Archive for September, 2008
3DVIA Shape & 3DVIA PrintScreen: Kewl 3D Tools! (for the future?)
September 16, 2008 7:54 pmAs many people & avatars reading this blog, I have some notions about 3D building: I know what a mesh is and that we need an X, Y and Z axis. I can rezz a prim, glue a texture on it and massacre it. But aligning them up nice is already a bit harder. I’ve heard about and experimented with ’sculpties’ and know that the lesser polygons the happier and less crash-prone my client is. I used to fool around in Bryce when I was young(er) - and did the same attempts with for instance Blender more recently. It can create something, but not in as far that… well… it’s worth showing off. Hence my admiration for great ‘builders’ such as Light Waves, Miss Beatrix Newt, Pavig Lok & Miss LittleToe, Ponk, … . But I’m always interested when ‘easy to do 3D building tools’ hit the market and/or beta. Google Sketch Up is one of them, and now we have a - very similar - 3DVIA Shape.
Dassault Systèmes has quite an impressive 3D graphics suit for young, old, new & experienced already:
- Cosmic Blobs a very cute 3D graphics software system for kids & mature children like me, which allows you to create graphics scenes, small animations movies, IM avatars (buddy icons), … and comes with fascinating expansion packs sucks as ‘pirates’, ‘pets’, … . (not for sale anymore)
- CB Model Pro was built around the idea that surfaces should be manipulated directly. The result is a very intuitive and highly productive tool for 3D content creation that seamlessly fits into the production pipeline. (free 15 days trial available)
- 3DVIA PrintScreen has the ability to save 3D scenes from OpenGL and DirectX applications. It converts them to 3D XML standard format. (So OGLE, but will also do DirectX.) (Free)
- 3DVIA Virtools which includes a Graphical User Interface to develop sophisticated applications by visually assembling objects and behaviors, the Behavior Engine to run interactive applications, the Render Engine to render graphics in real-time, the Virtools Scripting Language to create low level specific functions without any C++ line and the SDK to create custom behaviors. (beyond Vint budget)
- 3DVIA MP aimed specifically at 3D game development. (beyond Vint budget)
- 3DVIA Player which allows to embed Virtools Composition (VMO files) into a webpage and for viewing 3D scenes & objects created in 3DVIA Shape. (Free)
According to Dassault Systèmes, they are dedicated to developing technology that enables people to express their creativity and productivity through a portfolio of high quality products and are planning to expaind their ‘world-class product development capabilities’ into many new markets to make 3D the content of expression and creativity for everyone. Not so bad a mission statement, is it? And what’s so revolutionary about 3DVIA Shape? ‘The new 3DVIA Shape further extends 3D content creation to a whole new set of users and provides a new outlet for our existing 3D artists to share their work,’ said Lynne Wilson from 3DVIA, Dassault Systèmes. ‘The new 3D remix capability not only makes 3D publishing easier, but also more fun. We’re excited to see what our user community will create.’ And yep, it is fairly simple to insert a better quality 3D object in your - rather lame n00bish - scene, just take a look at the avatar standing in Torley’s house! ;)
3DVIA SHAPE (beta) - Functionality
- Shape: Simple, but powerful 3D modeling technology designed to be easy enough for anyone to quickly express ideas in 3D.
- Remix: Edit and modify Shape models published by other users, or skip right to constructing complete 3D scenes with models posted by the 3DVIA community.
- Publish: Users can publish and share their work directly through 3DVIA.com and on their blogs, profiles or most Web pages through the embeddable 3DVIA interactive player.
Of course, this simplified approach gives you lots of limitations. But really, it’s mostly like with all tools: if you need to publish a whole book, use InDesign, if you just need to print out your shopping list, notepad will do just fine! ;)
Now, what’s the - 3D - use?
