Archive for 'Philosophical Issues'
SL modifies Terms of Service and EULA (sort of)
Well, at least they let us know when then introduce a new agreement. The new TOS seems like a lot of legal CYA without much thought to forging serious business partnerships. For example, how much are *you* willing to invest in a platform that keeps this clause in its TOS? ?7.1 Termination. Linden has the [...]
Full StoryThe Myth of Fiction
I’m happy to report that we finally got Professor Ludlow off of his fat derrier and got some product out of him — in this case a paper titled “From Sherlock and Buffy to Klingon and Norrathian Platinum Pieces: Pretense, Contextalism, and the Myth of Fiction.” Wordy mofo ain’t he? Not sure I get the [...]
Full StoryBartle Mourns the Loss of Creative Freedom in MMORPGs
In a recent post on Terra Nova, game making pioneer/god Richard Bartle (d00dz, he co-wrote the first MUD) mourns the loss of creative freedom in the new MMORPGs. Why are we all giving up our creative freedom so happily? Do we all just wanna be SOE’s beyotches or is it just that we have no [...]
Full StoryCaptain Will on BBC Online
We’re going to see a lot of Will Wright as the Sims 2 release approaches, but this intereview in BBC Online is special because…well because Doc Pete is mentioned too! What does Will think about the shady side of virtual life?: “it makes the game more interesting.” We couldn’t agree more. Don’t miss the audio [...]
Full StoryHerr Doktor Professor Ludlow on German Public Radio
Well, our very own nutty professor and resident media ho, Doc Pete, has resurfaced in the infosphere — this time on German Public Radio. Since our German ist sehr schlect we don’t really know what he’s talking about (hell, we don’t know what he’s talking about when he speaks English), but we think it has [...]
Full StoryComputer Viruses as Art
By rights this should be a humdog post, but while we wait for the good dog to return to us, I give you the following very interesting post from amico Allesandro Ludovico of the Italian hacktivism and cyberculture magazine Neural. Computer viruses as works of art? Oddly this sort of makes sense to me.
Full StoryFinally, Skewl is Kewl
I took an hour off from war reporting yesterday to drop in on a course being taught by Ancient Earth (AE) member Archaegeo Platini, and while I was AFK and up to my neck in IMs for much of it, I have to say that for the first time ever I had the impression that [...]
Full StoryStuttgarter Zeitung examines Alphaville mafias
S? Iwersen, of the Stuttgarter Zeitung has just published part one of a two part article on Alphaville — this part dedicated to the golden age of Alphaville when JC Soprano of the Sim Mafia squared off agains the SSG. Lots of discussion of Piers and Jen and JC. I only have the article in [...]
Full Story“Two Steps From The Move” (If You Want It): A passionate cyber hater encourages us to look “inward” instead of to the Internet
EleanaTobias In case you haven’t noticed, there is a fairly substantial group of people who display a great deal of antipathy toward the Internet. In this interview (and if you think it’s easy to get someone who hates the Internet to agree to sit down for a piece appearing in an on-line journal, think again), [...]
Full StoryBodega Dialogues II –
Hamlet Linden has posted part II of the Bodega Dialogues (a discussion between me and The Thinkers in Second Life). This one has some interesting discussion of language in the context of MMORPGs; how does the MMORPG lexicon develop, etc.
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