Archive for June, 2007
June 29th, 2007 by Caleb Booker
Click for wallpaper
Remember people putting “cyber” in front of everything? Remember articles defining what an “emoticon” was?
Suddenly… VERY suddenly… everything changed. That network not only became mainstream, it also fundamentally changed the lives of a lot of people. The isolated had company. The uneducated gained knowledge. The dreamers touched their dreams.
The Internet really means something to a lot of people now, and that has nothing to do with technological marvels. Below I’ve collected moments of passion (with links to the full stories) from savetheinternet.com detailing how much the Internet has made a real difference in the lives of these people.
None of them are CEOs or celebrities or historical figures. They’re regular folk, and they can’t imagine a world without the net.
Continue reading ‘Love Letters To The Net’
June 26th, 2007 by Caleb Booker
Prokofy Neva was recently banned from Terra Nova. Why?
Prok and Csven are banned. I’m tired of both of them.
Posted Jun 24, 2007 4:16:53 PM | link
If you’re trying to work out what the new policy is, here’s your guide: don’t make Dan Hunter tired or you’re banned. I’m pretty sure they’ve already banned turkey and warm milk. You could be next.
Greg L. tweaked the original post about comment policies and may tweak it again. That’s what happens when you drink and blog… either that or he just didn’t think about anything he was typing, which I’d never want to imply about an academic.
Back to Dan Hunter for a moment: has that guy ever written anything intelligent? So much of what he writes can be boiled down to: “Know that thing people are talking about? It sucks!” I’ve been searching and searching… here he is completely missing the point about net neutrality (free registration required). This guy is an Associate Professor. The gods of academia and intellect are weeping.
Continue reading ‘Don’t Drink And Blog’
June 25th, 2007 by Caleb Booker
There are times where I’m dazzled by all that is glorious and wonderful about the Internet, social networks, virtual worlds and the coming of the Metaverse. There are other times, however, where the world seems like it exists for morons only.
These are the dark times. The times of Bush and FOX News, of Windows Vista and DRM. These are the days of colorized classics and Uwe Boll movies. These are the Paris Hilton moments.
At the Supernova 2007 conference Paul Kedrosky did a quick tally of certain significant terms and how often they were used by presenting Web 2.0 companies:
Ajax: 0
Wiki: 0
Facebook: 1
iPhone: 1
Wireless/mobile: 2
Google: 2 (!)
Web 2.0: 2
Paris Hilton: 5
For the most part these comments seemed to be about getting celebrity endorsement for their causes, and Paris Hilton is getting a lot of press at the moment. Still, do users really want her?
If you’re in a Web 2.0 company you really should know this bit of history. When Paris Hilton came to YouTube the user community flipped out. Here, have a video link or two or three. People were not pleased, simply because Web 2.0 is supposed to be about the people, and Paris is anything but. She’s above the people, and as a result she didn’t last. The account hasn’t been logged in for two months and the last post from her was nine months ago. She was chased off, and the sun shines again.
Briefly.
Continue reading ‘Paris Hilton And Metarati.tv’
June 21st, 2007 by Caleb Booker
On my way home there’s this tunnel I pass through. It periodically fills with graffiti and then gets wiped clean. The really good graffiti doesn’t appear here. The good stuff ends up on a wall between two lanes of the highway that few but the most stalwart urban explorers ever see. The tunnel kind of serves as a clearing house for the city’s more amateur artists.
Today as I entered the tunnel I noticed that the city workers had been back, applying paint-thinner to all of the swear words and tags and additions of people’s initials “4evr”. They did a bad job this time around. While you couldn’t make anything out, there was still paint everywhere. The only thing they left alone was the pumpkin I took a picture of.
You know, I always did like that pumpkin. It’s pretty cool that they made the decision to leave it.
All of the excitement about user-created content that the Web 2.0 boom is bringing with it makes a lot of sense when I look at this picture. If we spend time somewhere, we want to leave our mark. It mostly leaves a mess, but sometimes it gives everybody a little shared moment. Who cares why, or whether that’s a good thing, it just is. We’ll break the law to do it if we have to. It’s our compulsion.
I think a lot of what we’re seeing in the information revolution is the general acceptance of what our compulsions are. We want to kill, thus killing became the norm in video games. We want sex, and so there’s porn three clicks away from every page on the Internet. We want to tell everybody that we exist, and get recognition for it. Youtube.
Never mind if that’s good or bad, it’s what is. I think we’re starting to get that as a society and find new ways of coping with that beyond general repression. It’s not happening by design, but it is happening.
I really do like that pumpkin.
June 21st, 2007 by Caleb Booker
There are about a billion or so conferences about virtual worlds these days. The one running right now in San Francisco is the Supernova conference, and one of the first panels involves Raph Koster, Reuben Steiger and Clay Shirky. Ok, a games guru, a content provider CEO, and a professor from NYU. Sounds good. What’s the topic?
Virtual Life or Virtual Hype?
Do most people really want to be immersed in 3D virtual worlds? And what are the real business benefits of these massively multiplayer environments? This session will examine which activities will migrate to virtual environments, and when physical forms will continue to dominate.
This just strikes me as odd. I could have sworn we had been safely past the “is it all hype?” phase for a few months at least. It is what it is, and the money speaks for itself. Besides, the question for businesses shouldn’t be about most people as much as are there enough people.
Anyhow, three bright guys when faced with questions that don’t quite hit the mark end up giving us a bit of a grab-bag of unfocused insights. Alice over at Wonderland was good enough to type up a few notes. Here are a few hilights:
Continue reading ‘Virtual Life or Virtual Hype… seriously?’
