Johnny Ming and Torrid Midnight host a discussion on the current tone of the press coverage of major corporations, major label music artists such as Ben Folds entering Second Life. The group discusses the unbalanced coverage of some mainstream media, the affects of major brands entering Second Life, and the 3rd anniversary of the Second Life Herald on Thursday!
Special Guests:
Spin Martin (Eric Rice) of Slackstreet and HipCast.com
SNOOPYbrown Zamboni (Jerry Paffendorf) of the Electric Sheep Company
Urizenus Sklar (Peter Ludlow) of the Second Life Herald
Music:
“I Saw It Coming” by Keiko Takamura
Transcript appears after the jump.
Ben Folds: Hi, this is Ben Folds and you’re listening to SecondCast. -And, if you’re anything like me -white and skinny with a waxed chest and some baby oil- just tune in to hear Torrid Midnight speak. When you are listening to SecondCast look up my new CD, Super Sunny Speed Graphics the LP. Find out more at http://www.BenFolds.com or http://www.Boratmovie.com.
[music]
Johnny Ming: Is everybody ready? Everybody have a drink and has been to the bathroom in the last hour or so?
Eric Rice: I know how to pee, drink, smoke and walk while in an interview, because I’m a professional.
Torrid Midnight: I don’t doubt it.
Eric Rice: Ha-ha, shut up!
[laughter]
Eric Rice: I was just trying to figure out if I should start doing some training in Eve or start killing more wild pigs in Warcraft while we do this.
[laughter]
Johnny Ming: Oh boy, that is great!
Jerry Paffendorf: It is the future of virtual worlds.
Johnny Ming: Very true, and Jerry, who hasn’t quite trained his girlfriend yet has to depart from-
Jerry Paffendorf: Hey, you know what, she totally…she dumped me for the night man.
Johnny Ming: Oh man.
Jerry Paffendorf: That was it – that was it. Yeah I know it was harsh.
Johnny Ming: Well…
[laughter]
Johnny Ming: That is why we had Torrid come on, we thought, you know, have a female keep you company.
Eric Rice: Instant girlfriend.
[laughter]
Jerry Paffendorf: I apologize for the vulgarity. No it was terrible I had a whole night planned with my girlfriend Vanessa and I was like okay this is great, can I, -Johnny just invited me- can I have like twenty-five minutes around ten o’ clock? She was like, “You can have the whole night, dude.” I was like, “Oh man, Jesus Christmas, all right.”
Torrid Midnight: Oh baby, that was harsh.
Jerry Paffendorf: Yeah, so it goes.
Johnny Ming: All right, well this is SecondCast episode thirty-eight for October 25, 2006. This episode is brought to you by the first company to do everything in Second Life.
[laughter]
Johnny Ming: For those of you still, I guess, on Orientation Island…that is a humorous reference to the scads…The scads of first companies racing to make it into the press. In any case, I am your host Johnny Ming, and joining me is fashion designer and music enthusiast Torrid Midnight.
Torrid Midnight: Hello.
Johnny Ming: Futurist in residence, SNOOPYbrown Zamboni, a.k.a. Jerry Paffendorf of the Electric Sheep Company and http://www.themetaverseroadmap.org.
Jerry Paffendorf: Hey.
Johnny Ming: Spin Martin, a.k.a. Eric Rice of Slack Street Entertainment and http://www.hipcast.com.
Spin Martin: Hello.
Johnny Ming: And Urizenus Sklar, rhymes with penis right?
Urizenus Sklar: Urizenus.
[laughter]
Johnny Ming: Urizenus Sklar.
Urizenus Sklar: Greetings, yes.
Johnny Ming: Noted author and founder and contributing editor to the Second Life Herald which is celebrating the three year anniversary this Thursday. Tell us a little bit about the event that you have planned.
Urizenus Sklar: It is completely unplanned.
[laughter]
Urizenus Sklar: Watch the pages of the Herald for more information, all I know for sure right now is that it is going to be at the Black Library which may be familiar to some of you, or should be. It is at 2:00 Eastern, sorry, 2:00 London time on Thursday.
Johnny Ming: And you are just, I guess, returning from a brief departure from the Herald, is that correct?
Urizenus Sklar: Yeah I took a ten month sabbatical.
Johnny Ming: What brought you back?
Urizenus Sklar: Well, part of it was what took me away, which was mostly just burnout and boredom. And what brought me back was all the hype about Second Life that I was reading and it was really starting to piss me off. That sort of awakened me from my dogmatic slumbers and, you know, winter is setting in so I do not mind being indoors, online in the game. I thought it was time to come back.
Jerry Paffendorf: Which was the, what was the “hypiest” stuff that you saw?
Urizenus Sklar: Oh, it started with the Reuters stuff. That was the one that put me over the edge.
Jerry Paffendorf: That Reuters opened up, that they put a reporter in to cover stories coming out of there?
Urizenus Sklar: Yeah, yeah, and you know, the report on the ginkgo…Which wasn’t actually a bad report, but.
Jerry Paffendorf: No, they I am just trying to think where that- where those where over the top?
Urizenus Sklar: Oh, well I mean if you don’t find the sort of recent press in general as sort of being over the top, I mean I don’t…
Jerry Paffendorf: No, it is a totally interesting question because I know exactly what you mean about like the hype stuff. It is just a question of, like, I just posted a comment on your blog about the guy from, what is it, PBS, Mark something-
Urizenus Sklar: Yeah.
Jerry Paffendorf: Posted an article.
Urizenus Sklar: Yeah, right.
Jerry Paffendorf: Which was, yeah I just don’t know. I mean, I read what he wrote there, which was kind of like, which was a response to people kind of writing about these big ideas for things that were staring to happen in Second Life but might not be the average experience of somebody who shows up right now. Just trying to think about the difference of like when something new starts to happen in a space people like to imagine really loudly what the possibilities are to kind of shake people out of the slumber that they may have been in previously.
Reading his article, he posted like that, really got me thinking more about this idea of the hype hype, or like the backlash from people who always like cry Kool-Aid or cry that people are going over the top on stuff when looking at his was just like, dude was like going back to sleep and saying that things are the same in virtual worlds that they were back ten years ago or whatnot.
Looking at them side by side and thinking about like which is more useful to most people about getting like an idea out, like if you were to blast the fluff off the boosters and blast the fluff off the haters in this side it just seems that the boosters are coming out on the side of like the big idea of the kinds of changes that are happening in virtual worlds where it is not at all imaginary.
Urizenus Sklar: Yeah I don’t agree with that at all. I do not agree with that at all because I think that what were are reading now has nothing to do with the interesting ideas. All of what the media hype is talking about is completely boring stuff which is “Oh my god a car company is giving away little cars in the game!”, or, “Oh my god, a shoe company is making and giving away shoes!”, or, “Oh my god, Ben Folds is performing in Second Life!”, and all of that is completely trivial. None of that is interesting, it is not what Second Life is about, that is total-
Jerry Paffendorf: No, I would agree with that, I’m not. I mean this is an awesome discussion these are the things that I tend to think about the most here but when you think about a big company coming into Second Life, right, like you were saying all this wild stuff that is happening underground and it is out of control and it is more interesting that somebody is just dropping off a box into the world and is saying here is my thing that I have just given you and its really cool because I am a company.
