Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun Is Changing Reality by Edward Castronova -Virtual worlds have exploded out of online game culture and now capture the attention of millions of ordinary people: husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, workers, retirees. Devoting dozens of hours each week to massively multiplayer virtual reality environments (like World of Warcraft and Second Life), these millions are the start of an exodus into the refuge of fantasy, where they experience life under a new social, political, and economic order built around fun. Given the choice between a fantasy world and the real world, how many of us would choose reality? Exodus to the Virtual World explains the growing migration into virtual reality, and how it will change the way we live–both in fantasy worlds and in the real one.

Vodafone customers now have access to a new service called InsideOut that allows interaction between characters in the vast virtual world Second Life and real, actual phones (you know, like in the real world) operated by Voda. Both voice calls and text messages can be ferried in and out of the game, with SMSes running a cool L$300 (which we think is somewhere around $1) and voice calls running L$300 per minute. Continue reading

Dear Friends,

We cannot continue without your help. We MUST raise $25,000 by December 31, 2007. If you are one of the thousands of people who regularly visit Turbulence, Networked Performance, Networked Music Review and / or New American Radio ; are one of the hundreds of teachers who use Turbulence works in your new media / digital art courses; are an artist who has received a Turbulence, Networked Music Review or New American Radio commission; have presented at or attended Upgrade! Boston (Art Interactive or Massachusetts College of Art and Design), Floating Points (Emerson College), or Programmable Media (Pace Digital Gallery) … now is the time to give something back. Continue reading

Share Prize 2008: Jury Statement - Bruce Sterling, Piero Gilardi, Stefano Mirti, and Anne Nigten: This has been a very good year for the physical and the actual in digital culture. In the 1990s, virtual art, website art and Internet art would have dominated our entries. But in 2007, five of our six prize finalists involve a physical, hands-on encounter with digital technology — and we mean it is digital art that must be literally touched and gripped by the hands of artists and audience. The sixth piece is driven by living human breath.

It has recently been said that “cyberspace is turning itself out,” that “the virtual is becoming the actual.” We think this years’ chosen artists may have proven this thesis. Continue reading

“A new vest from TN Games aims to bring more realism to the video-game experience by simulating impacts. In a first-person shooter, for example, the gaming vest, called 3rd Space, mimics the force of enemy fire. The vest’s air compressor controls eight embedded pneumatic cells that produce impacts of various strengths and in various locations on the player’s torso, in response to events that occur in a video game.

The 3rd Space vest is a scaled-down version of a medical device that CEO Mark Ombrellaro is developing. A vascular surgeon by training, Ombrellaro was working on a pilot project for Texas Tech University, experimenting with using telehealth to deliver health care to prisoners… Continue reading

“Twine is a website where people can dump information that’s important to them, from strings of e-mails to YouTube videos. Or, if a user prefers, Twine can automatically collect all the Web pages she visited, e-mails she sent and received, and so on. Once Twine has some information, it starts to analyze it and automatically sort it into categories that include the people involved, concepts discussed, and places, organizations, and companies. This way, when a user is searching for something, she can have quick access to related information about it. Twine also uses elements of social networking so that a user has access to information collected by others in her network. All this creates a sort of “collective intelligence,” says Nova Spivack, CEO and founder of Radar Networks.” From The Semantic Web Goes Mainstream by Kate Greene, Technology Review.

The popular TV show CSI: New York lead its viewers into Second Life last night: “Mainstream TV audiences will get a taste of the virtual world tonight in an episode of CSI: New York titled “Down the Rabbit Hole.” The show’s creator, Anthony Zuiker, a keynote speaker at the recent Virtual Worlds Conference and Expo in San Jose, CA, has designed a cross-platform experience that will route CSI viewers into Linden Lab’s Second Life, where they will be able to participate in content related to the show, and can continue following the show’s narrative. Continue reading

“A virtual character, or avatar, for all the virtual worlds in which people play is the goal of a joint project between IBM and Linden Lab. - The computer giant and the creator of Second Life are working on universal avatars that can travel between worlds.

The project aims to open up virtual worlds by introducing open tools that work with any online environment. The companies hope to boost interest in virtual worlds as well as make them easier to navigate. At the moment every virtual world requires a player or user to go through the process of creating an avatar that will act as their proxy in that online environment. Typically, an avatar created for one world, be it a game or a system like Second Life, cannot move between these different virtual spaces. The project started by IBM and Linden Lab aims to create a universal character creation system so people only have to create a digital double once.” Continue reading Universal Avatars Bestride Worlds, BBC News.

Create, make and trade your product ideas - The post-industrial revolution is changing the way products are created, traded and distributed. Now everyone can engage in the manufacturing process through their PCs - bringing personal manufacturing of individualized products to the masses. Ponoko is the world’s first personal manufacturing platform. It’s the online space for a community of creators and consumers to use a global network of digital manufacturing hardware to co-create, make and trade individualized product ideas on demand. The ponoko.com marketplace connects creators, consumers, digital manufacturing hardware and service providers to promote, make and trade products on Ponoko and social networking websites.

Users of Metaplace, as it is known, can build 3D online worlds for PCs or even a mobile phone without any knowledge of complex computer languages. The web-based program is the brainchild of Raph Koster, one of the developers of massively multiplayer online games such as Ultima Online. Users make the virtual spaces from simple building blocks. The results, which could be used for gaming, socialising or e-commerce, can be embedded in a webpage, facebook profile or blog. “We are out to democratise virtual worlds and bring them to absolutely anybody,” said Mr Koster, founder of Areae, the company behind Metaplace.” Continue reading Virtual worlds opened up to all by Jonathan Fildes, BBC News, San Francisco. Also see Virtual worlds open up to blind by Geoff Adams-Spink, BBC News.