The question still stays though, what’s the use of programs such as 3DVIA Shape? For now, not much probably? As long as ‘normal people’ - like you and me - don’t find a - simple - way to get their scenes & objects into 3D worlds such as Second Life, Google Lively, OpenSim, … there’s not much use of 3D toys for designing your own. But now imagine this building tool linked to Second Life? If this were the case, it would have not been that much effort to build me my skybox! Or, find an automated way to clean up your 3DVIA Shape & Google SketchUp created objects - or OGLE & 3DVIA PrintScreen captured objects and ship them off to 3D printing service such as Shapeways, print them in Chocolate using lego blocks or hope that RepRap gets better at self-replicating and you can get your hands on a copy. Could get you some fun results. Possibilities will be doable for all and endless some day? Maybe?
Download 3DVIA Shape? Go here. For the full press release, take a look at Reuters. Have an idea about how to get my 3DVIA Shape created composition in Second Life - the easy way, if there is any - take a look at Gulliver’s wife trespassing on Torley’s Property (swimming pool included) or give a shout in the comments.
Free Full Perm Female Skins - Sezmra’s Splendor
September 15, 2008 6:59 pmWhen Eloh Eliot first released her skin’s .pdf files - how much more ‘full perm’ can you get? - ‘accusation hell’ broke loose in the Second Life Skin & Fashion industry: This would ruin business for any dedicated skin maker, chase their customers away and put them out of business. As today, there are is still a large amount of famous - and good skin makers in Second Life, charging over 1000 L$ for beautiful, well crafted skins. So the ’slash end skin business’ was probably something like all those people predicting the end of the world: probably they are right in the end, but they surely go the date wrong! On the contrary even, Eloh Eliot’s free skin psd files were an inspiration & knowledge source to many, teaching us great tricks and allowing people to build upon them. For instance: I used them often as an inspiration to shade clothing I made, pasting the free skin’s shadow layers and adjusting those to achieve exactly the effect I wanted. Thank you, Miss Eloh Eliot!
Splendor .psd skin files
Following in Eloh Eliot’s footsteps with a release of ‘free full perm female skins’ is Sezmra Svarog - or ‘Laurie Ellis’ for the humans - with her Splendor line. Sezmra introduces herself on sezmra.com: ‘I’m a pretty average girlgeek, and my SL name is Sezmra Svarog. I have spent over four years in Second Life as a skin designer. I owned and operated Nora BodySkins & Fashions from 2004 to 2008. Currently, I am now enjoying Second Life from a personal perspective.‘ Although Sezmra Svarog’s skins - opposed to Eloh Eliot’s free ones - are not ‘layered’ PSD’s, which means you can not as easily adjust them for your own purposes, they are still a lovely gift to the community: ‘The first skin resource I am making available here is a female skin called “Splendor“. This is probably the best skin I’ve ever created, and I am offering it to all of you Second Life, Open Sim, … whatever denizens to use as you see fit.‘
Miss Sezmra releases these .psd files - head, torso and legs - in three body shades accompanied by the following rules (suggestions):
- You are free to use these files to create your own skins for your Second Life avatar, no matter what Grid you are using it on.
- You are free to alter these files to create your own skins in order to resell them.
- You are NOT encouraged to redistribute these files, commercially, as is.
- Credit would be nice!
So as far as I can read, as long as you are no ass trying to make money of selling her .psd skin files off the shelve, you’ll be fine using them for whatever purpose you wish… . Nice from the lady, no? You can find the direct download link here, but I’m sure Miss Sezmra would love you to take a look around at her website, especially as she announces soon to come skin tutorials, accessories (tattoos? scars? bite marks?) and more Second Life skin resources. Yeey, I’m seriously looking forward to those, and I bet you are too!