Is it not interesting to kind of follow when they begin to take root, however small at this point in time in a virtual world like this and the experience something is out of control and it kind of is a shock to there–
Urizenus Sklar: There is nothing, no, there is nothing out of control except for the hype machine because what these corporations are doing is absolutely nothing of interest. They are selling these big gorgeous builds which your are helping to build which is very impressive but all of that is just a feedback to the outside world and to show the outside world that we are hip, GM is hip, we understand, we found a way to plug into youth culture or fringe culture we are on the bleeding edge and it has got nothing interesting to do with what is going on inside of Second Life itself. So what, forty people go to see Ben Folds in a game, BFD, that is the most trivial non-event.
[laughter]
Urizenus Sklar: I mean, compare it to the following: In August of 2005, right, Gorillas went into Habbo Hotel, right? Now I mean, if you think about it, it is a year earlier. That is a way more interning thing, I mean, because think about Gorillas as a virtual group to begin with. I mean, it is two guys sort of playing this band that is actually four guys, right, you only see an animation, and then they go into Habbo Hotel in their characters. I mean-
[overlapping talking]
Urizenus Sklar: What is all this hype about Ben Folds? I mean come on.
Jerry Paffendorf: Well think about it like, okay, think that there are two things that are like one: instead of like, I guess I view it because I tend to not get like, really angry at these things that are kind of predictable cycles, like this is how things get started in a space, they are not fully played out, so that is how it begins.
Urizenus Sklar: This is nothing starting, no Jerry, nothing is starting. This talk about corporations it is not the sign of something starting. The something starting is the stuff that you know all the little homegrown little homebrew operations in the game are dealing with. There are a lot of really interesting things going inside of Second Life. I mean, there’s a guy on an island next to my island that is building little artificial intelligence agents that can be used as sort of little AI NPCs in video games and so forth. Lots of crazy interesting stuff going on. All this stuff that we’re reading about in the newspapers is, like, trivial. It’s like, not interesting.
Jerry Paffendorf: Well, it’s trivial in the sense of the big scheme of things. What it’s doing is it’s certainly bringing an outside awareness into what it is. People might show up. We were talking about this right before the show. One of the big bands, one of the big bills from one of the big record labels… You know, I’ve got like 2000% more traffic than the studio that built it, and then also everybody walked across the street to see the rest of the Second Life-grown content. And the other indie content. So it’s a catalyst. All they’re doing from a business perspective is “new marketing channel, new audience, new demographic”. So, Uri is totally right on that. But I think that we have to kind of look that there is this effect, and who cares about Ben Folds? Well, Ben Folds fans do. I’m not really a Ben Folds… The only thing I’m a fan of Ben Folds for is….
Urizenus Sklar: There’s nothing wrong with Ben Folds. I actually kind of like his music somewhat. But the fact of his performing in Second Life is not interesting to me. I’ve been to a lot of….
Jerry Paffendorf: I guess that’s the deal on that, though. That came off as like a very loud noise in a small pond or shore. So it ended up being like, when there’s a lot more stuff out there like that, you wouldn’t go and attend that Ben Folds concert and write about it. So I totally see both sides of this. If you’re expecting to have your life changed by a Ben Folds concert in a virtual world, and you’re not a Ben Folds fan and you’re not interested in that at all….
Urizenus Sklar: But it’s not about Ben… The point is that there’s been tons of concerts in these virtual worlds, and they have them across the river from me in Jessie. A couple times a week they have little concerts. Tuesday nights they have concerts.
Jerry Paffendorf: And those are going to be the next stories, right? Those are going to be the stories… They’ve already been written about on blogs and obviously in the circle of people who follow Second Life and virtual worlds. Those are the things that you all know about. And so the next story is, people are going to climb up that ladder of the attention that’s being focused because these brands are coming in right now, and it’s going to get pointed at all these people who have been out there doing stuff. So I see….
Johnny Ming: That’s part of my job, is to draw attention to that. Because the second I hear somebody that’s like “the first band to perform in Second Life, ” going, “Ah, nooooo.” I hold the moderate position. I play nice with both camps because, well, you have to. It’s productive.
One of the people who had been performing forever, she was terrified of performing for twelve people, and now MTV is coming to look at her house. If that’s her goal as a musician, cool. MTV probably wouldn’t have given much mind to Second Life. But granted, they were around earlier. I don’t think I was around then. Yeah, it was before my time, because I’m only like a year old.
It’s that catalyst. Yeah, totally. Tuesday nights, and I’m your neighbor in Jessie too. And Astor and those guys across… So we’ve got to at least take that and at least try to spin it to say “Yeah, but it ain’t just you guys.” The thing that I was comparing Ben Folds to was the older event, the Universal Hip Hop artist who came, and they couldn’t figure out how to plug in a microphone cable, and not a lot of people knew about it. Yeah, the Chameleon Area – which, it was a meet and greet. Everybody thought it was going to be a concert. I don’t think anybody had this expectation of Ben Folds being a concert. They knew it was going to be just people standing around and talking. But what happened is…Did anybody do any research on that one, because these guys do it every night from their living rooms or offices or bedrooms flawlessly, without fail. And that’s part of my job, is to help throw that out there, to say, “By the way guys, it ain’t just about you, because we can move a lot faster than you.”.
Urizenus Sklar: How is it that the whole Ben Folds event was supposed to have helped these guys across the river from me in Jessie that are having concerts every Tuesday night?
Jerry Paffendorf: Well it’s not put out that way. I mean this isn’t thinking that….
Urizenus Sklar: But what positive thing, what really interesting thing, is supposed to have happened here? Because I just don’t get it.
Jerry Paffendorf: What would be the interesting effect of that happening? Well, a lot more people understanding that there’s music in Second Life, and that’s possible to do there….
Urizenus Sklar: I think more people do understand that. Why are there not enough….
Jerry Paffendorf: I didn’t really understand that.
Urizenus Sklar: …what’s going on in Second Life. If a hundred thousand people or whatever it is are subscribing per month because of this noise’ that is not good. I mean people are coming in faster than Second Life can absorb them right now. Second Life does not need the publicity. It’s not helping.
Torrid Midnight: I have a question about Ben coming in Second Life…something that I was kind of curious about… Did Ben actually get what Second Life is about… did he actually… I mean, it almost seems like he was just having a lot of fun… these are a bunch of nerds at their computer listening to me f*** off, pardon my language, but… I’m glad he had fun and everything it was enjoyable but it just kind of seemed like… it was almost like he was… I don’t want to say making fun’… but.
Jerry Paffendorf: No, I definitely didn’t get that impression.
Torrid Midnight: That’s not what I’m trying to say I know it’s coming off like that but….
Johnny Ming: Jerry, maybe you can… give us… we’ll take a break from the debate.
Jerry Paffendorf: I love the debate. This is great.
Johnny Ming: This is a really great debate. But we never introduced what the topic was.
[background laughter]
Jerry Paffendorf: It introduced itself.
Johnny Ming: For our listeners, we are gathered here tonight….
Jerry Paffendorf: dearly beloved….
