Social Change in Second Life?

I tend to be much more into You Tube than Blip but I found this on an interesting blog. The blog is: http://sodacity.net/ and is kept up by a digital media professor named Morgan Schwartz. I found it by searching New Media on blogflux.com. If all goes well my home page will be on blogflux soon. Anyway, back to the point of this post. So here's the video and below are Josh Levy's comments from Blip on his video.

Click To Play

What Josh Levy posted on Blip about his video:

A Better World in Second Life? is a machinima documentary about how real-world activists are using the virtual world Second Life as a platform for social and political activism. In the film I meet progressive organizers and environmental, anti-war, and anti-genocide activists who are using Second Life for collaboration, organizing, advocacy, and creative work. I question the nature of activism in a virtual world, and wonder whether spending time in a virtual space necessarily moves participants toward action, or merely gives them a false sense of action and catharsis.

The film is broken up into five chapters. Each chapter is linked to on the right.

The project benefited from the help of several kind folks: please go to www.levjoy.com/betterworld/about for thank-yous and more information.

-Josh Levy

VR Conspiracy theories (Read at your own risk)

Occasionally I find it interesting to “google” the things I am wondering about. So the other day I searched for “virtual reality conspiracy theory”. I got 1,570,000 hits. The very first one had an interesting title, “The Future History of the World…” and a site name of http://www.heaven-or-hell-its-your-choice.com/alien-computer.htm. How could I resist?

Apparently this page is a preview of a new E-book that the site owner tells us is, “endorsed by some of the smartest people on the planet.” This was getting better all the time! As if that wasn’t convincing enough, we find the author telling us right off the bat that he is “totally sane.” Wow! What more do you need for the ingredients of a good conspiracy theory but the introduction of “I’m not crazy”?

Let’s start reading. At first glance some things here do sound interesting. Like the concept that humans can, “…manipulate and build structures at the same level that biological systems operate.” Not something I as a nonscientist can verify but it does sound interesting doesn’t it? Sounds like a concept ripe with possibilities to me. It also makes the author sound like he knows what he’s talking about which is also good. Let’s go on.

Now that we know our author is smart and sane and that his book is endorsed by the smart we are ready to get into the good stuff. Shortly, we are warned that we are headed for disaster with our use of nanotechnology and virtual reality (VR). VR is a part of that disaster by coming into every home. According to our conspiracy theorist, the danger here is that we will become accustomed to communicating with non-real people. By doing this, the author thinks that soon we will be unable to distinguish artificially intelligent virtual people from real people. The author must think we are not as smart of sane as him. Not to mention, having worked on some AI communication recently, I think this might be a little while off. Let’s keep going anyway and see where this theory is taking us.

Apparently our conspiracy theorist also believes that beyond communication we will also get used to seeing creatures that look strange. I wonder if he’s heard of Halloween or Hollywood? Anyway, apparently this will pave the way for aliens to introduce and integrate themselves slowly into our society. Nanotechnology, VR and Aliens oh my! What more could we ask for in a good conspiracy theory? Wink, wink. Now we just need to involve the world governments and I think we’re set.

Speaking of governments, on the plus side our theorist seems to also think that VR would make world peace a possibility. This is an unusual twist on the usual gloom and doom I’ve seen in the conspiracy theory field. We may have found ourselves a conspiracy theory optimist! His theory for world peace is as follows: if my VR best friend lives in Russia or the Middle East than I don’t want to nuke those countries anymore so we become one big happy online family. I’m not sure he’s seen the news lately but I’m pretty sure my not wanting to nuke a country doesn’t really matter. Following his logic we need to get the president and congress to play second life and make friends with more people. Until then I think we should all be practicing with our headsets our virtual performances of “Kum bi ya” just in case he’s right. See you on SL, my foreign friend (or alien?).