual emails saying the same thing. And you've got to admit - accessing a website, like this blog is far simpler and user-friendly then having to log into one's email and subsequently facebook. And it looked great - the layout of our site interspersed with our pictures of our travels and a very simple and direct comment system for our family and friends to reply to.

I'm actually happy about using a blog. I think it's a clever way for Lecturers/ Tutor's to effectively determine, conveniently (by jumping online when-ever, where-ever) exactly how we're progressing without fumbling through piles of paper. And again, its a great way for a student, to conveniently (by jumping online when-ever, where-ever) 'slap' up a post - mere seconds before its due, and not have to concern themselves with ever having to scramble for the car keys, drive to Uni, find a park and burst into a tute - books falling from your armpits, lenses askew, hair gone bland, shaking from an over dose of caffeine from one of those 'skinny green can's' and hand in something 'physically.'

Doing things the other way around - I'll briefly end with who I am. My name's Joel. I'm 22. I'm at Griffith Uni. I study Communications ("What's that?" - Most respond.) I play Cricket, Basketball and I ride a motorcycle. I'm a New South Welshman at heart - but I don't give a shit about the State of Origin or The Broncos.