Johnny Ming: we are gathered here tonight to discuss the recent splash of big brands and big name music artists in Second Life. Last Thursday Jerry or SNOOPYBrown Zamboni’s company and, I guess it’s in conjunction with Sony Music, right?
Jerry Paffendorf: Yes, and BMG.
Johnny Ming: They had Ben Folds, a rock artist, that’s on the Sony Label, come into Second Life, preview some tracks for us, then proceed to slash people with light sabers, and do all kinds of crazy things, so I guess, Jerry could you give us a little behind the scenes what was going on in the room when this event was happening.
Jerry Paffendorf: Sure. So to paint the picture, I was with a few other people on the Electric Sheep team and some people from Sony at Sony offices in New York. And Ben came in straight from performing as a pirate on the Conan O’Brien show. And he showed up kind of tired at the end of doing all that. He had heard about the event, obviously, and he’d been briefed on Second Life, on what it was. He came in about 45 minutes before to get the real hands-on test of it.
And so he went through all the phases of getting Second Life that you have to go through like very quickly. From looking at it like it was just a video game and he was going to play through, to it’s just like an IM client, to finally get that moment when it’s like holy crap’ you mean there are real people on the other end of all these things, to like can you give me laser beams for eyes which was his original request for his avatar so he could zap the people out in the floor… to being like… eventually pacing the room being like “Can I break-dance? Can you give me a light saber? Can I do this crap? To where he was just like directing this world as much as possible. So he went through those phases really quick. So he definitely got what was going on with it. It was totally fun to watch that process of him turning from not knowing, to being skeptical about it cause I’m not a computer guy, to being like “holy crap this is like visual images that I can conduct with other people and there’s all these other dudes in the audience watching me.”.
Johnny Ming: When he started… basically the way the room was set up, you had a projection screen set up, and he was basically pointing to the screen and watching what was going on and you had someone basically typing and acting on his behalf for at least part of it. And so he was kind of directing people cause he was telling people… after people with a light saber. He told girls to take their shirts off and all kinds of things….
Jerry Paffendorf: Yeah he a mix. It was cool to see really was…I felt like it was fitting we did the War of the Worlds podcast last week, because this felt like this was being back in the early days of radio where people are like making up sound effects and someone’s still writing part of the script to respond to something that just happened on there. -And, no, it was a mixture. It was cool to see. It was like full room playing SL like an instrument so he had a machine that was dedicated for his avatar at the end of the table, and directly opposite that was a big screen viewpoint into Second Life…. the big screen he’s looking at…he did this mixture of typing in and then interacting with every one himself. Like, anytime that Ben spoke, that was him typing through the keyboard. To running around the room and pointing at people on the screen with his finger and saying “do this to that guy” or “say this to this person” and then someone else trying to control the avatar as best they could to make that happen. So that was how the mix went. It was a bit of mix of direction and direct hands-on.
Johnny Ming: Now, I think some people were kind of – and this is sort of what Torrid was getting to, I think. At one point, you asked him during your interview with him if he could write a quick song for us about what his Second Life experience was like so far. And he came back with a song that basically said that every person in the room needs to get a life and that he’s going to “cut everybody with his light saber, baby.”
[Ben Folds singing]
Second Life…
F***ers need to get a real life…
Second Life…
I’m going to cut you with your light saber baby.
[singing ends]
Johnny Ming: I’m just wondering, between that and saying f*** a lot, is that his normal behavior? [laughter] Do you think that he; did he see everybody there as people inside a fish tank that he could mess with?
Man one – In my Ben Folds research for the event and kind of listening to him in some of the other interview stuff they sent over, that’s generally the Ben Folds M.O, I think. I thought he was funny.
Johnny Ming: You know, Ben Folds, he’s that guy who got Shatner and Rawlings[sp] together to do “I can’t get behind that” which is painfully funny in and of itself. And Henry Rawlings just talked about this in concert, and Henry Rawlings is a dude who really gets tech. I’d love to see him in-world because he’s hilarious. And so I totally viewed it as this guy is nutso, I mean, I only had that exposure to Ben Folds previously going this guy’s a nutso. This is fun. It just adds to our playtime.
Jerry Paffendorf: He didn’t treat anybody in the room differently than that.
[laughter]
Johnny Ming: There’s a picture of me spread out on the ground. Ben Folds is standing over me half naked with a light saber. I like that picture. I want to keep that in my personal album.
Jerry Paffendorf: Yah, it was incredible. Here’s the impression I got. I haven’t blogged this yet, but I need to do an entry called “Stories 2.0″ or something like this. One of the pieces of the immersion of when he got into it was when the language kind of falls away and you end up realizing that you’re describing what’s happening in Second Life with the same nouns, adjectives, and verbs until you describe things in real life. Where you don’t say, “My digital avatar is several paces away from the avatar with which you are representing yourself.” It’s, like, “I’m next to you and I’m doing this.” Which is why a lot of the stuff on the Second Life Herald that just describes wild actions that are completely factual because they took place in shared spaces where everybody saw the same thing, are so amazing because the stories that come out of these experiences in virtual worlds are real and they are true and they transfer that way and they get spread that way.
Johnny Ming: Video gaming. Video gaming, its true when you capture an enemy bunker.
Jerry Paffendorf: It’s true.
Johnny Ming: That’s the fact of it.
Jerry Paffendorf: That’s what you’re describing. So that was the point in time when the entire performance kind of switched over to the story and it was just “oh my god I can’t believe that I was just on stage, drinking beer, zapping people with glasses, rubbing up on shirt-less ladies in the audience, and attacking fans with light sabers”.
So, no, so, that’s a lot of what’s so exciting. And you remember the things that way as well, which I think is so cool. So that was something that got impressed on me, it was like, it was the kind of thing you see over and over again when you work with Second Life and you describe it to somebody and they understand it or whatever. And then somebody gets their first story hook into it and this is like a more capable language medium. I can create these kind of scenes. This is the kind of thing you can’t do with Habbo Hotel. There are a lot of discussions going on right now about…
Urizenus Sklar: Now we’re dissing Habbo Hotel.
Jerry Paffendorf: No, I love it. When you think about virtual worlds, though, and the criteria that you put down where they have persistence and they have shared space and those other criteria, you just cannot generate the kinds of variation of scenes and viewpoints in a space like that. You look at the screen shots that come out of a Habbo Hotel performance, for instance and you put them next to the variety of scenes and viewpoints there, and it’s a totally different thing.
Urizenus Sklar: That’s not what it’s about, I mean, look at the screenshots in a MUD, I mean there are no screenshots, because it’s text based and you know…
Jerry Paffendorf: I think a lot of it is about the screenshots, not to harp on one dimension, but why this virtual kind of world experience is going to be so powerful is largely because of the images.
Urizenus Sklar: Let me just say about Habbo Hotel, and it should be noted, that while Linden Lab is celebrating a billion people who’ve signed up at some point, last year, Habbo Hotel had 30 million people signed up..
Jerry Paffendorf: We don’t have a Habbo Hotel Herald though, to go behind those numbers and point out the….
Urizenus Sklar: And I would, because they’ve got their little scandals there, too, like the people, the furni-hos’, the people who battle for furniture.
Jerry Paffendorf: Aw, I got to check this out.