Amongst the 3D spaces recently gone into beta, Just Leap In - ‘a 3D world of your own’ - finds itself more closely to Vivaty and Google Lively than Second Life: It is browser based - plugin needed - and it focuses on creating your own, private space, where other user may or not may edit objects. Rooms can be connected with ‘portals’, but each room you have to enter will have to load separately. Yet, as there is already some customising your spaces that you can do - and opposed to Lively does not crash my precious Firefox - it’s definitely interesting to take a look. Petition for a beta account at JustLeapIn.com and quickly receive back a friendly email that says you can join, and explains the functionality already available for beta testing:
Just Leap In (beta): Functionaly (Sept 2008)
- Drag-and-drop Portals to other beta testers’ spaces
- 3D space creation from a “test” selection of visual templates and styles
- Drag-and-drop addition of 3D objects and multimedia frames
- Upload photos and videos (audio coming soon)
- Personalize media frames with your photos and videos
- Resurface 3D objects with your photos and videos
- Drag-and-drop streaming sound
- Space Chat by text
That also includes a physics preview and the ability to comment on rooms - and get support through those comments, in my case. A sneak peak of the sample 3D characters - soon to be avatars? - is available by rezzing them in your space. There are two ways of sharing your space with others: mail them the URL or copy a snippet of HTML code to embed your 3D space inside your blog or website.
All this functionality makes that there is already quite some stuff to play around with in your Just Leap In space:
- We have physics and characters, you say? Right! Let’s toss them over! Press X or C and click the character. Now, keep pressing X or C and your mouse button and drag the mouse around until you’re pretty sure he’ll fall over and then let loose. I have tried to get the ‘martial arts’ character kick over one of the basketball players. Sadly enough, functionality did not reach that far.
- Texturing! Upload your own texture - I took my Plurk background - and drag that on anything you think you can re-texture. I know it’s possible from my own experience: the walls, most objects or parts of them (see the bed in the preview photograph) and the character’s clothes (not their skin & hair).
- Upload your videos & photos and hang them on your wall/show them on virtual TV.
* This is not an exact Just Leap In screenshot. You only see one of the tabs visible in this one when playing, but I assumed people would like an overview of the navigation controls & object/texture/video/… functions. Go take a look on Flickr for a bigger size.
Vint in Just Leap In
And some personal remarks/questions/FAIL thingies:
- Smallest ’shareable’ size of the iframe that holds it is ‘Small (504×496)’, thus to wide for this blog.
- It saves texture modifications all right, but does not remember object location when re-entering or publishing my room. So they all end up on a huge pile of virtual objects. (Which is funny as it throws in the rezzed characters too, but not very practical.)
- Object editing: being used to Second Life’s coordinate system (for location as well as rotating) getting things like I want it using the mouse to position & rotate is a pain.
- I get nauseous when ‘playing’ Just Leap In for to long. I don’t know if it’s because of the way my camera moves or the enclosed space. I do know I have the same ‘car sickness’ feel of nausea when I play Twinity & Kaneva - or used to play Heretic & Doom - but do not suffer from it inSL. Strange, no?
- RSS feed to easily keep track of comments on your room would be handy
Try to leap in yourself
If you want to try out Just Leap In yourself, request a beta account at justleapin.com. Or want to take a look at the space ‘Vintville’ I already created? No problem, it’s right here (URL with just name of the space would be more handy in stead of all those numbers). For updates, keep an eye on their blog.
Just Leap In Minimal System Requirements
Windows PC
- OS: Windows XP or Vista
- Memory: 1 GIG RAM or higher
- Browser: Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 2 and 3
- DirectX 9.0c (the more cores, the better)
- Graphics: nVidia GeForce 5500/equivalent or higher (pixel shader 2.0 capable)
Macintosh
- CPU: Intels are best, but G5+ PowerPCs work
- OS: Mac OS X 10.3 or higher
- Graphics: ATI Radeon 9500 series or higher
- Memory: 1 GIG RAM or higher
- Browser: Firefox 2 and 3
JLI official sales talk (ctrl c+v)
How are you different? Typically, 3D worlds have been only for those willing to trade in their lives for a digital version, but it doesn’t have to be that way. We will help you build rich, immersive 3D worlds to express yourself casually, socially, professionally, artistically, playfully – any way you want. And have fun doing it. (Serious *grmbl* about the bold part!)
