My friend Rupert pointed me to this video of Keven Kelly. It’s a really great 20 minute summary of a lot of ideas that have been floating around for awhile. The basic thing that I get from it is that we’re all becoming part of one global machine and what really makes it powerful is us being open or transparent to it.

Being open to the network is an idea that I personally find inspiring and liberating. I have a few blogs, I participate in a number of social networks and virtual worlds and I post lots of videos and photos of myself, my friends and my family online. Some people find that kind of behavior somewhat alarming - especially where my kids are concerned. But I’m looking at it from a little farther down the road. A cell phone used to mean you were on call 24/7 but now it means you have access to everyone and everything 24/7 and that’s powerful. I think for many people, putting yourself out there on the web feels like an invasion of privacy. If you were only one, I’d agree it might feel like being the only naked person in the room. But if everyone were naked, then maybe it’s not such a big deal.

I’m not saying there aren’t issues with everyone putting everything online but I’m optimistic that we’ll figure it out as we go without turning the world into some version of Gattica or 1984. Either that or the cyborgs will be showing up soon and they’ll start making their way through the list of TED speakers.

This article from io9 is an interesting discussion of the pros and cons of Alternate Reality Gaming campaigns and how they work (or don’t). Many of the points they make are things I think I agree with, specifically about relying too much on puzzles and schwag and not enough on compelling storytelling.

Here’s some key quotes:

Lost is running an ARG at Comic-Con this week where the fictional Dharma corporation tries to recruit new employees, and the Sarah Connor Chronicles had a tie-in ARG that was quite artful in which employees of the Enitech Corporation discover a camera that takes pictures of the future and predicts the rise of the machines.

One reason I liked the Sarah Connor Chronicles ARG so much was that it actually functioned as its own, compelling story. It was almost like the Heroes webisodes – stories set in the same universe as their parent story, but shorter and with a lower budget. The Dark Knight ARG, on the other hand, felt like it really was just advertising with a few perfunctory interactive bits thrown in.

Well I’m glad the author dug our work and I can’t complain about having our project called “artful.” He makes some good points and I’m glad this discussion is going on now. ARGs are walking the fine line between art, entertainment, and advertising, so it’s important to start pushing these questions out there.

Read more HERE.

For over five years I’ve had the extreme pleasure of knowing an evocative, intelligent individual in both RL & SL. The first time I met him in Second Life, he could have filed an abuse report on me. The talented writer of the New World Notes blog (with a bevy of other writing credits under his belt) has written his first book, “The Making of Second Life“.

Please join us for a “mixed reality” party in celebration of Hamlet Au’s (Wagner James Au in meatspace) latest achievement!

Past
Thursday, April 24
5:00-8:00 pm SLT

It’s going to be a “mixed reality event”, meaning that he’s also having a parallel party in a penthouse in New York City! While he’s chatting with us in world, he’ll also be hanging out with friends and wine IRL and posting pictures of the party there on a laptop at the penthouse.

Contact me (Lyra Millionsofus) with any questions! See you tomorrow.

I can’t stop watching this VIDEO of the event we did to help Scion launch their new line of 2008 cars. I’ve watched it 10 times now and it’s still hard to tell what’s happening in Chicago and whats happening in Scion City Second Life. The Scion guys are amazing clients to have because of the risks they take and how far they push the envelope. Enjoy.

So I’m sitting here in Aspen getting ready to fly back to San Francisco and just thinking about the event. Overall, I was blown away by how well it all worked and people really seemed to enjoy themselves. Going into it, we were pretty nervous because (as Mark Wallace said to me), “comedy is such a high bandwidth experience. With the impending release of realtime voice capabilities in Second Life (and the inevitable debate about that), I thought I’d jot some thoughts about doing comedy in SL.

The general format of the event was as follows:

1.  People arrived and we had drinks and hung out for about 15 minutes.

2.  Hyla Matthews, the standup comedian, welcomed the crowd, did about 5 minutes of schtick and then introduced some videos of comedians from the Festival in Aspen

3.  Hyla did more schtick, this time walking into the audience for some live interraction.  Intro to more videos, this time selections from the film festival component ofthe Aspen Event.

4.  More schtick, this time focusing on Second Life jokes, which seemed to work really well.  Intro final videos from This Just In.

The toughest thing, by far, was the 17 second delay from when Hyla said something on the Skype call and when it was heard in Second Life.¬† Hyla really struggled with this — trying t get straight who was haring what and when.¬† In so many ways, comedy is about split second reactions and when the audience said something in chat, a 17.5 second reaction just doesn’t quite feel split second.¬† Behind the scenes, we did a lot of work to make this easier for Hyla and less apparent to the audience.

The other thing we noticed was that without the immediate feedback from the audience, Hyla couldn’t tell whether people were laughing or she was getting “crickets”.¬† One great idea that came up was in the future to have Laugh-Meters that the audience¬† could click to register overall amusement.

In general this was an amazingly enjoyable and eye-opening experience.  It also makes me realize just how game-changing the addition of real-time voice will be for day-to-day interraction, collaboration and work, and for entertainment.

Tomorrow morning starting at 9 am SLT we’ll be doing this event with Cisco and the Santa Fe Institute. Mixed reality with all the fixings!

As you can see, we’re running some streaming tests in preparation. The event will be streamed live to 4 locations on Cisco’s islands. Here are a couple of them.

Should be a lot of fun!