Urizenus Sklar: You battle for furniture, but that’s another story. I’m getting you off of the topic here.
Johnny Ming: So speaking of, I guess, the platform, how does Sony feel about, Jerry, having a total of 20-some people attending an event for an artist?
Jerry Paffendorf: Yeah, that comes out of, I guess there are like two thoughts on that. The one the twenty-five number was like, I forget where it was reported…The Age or something?
Urizenus Sklar: Yeah, The Age.
Jerry Paffendorf: Yeah, it was reported somewhere when it was actually more than 25 people on the sim as well, but I mean, not incredibly more, it was like twice that, which is just the current limitation of the platform, how many people you can put into the space. The big, the criticisms that I’ve heard, so far, about that event, center mostly about not enough access for people, cause it was a small event, it was something that only really 50 people could get to experience directly.
Johnny Ming: This is a world-wide flaw. You know, in the indie-music scene in SL, you know, even when griefers are taking down the grid, people are finally getting to that point of…we’re sharing URLs. Even if they’re just doing radio DJ type stuff, so you can actually give a shout-out from a sim and then you’ll hear a shout-out back. You can go ahead and take down a grid all you want, guess what, you ain’t stoppin’ the music and I think it’s this kind of universal thing that yeah, I mean, people get mobbed if people are popular, even at the more DIY videoblog level like when Amanda Comden was on RocketBoom, she could go out to conferences for so long before then, the mob scene starts, so in a way it could probably end up being worse, if it had this complete unopen, you know, then you got to make calls.
Jerry Paffendorf: It’s strange, right. There’s a thing…you got this media now, and it’s like the Mclewan stuff, everytime you get a meeting you try and impersonate the things that happened before with it and it doesn’t work out quite right so the water finds its lowest level and the way that you do creativity through a medium finds some shape through how you’re communicating it. And maybe that’s another assumption that has to go too is that, although I would love to see the ten thousand avatar mob in place, I just don’t think people would behave, it would be something else. So that’s an interesting question too, in the ways that you syndicate, cause there’s a variety of ways that you can do it, the ways that it will be done differently in the future and the ways that it’s been done differently already. That is certainly, the number of avatars in a place is a grid-wide limitation.
Urizenus Sklar: But here’s the deal, I mean, Sony has to consider this a great success, because forty avatars were there, but gazillions of people have presumably read about this by now. The problem is, after this happens three or four or five or six times, it’s not going to be newsworthy anymore and nobody’s going to get the publicity bang out of it anymore. So, you know, if you had these every night, right, I mean there are a lot of indie artists out there, I mean if you had it every night, the publicity generated would drop to zero.
Johnny Ming: And that actually happens, that’s actually one of the problems with, I mean if you join the live music enthusiasts group, if you’re not poring through the event listings, simultaneously at any moment with five minutes notice, so-and-so is playing at the Luxor stage, so-and-so is playing here, it’s just like, I can’t even cope with this. And so streaming radio is starting to show up a little bit more because at least there you can hear everything. When it comes to the big labels, I think it’s all going to depend on the name, are people hanging out on Avalon who know that Duran-Duran is coming? But they just are camping out there. I thought camping out at an Apple store that was about to open was weird, but there are people who have been there for two months doing nothing but sitting on Avalon waiting for Duran-Duran to show up, and nothing has been announced. So it’s going to depend on who, I think, is going to have the impact. But you know the indies are able to do this just the same, there was one dude who brought in an eighty-four year old Delta Blues guitarist. I mean, the guy’s like 80, 84 years old, and he was playing, although it was through somebody else’s avatar. And word got out and those events eventually started filling up. But does that get out? No. The Ben Folds of the world have this massive reach. Of course twenty people are going to make a lot of noise.
So in a way, it’s our job I think, as residents that, if it’s important to keep our culture alive, we’ve got totally leverage that and be like, “All right.” And that’s why I put up, right before I knew the Talib build was being put in, a whole mess of indie stuff and cleaned up my area. So that when everybody showed up for Talib, they’re showing up and they’re also finding… I mean almost half of… So, twenty-five hundred traffic for Talib, a thousand for the indie hip-hop listening stations.
Jerry Paffendorf: That’s awesome. So there’s the positive stuff on this too, right? I mean, you’ve….
Johnny Ming: That’s the only thing that bugged me about the Ben Folds thing and live events, is that they’re not persistent. Is he ever going to come back? You know, nyah. At least… And one thing that at least you guys, the Sheep have done, is at least the listening stations are a step. Because, there’s like an artist I’ve never heard of that I’m going to check out. I could give a rip about Christina Aguilera, but I’m curious who this other person is.
[laughter]
You know, Talib’s like an indie hip-hop now on a major label. He’s actually really good if you’re into their genre. So there’s some benefits to that. But the listening station lives on forever, and I’ve got two of them. I’ve got Regina Specter and I’ve got Talib now. And people just hang out in a place where the rest of SL is doing other stuff, whether it’s music or maybe a little shopping, or just shooting people. It’s whatever we want to make it. That’s, I think, what our job is.
Jerry Paffendorf: And that’s a great idea. I’m going to see about that. Because I’m not sure if and when Ben Folds will be back, or something, if that’ll be later on. I don’t think there are any plans right now, but other Sony artists are planning to come in, so totally from this. Like, we actually learned a lot, because you don’t… Because these things are being done… If they’re not being done for the first time, because as you point out there are tons of people doing new music in Second Life all the time. Some of these events on that scale or that level of interest and criticism and just attention when a star comes in like that are being done for the first time.
And so we learn a lot on the fly there from what we try to prepare as an outline to how we’re going to syndicate this thing to get other people. We just created this thing, “Destroy Television, ” which is an avatar that’s broadcasting its point of view to the web and taking Flickr pics all the time, and start sending that thing to events, start doing big, multiple sim events here. So there’s tons of stuff. I just can’t wait to make them all better. And then hopefully people will kind of like settle down when they don’t actually like the artist, if that’s the case, when they appear, rather than… Right now the appearances are so tied up with what the platform can offer, that there’s actually two conversations that are happening at the same time.
Johnny Ming: I have a question for Uri. You said… Reuters, that thing kind of bugged you. Does it show up as a little bit more of an honest effort, the fact that you’re going to use Reuters and CNet as an example, that the two dudes who, who that’s their baby, Adam whatever his name is, Adam Reuters, and then Dan Terdiman… They’re there. I run into them. I’ve seen them around. They are, as far as I can tell, living in our world. Does that… Is that a positive to you? What’s your take on the fact that they’re there and they’re existing, and yes, they’re there as a result of two major organizations?
Urizenus Sklar: Absolutely. I mean, you can tell. They actually are very good reporters. I mean Terdiman in particular, but also Adam Reuters is doing very well. And it shows that they’re actually embedded in the game, because the stuff that you got previously with people just dropping in for a day, or just completely cursory stuff, I mean, you just get nothing out of that. So they’re doing… It really shows, I think, and I think that everyone here would agree that their reporting has been very good.
Johnny Ming: Yeah, I wish that the Vonnegut and the Howard Rheingold was much more persistent, because it seems like more people were interested in Vonnegut than Suzanne Vega. [laughter]
Jerry Paffendorf: It’s Kurt Vonnegut, man.