Why should I try it? Imagine crafting your online profile in an outdoor paradise, nightclub, or your own museum while linking to thousands of others. A two dimensional webpage simply can’t compete with the real world when it comes to expressing identity & sharing creativity. JLI (Just Leap In) is pushing the envelope by making the social web more like the real world - visual, experiential, playful. A place to create, share, connect, explore – just be.
Just Leap in & User Generated Content
From the official Just Leap In blog: In the near future, we will be releasing a set of tools to a small beta group that will allow 3D content creators to add new assets into the JLI world, and we’ll do it in a way so that we’re not building a walled garden. Our direction is to leverage open standards and existing professional tools and skillsets—not to create yet another set of modeling tools and techniques for people to learn. By using industry-standard tools for data transport and shader visualization, we can enable creators to be quickly productive at a high level of quality and use their familiar, mature commercial 3D authoring products or free/OSS packages. Following this path also allows content created in other contexts to be easily adapted and imported in to the JLI world.
Ultimately, as we roll out our pipeline over time, it allows us to focus on the creative new features for users in the JLI world, and not writing expansive 3D tools and reinventing wheels. Our published toolset will be a twin of the tools our internal artists use, which means content creators will have the same ability to create content that we do. Since we are all using the same tools, we will be more responsive to fine tuning and expanding our users’ productivity and keeping them up-to-date as the tools they use evolve.
For the technically inclined, our first release of UGC 3D tools will include a set of XSI properties, RT shaders, a custom fbx exporter that adds some JLI ‘sauce’ and a Mac/PC JLI viewer, with full documentation. Users of Maya/Max/Blender/etc. can tap into our fbx pathway to create JLI-compatible data as well. In subsequent releases, we’ll be considering adding Collada support, which in combination with fbx will further broaden the number of 3D packages that can be supported. We are also open to collaborating with third party tool creators to broaden further the abilities for our users to create.
Just Leap In Demo Videos
Flickrites to fall in virtual love with : Zinc Karas & Illian Garrigus
September 12, 2008 8:07 pmZinc Karas
Not much is known - by me - about Zinc Karas, excect that he’s male, from Greece (find that info in his flickr profile), sells virtual furniture on OnRez and creates some awesome Second Life photographs. Behold yourself:
And last, but definitely not least - I expect all the female avatars to agree with me:
Illian Garrigus
Another highly inspiring Second Life photography artist is Illian Garrigus (Flickr Profile) who sheds a bit more light upon himself with this incredible self portrait (dual-world):
Quote: ‘I wanted to escape from this world, taking with me the good things I had from people I met…. I put on my bag a lot of fast thought, a lot of nice moments, rememberings of many little polygon creatures moved by AOs that gave me less boring night. I was ready to disappear, ready to hit quit and never come back… but, it’s impossible… my friends, it’s impossible… the energy coming out of minds of this world is higher than any illusion, positive or negative, higher than the worst lag, missing texture or freeze… this great common conscience connecting all us and make us stronger to eye of who look at us and don’t understand what we are doing in this world, what we are doing on flickr. love, hate, friendship, honestly, hollowness… reality into the virtuality. I can’t help to live it… I’m sure I learned a lot in these month and mainly in these last weeks, experiences I forgot or I’ve never tried in my RL. for all this. I want to thanks anyone supported me, anyone understood my choices even if wrong without considering a bad person. everything I did, I did with honestly.’
Illian apologising for his ‘Macaroni English’, makes me suspect his real life self originates from Italy. Anyway, this photograph - a friend’s death - is what first did catch my attention, and made me sob a few - real life - tears:
Make sure to browse his flickr stream for a lot of funny, sad and absolutely stunning surprises!
Fantasy Map for Open Source & Standards
September 11, 2008 5:00 pmWhy fantasy? We’re definitely not there yet. And I assume about 1% of the internet population drooling over this, no, zeroX? :D Make sure to check out the moral compass (defines the whole map), the mordorsoft area, openness and collaboration heaven, maelstrom of incompatibility, the pit of ‘deep linking’, and clouds of tagging! From now of one, you’ll know where to thread… . ;)
This lovely map was created by PSD - Paul Downey - and can be downloaded in huge printable .pdf format here.
