Notes from Metaverse U, Day 2
Please forgive the rough format. I also only managed to capture things that really stuck out to me.
TL Taylor, it university, copenhagen, denmark
- people put in years of investment into worlds and their identities there
- they need to have some claim to it
Jeremy Bailenson, virtual human interaction lab at Stanford
- avatar = any digital representation of a human
- showed a facegen technology that was really excellent
- showed facial expression tracking through a webcam
- showed a demo of virtual reality using those technologies in a police lineup setting
- people can send their actual behavior, or apply a filter to show some other behavior
- mimicry is a powerful behavior, and even in a digital setting it is powerful; people don’t detect the mimicry, but the effect is still the same
- the face morph is also powerful in getting people to like things
- the key tenet behind these concepts is that people like other people who are like them; like attracts like
- the gaze and attention system also keeps people more engaged
- showed shared body space and how it boosts learning and retention
Kari Kraus, U of Maryland
- in-world and outworld regimes have different standards and rules, especially with regards to intellectual property and copyright
- copying is central to preservation
- lots of copies keep stuff safe
- we do the same in business with backups, off-site backups, disaster recovery, source code in escrow and bank deposit boxes
- spoke a lot about copyright in SL
Conversation: Brewster Kahle and Henry Lowood
- copyright and licensing problems still exist
- open standards are here - walled gardens a la aol are dead
- open worlds are the future
- you have to open things up to preserve them
- there is very little documentation of big in-world events - users don’t document with screenshots, etc.
- internet archive is there for you, and needs submissions. also donate time
Beth Coleman
- referenced halting state, ubiquitous computing
- talked about israeli/palestinian argument based on google maps arguments
- showed angry teacher video on youtube
- virtual worlds on laptops are one of the last tethers to a sit-down computing environment
- everything else is mobile or is becoming mobile now
- mentioned a lot of interesting projects working on augmented reality
- and yes, these are really small niches, but the whole thing is considered niche by many
- working on virtual worlds primer book
Parvati Dev & Wm. LeRoy Heinrichs
- interested in mirror worlds for medical purposes, simulating emergency department training
- medical simulations are interesting too but it’s more complicated and needs better detail
- virtual worlds can be used for training to improve medical results
- learning curves and tethers are a challenge for using this for large-scale training, especially in developing countries
Conversation: Rebecca Moore, Jeffrey Schnapp and Wagner James Au
- Rebecca: google earth outreach manager
- used google earth to stop proposed logging in the santa cruz mountains
- created a fly over tour that showed where the helicopters would be logging and that the sedementation could affect drinking water supplies
- the wiki aspect came in with community members submitting pictures of old growth redwoods and beavers that would have been affected
- the google earth logging flyover
- the presentation was extremely powerful
- google earth is not just an atlas, it’s a geobrowser
- >50% of the info on the web relates to a place; sometimes the context is the best way to understand information
- referred to google earth as both a virtual world and a mirror world
- also showed an example of using google earth to fight flat top coal mining
- and how google earth was used to discover a coral reef
- James:
- The SL monthly fee in the beginning didn’t make sense because linden didn’t provide entertainment