Johnny Ming: Yeah, I know! But I mean, I missed the event, and I’m like, “Well, OK, I missed the event [grumble].” I kind of was like, “Well, damn. That sucks.” So I feel that. Just because I wasn’t totally unavailable, not because I wasn’t invited or anything. I just missed it.
Johnny Ming: So, I actually have a question for Torrid, since she was there. Has… I guess it’s kind of like an apartment with a stage on the roof… Now, there hasn’t been a live event with Talib yet, but Torrid, you and I went there with Lordfly, who built it. Can you kind of like, explain what the experience was like? Because it was very different from the Ben Folds experience.
Torrid Midnight: Well, thus far the build is certainly well done. In my opinion, it had a very realistic sort of real-world feel to it, but it was a very warm type of space, like you would want to hang out there. You know what I mean? You would feel like, on a more intimate level, if he was to be there performing in that space, or whatever. It’s kind of like comparatively being in a concert hall to a coffee house with someone performing. It’s totally different.
Johnny Ming: There were two guys on the build. It was Lordfly who did the building and, I think Bushido Brown….
Torrid Midnight: Bushido….
Johnny Ming: …Hightower did all the styling inside.
Torrid Midnight: Yeah, and I loved it. I would definitely, even if there was no artist in that space, it would be someplace that I would want to hang out. Because… I don’t know about other people, but sometimes the builds in Second Life seem to like, the bigger the better, and the more glitz we can get, or the wider it can be, or the more, just… I don’t know, it feels cold. And it just, it doesn’t… I don’t get that immersion like I do in a smaller space where someone’s really taken the time for every little tiny detail, to make you feel that way.
Johnny Ming: It’s like the Elbow Room theory. You know, the success of the Elbow Room. They’ve always got twenty to thirty people crammed in less than 512 meters squared. [laughter] It’s just insane.
Jerry Paffendorf: I had a couple conversations just hanging out that had nothing to do with hip-hop or music at all, just hanging out in the Brownstone. I think we were like playing darts or something. It was just hilarious.
Johnny Ming: Does Ben Folds have… They have a listening station for him, right?
Jerry Paffendorf: Right, on Media Island. There are a bunch of artist rooms there, and Ben has a room that has a video, and you can buy mp3s and listen to some music and that kind of stuff in there.
Urizenus Sklar: I have a question for Mr. Ming if I may.
Johnny Ming: Yeah, sure.
Urizenus Sklar: So you’re up to simcast episode what now? What number is this?
[laughter]
Whatever. SecondCast. What are we up to?
Johnny Ming: This will be either 38 or 39.
Urizenus Sklar: And how many of these episodes have been dedicated to the indigenous live performers in Second Life?
Johnny Ming: We interviewed Muse Isle and Cylindrian Rutabaga and we also brought in J-Cad and Frog. They couldn’t make it for the recording, but they gave material ahead of time. So we got a live performance recording that we played kind of like syndication.
Urizenus Sklar: Yeah. You know, you should do something like that every episode, because instead of having people yak for however long these go on, an hour or whatever. Like, you know, break it up with some of the indigenous music from some of the live performers, and let them hype their little shows.
Johnny Ming: I’ve put request out a couple times to get mp3s from performers, and they… I get a handful here and there, and I try to intersperse them in some of the episodes. We close some of the episodes with those. In fact, we have one for this episode. So as they come in, I tack them onto the show and give them credit. Uri, were you accusing us of being balanced and riding the hype wagon?
Urizenus Sklar: Well, that and being a little bit boring.
[laughter]
Urizenus Sklar: Because I’m imagining a show that’s sort of like an All Things Considered sort of thing, where you have some talk about these issues, but then also introducing the Second Life music scene. And then there’s also lots of very interesting poetry readings throughout Second Life. Things like that, that could be woven into this show. And you get a picture of what’s going on in Second Life in a kind of entertaining way and at the same time you’ve got the discussions and the arguments and the inside look at what’s going on and stuff. Because I think that all of that stuff is way more interesting to me than what Sony is trying to get out of Second Life.
Jerry Paffendorf: That’s usually how I thought of Second Cast. It was that inside look at Second Life, discussing things happening on the grid.
Johnny Ming: Yeah. Uri, this is actually our most boring show yet.
Johnny Ming: I went to one of Fercoffi’s like round table things and the big discussion was, “Oh my god, the GM thing, giving away free land.” Well, for somebody in the rental business, is this a serious concern? It was a good roundtable topic to have and so I think the issue of Sony Music or Warner Brothers or Universal showing up, what are they going to do and how can we spin it into something that will help us as the people who do that?
Jerry Paffendorf: That’s the force. I guess I see that as the dynamic here, that there’s no like, to bring in Divonia, this is like not Ice Nine for the virtual world, right? When a company like Sony puts something down here, it doesn’t mean that in Second Life suddenly everything becomes your worst fears of what you think a big company may be or what it may do.
Actually, quite the reverse happens. The network of people doing things in Second Life totally route around that and end up forcing those companies to change the way that they do things, the model of the world, if they’re going to stay. If somebody doesn’t stay when they come in, well then somebody else eventually does come in and they change the way that they behave. But I think that’s the arrow of what’s going on. It isn’t any kind of outside influences that change the fundamentals about this medium and what it lets people do.
So I guess that’s why I’m either less fearful or I’m watching the whole thing, entertained by it, saying like, “Isn’t this amazing to see this kind of like big meteor coming here?” It attracts so much attention. It attracts some fear in certain areas like to guess about what they are or aren’t going to do for us and, in the end, I think what’s happening is that all the positives about Second Life end up springing out in the other direction.
I just see that as a force. I don’t think there’s any way it could go in another direction. We have a space where you’re with other people, where you can create anything you want, and if you don’t like what you’re seeing, you can go somewhere else.
Johnny Ming: I mean, this is also video gaming too. I mean, everybody is coming in with this Second Life centric… I totally disagree with the “it’s the future”, “it’s the 3D web”. Give me a break. This is a video game industry, a multi-bazillion dollars, and as I started getting into worlds like Eve and Warcraft and Vendetta and, even there, wow, these conversations are the same conversations everybody has. It’s our world. Everybody’s coming in and everybody forgets about it and the cycle continues it and billion of dollars of cash are flowing. These big companies missed out on blogging and missed out on podcasting and they’ll be damned if they’re going to miss out on something that they think is one thing when, really, it’s a bunch of people hanging out together. There’s buddy lists and the social network follows them wherever they go. You know, I hook up with friends from Second Life inside of Warcraft now. What’s the difference? It doesn’t matter.
Jerry Paffendorf: I think you’re right. It’s totally bigger than Second Life. I mean, in Second Life, if this was about Second Life or the failure or success of Second Life, like are we going to have this user-created 3D world, that lowers your idea. You’re right, it’s as big as the video game industry which you’re awesome at reminding people too because that’s the kind of thing were people are, “Oh, this is so small, ” or whatever, you point to the bazillion dollar gaming industry and say, “This is a hair’s breath away from what we’re doing right here.”
Johnny Ming: I want to see indie bands. I want to see Grand Theft Auto turn into an MMO and then I can actually hang out on the sidelines while someone’s getting carjacked outside and I’m listening to J-Cat inside.
Jerry Paffendorf: I play on the Xbox 360 quite a bit and I check it out and I watch it with the Second Life eye and Xbox 360 and their live stuff that they do right now kind of sucks. The reason it sucks is because it’s missing a lot of the things that a Second Life has. So you can’t bring yourself around between different game worlds on there, you can’t hang out in a social space to see who’s online at that point of time who you might want to jump into a game with, they limit the kinds of things right now like what kind of music you can bring with you, what kind of files you can bring in. But that kind of integration with a video game space to the point where you can bring in the other things that you do online with you, your friends and your media, and all that stuff. You need to just get at information in that kind of a space. It’s totally coming together. So, I mean you’re right, it’s the video game industry but as far as like the web and video games and this participatory web coming together, that’s kind of the big error that I see in Second Life just happens to be like the most complete microcosm of that right now.
Johnny Ming: It makes sense because Linden Lab as a company, as a venture of Second Life, so this is the kind of thing that’s going to happen eventually, right? You don’t have a world that goes on, and you don’t have the technology that you have all just sitting out there in silos without putting them together at some point. So Linden Labs acutally came out and did something five or six years earlier than it really had to happen.
I mean we didn’t have to have Second Life right now. The forces that create this kind of web-integrated, user- created virtual world. Second Life and Linden Lab were a very early example of trying to do that first. And they’ve done an awesome job in respect that they were able to survive through kind of the dry periods. Just getting to this point right now, we’re an alternate reality. They maybe getting the real started right now. That may have made more sense if they didn’t go ahead and do this.
But it’s driven by the same dynamics. If Second Life attracts a lot of heat for that because they can’t give you everything that you want right now. But there’s that model that you’re looking for. That web-connected, user-created video game world where you can consume content that other people have created for you or, if you want to do that, or you can donk into it like a web page if you just want to get at something or somebody. And where you can also set up shop and build or create anything you want for any kind of project that you want.
And that’s what people really want. They want the idea of Second Life, a lot of the hype that you see out there… what you would call hype… where people describe things so off the cuff about what’s going on and the wonders of the world are people really wanting that vision to come together. They want that story to come together. And that’s why also, I don’t like hype, but I appreciate the fact that people are shooting out these exciting ideas over top of everything because that also wakes up the people who are capable of putting other pieces together to create that better.
Urizenus Sklar: So am I back on now?
Johnny Ming: Yep. You’re on.
Torrid Midnight: Yes.
[laughter]
Urizenus Sklar: I don’t know ho….
Johnny Ming: Oh, great. We lost him again. He just blew out his microphone.
[laughter]
Johnny Ming: See Spin, this is what you out on having everyone in your studio when you do your cast.
Spin Martin: Yeah, I know… I got to get on the Skype.
[laughter]
Johnny Ming: Uri, we can hear you.
Urizenus Sklar: Yeah, I’m back. It was so hard to listen to all that and not be able to say anything. I was wondering….
[laughter]
Urizenus Sklar: Such a pile… No, I mean I forget….
Spin Martin: We seem to have lost connection with professor Zamboni with professor Sklar who was broadcasting from the Herald Headquarters.
Jerry Paffendorf: I still have the pdf if you guys want to launch in for the….
Urizenus Sklar: Doing the old fashioned way now. You asked me a question before I got cut off. It began something of the form of you don’t think we should talk about this, that, and the other thing, or something like that.
Johnny Ming: Well basically, what I was asking… I was trying to bring some sort of closure to the topic of big names coming into Second Life and how should the press be approaching the topic?
Urizenus Sklar: Well, I mean, it should be covered, obviously it’s significant. But I don’t… I don’t like that’s it’s breathless in this way. In that it’s… no one is considering the negative stuff. Right? Everyone’s saying, “Ah, well, General Motors, they buys these islands, and maybe Prokofy Neva loses some rentals and stuff” but you don’t have to go there. But look, right now Linden Lab… here is an example of one thing that you might be concerned about… right now Linden Lab has this policy where if you are an acedemic and you have some research project, you have to get prior approval from them to do it. Right? If you’re a reporter, you’re suppose to contact the Linden to get permission to interview someone. No such policy applies to corporations that are in there, doing market research, doing cool hunting, whatever it is that they’re in there doing. Right? Do they have to come up with some sort of plan to be approved? If they are conducting some sort of market research survey… do they have to conduct? Do they have to get that approved? So the Lindens have with these corporations. If you’re an academic or the press, they want to know what you’re doing, and they have to approve what you’re doing. If you’re, in affect, conducting the same survey, but doing it for profit, then they don’t care.
Johnny Ming: Do they know? How would anybody know? That a dude, for a word, corporation could be like go out and find some cool stuff. Shines into Second Life, runs around for a bit, talks to people, then reports on his… I mean, you have no way of knowing if somebody’s doing that. You might not even see it.
Urizenus Sklar: You might also have no way of knowing if I’m interviewing someone in there at least they… but that doesn’t stop them from stating they have a certain policy about it. And it’s not even a question of enforcement, the issue is exactly what do we have here when we have general motors in here? I mean, one way to view it is that what we’ve got is this giant, immersive advertisement. So it’s no longer the case that advertisers just want our eyeballs, like looking at a page in a magazine, or looking at the TV screen, but they want our digital souls in a certain sense. They want us to be completely immersed in their product and so forth. I mean no one is raising these issues as far as I can tell.
Johnny Ming: Is that the big fear that you have?
Urizenus Sklar: It’s not the big fear that I have, it is an interesting issue and it’s a thing to think about. Right? So we’re all saying “oh wow, this is the next wave, this is so hip. Don’t be dragging your feet, don’t be putting your feet on the brake because this is the next wave.” Well think about what this means too, right? I mean if it really is this big of a deal, if it really is this totally immersive environment that we’re sort of like dropping into this in effect this 3d totally immersive advertisement. I mean what does that mean? What does that mean for us?
Johnny Ming: Sure, that’s a question. On the push factor and everything, I guess that’s a question that rides up the same wave rather than like fighting everything back and saying, you know, “stop, don’t say this, you can’t say that there’s some interesting ideas here, you can’t report on these things happening and wondering about where they’re going to go because there’s questions.”.
Urizenus Sklar: But no one ever said don’t report on this stuff, right? No one has ever said “don’t report this stuff”.
Jerry Paffendorf: Sure, just include other questions, just include those questions alongside. And I’m sure they’ll come in other articles. If this stuff sticks around, those are the articles that have to be written, and they’ll be written next because the first introduction will be over, and now it’s time to do the work. It’s time to turn the lights on and look at what’s going on. Last night’s party was fun, now who’s in the house, all that kind of stuff. That stuff comes next.
The stories about like GM coming into second light are interesting, not because of their first, I know because we work with these companies and the thinking when they come in is that they have to find a thing that they can do first that’s relatively small. They have to try it out, they have to get people on their team interested and they have to understand what’s happening.
So they tend to do things that, by being very large, you would think that they would be like, this is going to be the most life changing thing ever if this gigundo thing can’t do the thing that changes my life then it’s in some way, shape, or form either like a failure, or it’s not the future of them working in this space. When really it’s not true, because they’re learning, so the story becomes something like GM or somebody starts this way, and the idea is that in five years time we’re in a place where people are modifying the cars that they’re about to purchase online before they get them or something like this that actually is significant. Or where you have a globally distributed design force that’s building all your vehicles because you have the technology that allows that.
Urizenus Sklar: Look, no one here is saying that interesting things aren’t happening, right? The issue here, and let’s be very clear about this, the issue has been about the height and the responsibility of mainstream media to get the story right, right? So when I complain in the Herald and I quote Mark Glazer from CBS, and then Jerry tells me “Don’t hit the brakes on this because history is going to blow right past you.” But look at what Mark Glazer said, I mean.
Johnny Ming: Mark Glazer said he was never in Second Life. He said he tried out Active Worlds and Ultima in the 90’s.
Urizenus Sklar: Absolutely irrelevant to this point that I’m making. This is what he said, look. What Business Week is doing, they, quote, “chose the easier road of hyping the entry media companies in the game with little criticism or thought for reporting. In fact, the photo essays that accompany the story online might as well be a series of ads for the companies that have set up shop in Second Life.” all right? Now that is not only true, but it’s a good criticism of that Business Week article. If there was no analysis in it, it was in effect nothing more than churning out the public relations fliers or something like that.
And what we need, we don’t want to sit here and say “oh, this is all bullshit”. Now obviously I don’t think that. I mean I’ve been in Second Life for a long time, I think it’s extremely interesting, and I think important things about our future are happening here. But that means that we have to be vigilant and thoughtful about the events that we’re observing. It doesn’t mean we’re just along for this sort of really fun, you know —
Jerry Paffendorf: Yes, but that’s not really what your posts in the blog are saying. It just seems to me like just criticism of like the Post and the Herald. They’re not shepherding any interesting questions along side of things. They’re just kind of, like, they’re just downright being pretty much straight-up — the impression they get is that they’re very jerky, the way that they’re written.
Just in being very dismissive, and then also not really showing a lot of respect for the kinds of things that are happening, whether they’re the total “bad news is good news” bash articles, like “this is something that wasn’t intended to happen, either with the platform or a project, and look at it, ha ha ha, ” this kind of thing. Look at all the press people writing about Second Life. They should be — the first article about this kind of stuff in the New York Times should have included every single minutiae of downside about it, when most of the people who were reading that had never even heard of it. You need something before you’ll even listen to it.
Urizenus Sklar: Look. Every point I’ve made here about thinking about the role of these corporations coming in and why is no one doing anything about it…But tracking the kinds of studies they are doing whereas academics do get tracked. The point I made about being immersed in, basically, a 3-D kind of advertisement — all of those points that I’m making right here, right now, all of those are in the Herald.
Obviously, the Herald has certain constraints to it, which is that it is a tabloid newspaper and we play tabloid reporters. Still, even we, with our constraints, can make these kinds of points, and shame on Business Week and the New York Times, for god’s sake, for not finding space to make these reports.
Jerry Paffendorf: Not a shame, a difference, right? I’m just saying, you’re right. I mean, there’s not exactly right or wrong here. That area that you’re filling in here, with the kind of criticism that you make, and that you make artfully like you’re saying, because you guys are a tabloid, you guys make a lot of your points to the side, right? You say something that’s interesting or it’s sensational, and the point comes out the side. It’s like The Daily Show or something like this, right?
In that sense, that’s exactly how it works. A Business Week article might be on the other side of that. They say, “We have to tell the truth about what’s going on, but we tell the exciting part, because none of this stuff, none of this frontier, the pieces aren’t filled in, but we need to show the entrepreneurs out there, the possible developers in these spaces who are looking for new opportunities, we’re a catalog for new opportunities.”
This story is an exciting brochure about the place that’s developing that you’ve never heard of but that you just might like to set up shop at some point, and you certainly need to begin to understand, if you have anything to do with what’s on the web or what’s going on in entertainment or what’s going on with being a company, this is the same discussion that’s happening on the web right now. It’s like, if I’m a company and this is, like Eric always says, don’t talk to us, play with us.
This is the whole thing. You need the people that use whatever it is that you provide, in many, many cases, to feel invested enough in what you provide and that they feel partial ownership over it and like they’re controlling who they are inside of it, and that you’re not just feeding them stuff and not closing the feedback loop.
Urizenus Sklar: What you just said is just shocking, because what in effect it said is that the role of Business Week is in effect to do the public relations work of Linden Lab and to hype it up.
Jerry Paffendorf: No.
Urizenus Sklar: That can’t be right.
Jerry Paffendorf: I mean, almost like, I can’t even see the story, but it’s not, it’s not even about Linden Lab. Again, I think this is so much larger than Second Life. It may be where I’m coming from in thinking about this, then, is maybe not exactly where you are, if you’re focusing specifically on Linden Lab.
But getting people to understand that there is this idea out there now that within simulation space you can actually create things of value to people, present your identity in a certain way, so it’s not like you’re in imaginary worlds. You have now had a communication technology that includes pictures which even can communicate things about yourself to other people, and you can also point those worlds towards some very serious applications, education or training or, in this case, business.
You might be able to make money here and this is an idea you’ve never heard of. Articles that get written that just say, like, “Oh, there’s this thing but then there’s tons of problems and there’s tons of griefers everywhere and it’s totally uncertain and we don’t know if it’s going to be here tomorrow, ” all that kind of stuff, like, misses the point. It’s bigger than Second Life and nothing else will present the idea to people in the same way. Then, of course, if anybody’s going to go, “You check it out and if you don’t like it you bounce off of it, ” or —
Urizenus Sklar: I’m sorry, I didn’t get that. Nothing else is going to present the idea in a better way?
Jerry Paffendorf: Oh no. Yeah, sure. Presenting a new idea requires making some sacrifices in the way that you tell a story because you’re not sure of exactly what….
Urizenus Sklar: Utter crap. Utter crap. I actually responded to your post earlier. Think about it. The idea that to move ahead with a new idea requires charging out and just giving the rosy side of the picture and not nailing down the details and worrying about all the concerns.
Jerry Paffendorf: No. Those are obviously important. Those are things that anybody needs to really start. But I mean that somewhere in there, yeah you need to present opportunity. I’m trying to balance out the force in the conversation, I guess. I don’t want to run far off the side.
Urizenus Sklar: Could I interrupt?
Jerry Paffendorf: Yeah.
Urizenus Sklar: Here’s what I said. Look. Charles Darwin writes a draft of The Origin of Species and then locks it away for ten years while he just works on barnacles for ten years. That’s all he did. He studied barnacles, right, because that was illuminating of his theory and he was trying to get the details right. He could have just hyped his theory from the beginning but that wouldn’t have driven progress in our understanding of the theory of evolution or in the acceptance of the theory of evolution.
Jerry Paffendorf: Right. And I guess what I mean to say on there is that there is a time for that. Not everything rests in one article or in one wave of articles. Right? So this is in the same way that Darwin did the details to really present his theory, it’s a similar situation. We need lots of different viewpoints coming in. But there was a great comment on Terranova where there was discussion about this, where somebody was talking to people who were presenting the viewpoint that you are right now, but very, very heavy-handedly. Like, oh man, Second Life. What is this thing? This isn’t the way it’s going to work out. The comment was something like, why after all these years of wanting this thing, is now everyone looking back where it’s coming from, and saying we need to immediately conservatise this conversation and concentrate on the negativities of what’s going on, rather than saying, holy crap, this is an independent thing that we can build up.
Urizenus Sklar: Nobody said concentrate on the negativities. People are saying, tell the whole story. Right? And don’t over-hype the positive. Just tell the story correctly.
Jerry Paffendorf: Right.
Urizenus Sklar: That’s it. Tell the story correctly and get the balance right.
Jerry Paffendorf: No, it’s an awesome question. What is the best way then to tell the story of opportunity or something that’s emerging like that? I’m just trying to think. What would be the best kind of article to introduce….
Urizenus Sklar: There’s a great book by Mark Wallace and Peter Ludlow called We’ll Meet Again.
Jerry Paffendorf: I have a copy on my desk. I have an advanced copy. It’s a good read. There’s something dirty on every page.
Urizenus Sklar: Your fellow podcaster Mark Wallace is very good at this thing, right?
Jerry Paffendorf: Yeah, he is.
Urizenus Sklar: He is very good at it. And there are a couple people that actually can do a nuanced story and….
Jerry Paffendorf: No, you’re right. Mark should have sprung to mind because he’s the best person I know of at that by far.
Johnny Ming: Any closing thoughts, Spin?
Spin Martin: I can work with it. Sometimes the events are going to be underwhelming. I’m going to pull out the positive and make them work for what’s already happening. There’s benefit to it. It might be an underwhelming event. I’m more interested in hip-hop culture so the Ben Folds event was like aaaah! People I think are going to have more fun with something that’s a little bit more persistent but I think all the studios combined are going to be learning how to work with media a little bit better, and cheaper, kind of stepping ahead with that, with more of these kind of mixed events. It’s going to be this constant arms race and whatnot. At least nobody’s saying “first”, I don’t think, anymore. We got over that.
Jerry Paffendorf: I know. Isn’t it great? That’s such a positive. Because this is, for all the new listeners tuning in, this was not the environment around Second Life, even six months ago. Even four months ago. Its amazing how quickly the system has self-corrected itself of the first. I saw some other posts coming in about some other companies who were still saying first, but now they’re just kind of cute, if anything. Kind of like, Oh, you just don’t know. You’ll learn. But its amazing how fast we passed through that era of firsts, to the point now where saying you’re first for most things is kind of embarrassing, for people who are hip to it at least.
But then again, there’s our own echo chamber as well. And I don’t know if we know very well how much very casual people who are coming in from the edges think about that or care about that, or not. I don’t know. There’s a lot of people of various levels of understanding of what’s going on, and beyond that various levels of things that they want out of the platform or the experience, that it’s so hard to talk to everybody about the same thing. And this community, us, we’ve been talking together for a long time, so were well aware of everything.
Johnny Ming: Well, very good. Thanks everybody for coming. Hopefully this edits into a thought-provoking podcast, and not a snoozecast as Uri will probably write it up as.
[laughter]
Torrid Midnight: I was so bored when I was on Second Cast.
Jerry Paffendorf: Watch that podcaster, Johnny Ming…
Torrid Midnight: It was a snore…
Johnny Ming: A show note: I omitted to mention that Urizenus Sklar esquire is real life Peter Ludlow, who is an author and professor of psychology out near where Lordfly lives, actually. University of Michigan. Is that right?
Urizenus Sklar: Yeah, except its philosophy and linguistics.
Johnny Ming: Oh, philosophy and linguistics.
Torrid Midnight: Nice.
Jerry Paffendorf: Put them both together and its like a Jelly Belly jelly bean formula. That’s what it tastes like. That’s psychology, Peter.
[laughter]
I know all my superheroes, though. I’ve got your stats down, Peter.
Johnny Ming: Wasn’t that in a movie, where he’s like, What do you do? Standup philosopher. Oh! Bullshit artist!
[laughter]
Johnny Ming: I think that was Mel Brooks. That’s all.
Urizenus Sklar: No, philosophical stylist.
Spin Martin: Stylist.
Johnny Ming: Well, that’s all for episode 38. Come play with us at secondcast.com, and for Second Cast, this is Johnny Ming.
We leave you now with a song called I Saw It Coming by Keiko Takumara.
[song]
Jerry Paffendorf: No offence to Johnny Ming and the other members…
Johnny Ming: Yes, I’m just a fly on the wall here.
Torrid Midnight: Captain Jazz Hands.
Jerry Paffendorf: You sit in the captain’s chair. It’s not about you.
Johnny Ming: That’s exactly…
SecondCast Episode 38 [68:23m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
SecondCast #38: Raking Through the Muck…
I haven’t to this episode of SecondCast yet (I had to miss the taping), but from what I’m told, the sparks were flying. Johnny Ming and Torrid Midnight co-host a discussion of the many real-world corporations that have come into the virtual…
[...] A new Secondcast podcast is up with Johny Ming, Torrid Midnight, Eric Rice, Peter Ludlow, and myself talking about the recent media coverage of Second Life and outworld companies coming inworld. Of hype and hype hype and what’s really interesting about SL and the process of introducing the web-connected user-created 3D Web to a much wider circle than the bad-news-is-good-news HIC (Herald Inner Core) while still painting a full picture. I think we managed to balance the force out between us all, and it’s a fun listen. [...]
Hi Guys –
Just finished listening, just wanted to say I really appreciated the fact that you were able to discuss both ends of this debate so elequently. This ep was by no means boring, and is probably one of the *most* entertaining I’ve had the fortune to take in. Thanks for bringing up so many aspects of the commercial/hype issue. I look forward to hearing more.
I have listened to every secondcast episode and this one was by far — BY FAR — the best of them all. Not only were the issues being discussed ones that I, as a musician playing exclusively in Second Life, found of personal interest, but I loved that your podcasters actually took differing positions and debated the issues.
Please keep up the good work,
Niko
i used to work for sony music europe – unless anything has changed in the past 5 years – they have an agenda that has nothing to do with sl…. its all about product and ooh whats next? – i could tell you tons about smee
and i missed off the fact thats its the most interesting stuff ive heard in ages
ive looked at millions of us, reuters, nissan and sonys island after the initial hype – every other site has far more traffic
now we all want discussion but just putting a lovely sim out there doesnt mean ppl come back
excuse me but you just start bleeping words? Why the fuck would you do that?
I didn´t know Ben Fold music before listening to SecondCast, actually the first time I ever heard his music was when watching that animation movie Over the hedge.
But I think going digital is nice but just using SL for marketing is bad, ya know, bringing stuff and leaving it to rot will not make many loyal customers.
I’ll echo what everybody else is saying. Great job on this episode. I just listened and it is certainly the best episode yet. The discussion was well informed and well done. I hope more episodes like this one are on their way.
Buy Paxil…
Buy paxil Buy cheap Paxil online order cheap Paxil online. Paxil…
Pick aura soma colors free online….
Soma online purchase. Budget flights online soma. Soma free online consultation. Buy soma online. Buy soma from mexico online. Soma online….