Fun? Almost as fun as Paul Downey’s Flickr Textorizer. Enjoy staring at the map & playing with rendering your photos or snapshots into text!
Virtual crime & punishment: Corn Field?!
September 10, 2008 10:27 pmIf a certain world allows you to be a thief, is it a crime or just an aspect of the game? Should real-world law apply?
Some virtual worlds have devised their own versions of jail, where boredom is the punishment. In Second Life, the largest virtual world, where about 60,000 residents are logged on at any given time, misbehaving avatars used to find themselves stuck in the Corn Field, an eerie place with nothing but endless rows of corn, a decaying tractor and a black-and-white television. The Corn Field still exists but is no longer used as a penalty box.
I fear that was before my time. Anybody can throw an SLurl or Landmark at me? Although I’m still sure that you can bore people to death in Second Life, if you ship them off to the correct locations. :D oh, the Corn Field should not be confused with the Far Away which is a beautiful and lovely place!
(thanks Siobhan! And some more Cornfield Snapshots)
upperdedate: I asked Foolish Frost - senior resident - ‘what can you tell me ’bout the ‘corn field’? :D’. The results: ‘ *stares* Well, when little avis were being bad, and didn’t follow the rules, the lindens… Wished them into the cornfield. Technically, it was a set of sims that when banned residents logged in, they would rez in a sim that looked like a cornfield. And it was only tried for a while, until they realized it was silly to use system resources to amuse asshats. *grins* It was funny. Never got to see it myself, but some few people supposidly still have parts of the cornfield. Wish i could remember who…‘. Furthermore, it seems clickable culture blogged about it in 2006. Also, < href="http://aliciachenaux.blogspot.com/2008/06/ali-search-for-corn-field-part-1.html">Alicia Chenaux went on a search for the mysterious corn fields. No idea if she eventually got in.
Cellufun courthouse: judged by your equals
A virtual world for mobile devices, called Cellufun, has established a courthouse, where rule-breakers are indicted by their peers and tried by a jury of other community members. If found guilty of a charge, such as using profanity, users must carry out varying levels of sentences, from being mute for 20 minutes to being banished. For the duration of punishment, a user’s avatar — a cartoon version of his or her real-life self — is pictured behind bars. At least one user has been convicted of a crime every day since the Cellufun courthouse opened two weeks ago, said chief executive Arthur Goikhman. Every day, dozens of members are indicted. “It’s really affected the tone and tenor of the site,” he said. “People are much, much, much more careful now. But sometimes curiosity about these penalties can cause spikes in petty crime. In Cellufun, some characters started breaking rules just to see how their avatar looked behind bars.”
… behind bars in VZones
Another site, called VZones, created the Void, a dull-colored last-chance holding cell where delinquents are sent before getting a final warning or being removed from the world entirely.
I guess if it was tested out in Second Life, but not continued, it became unsustainable when a large user base was reached? Did any of you - older than me - avatar ever got send to the Corn Field? How could you get out? And was that ‘punishment’ tactic effective?
Regardless, Virtual Worlds get real about punishment is a good, quick read of overview on some virtual world law, crime & punishment facts (real life and virtual) that even mentions Second Life’s Metaverse Republic. Sadly enough, IP theft is not mentioned. (That’s probably a few pages of article on it’s own! ;)) Anway, *kuddos* to the writer! =)
It is already researched and more or less proven that Second Life can help you improve your real life social skills. It’s not just that, we - avies * - also behave like our human counterparts:
… avatars in these elaborate fantasylands responded to social cues to help one another — and revealed racial biases – in the same ways that people do in the real world. In both of the classic social psychology experiments used for the study, one avatar tried to influence another to fulfil a request. The way the door-in-the-face (DITF) experiment works: the experimenter (in this case an avatar) first makes an unreasonably large request to which the responder is expected to say no, followed by a more moderate request.
As expected, the avatars — similar to people who participated in the same experiment in the real world — were more likely to comply with the moderate request when it was preceded by the large request than when the moderate request was presented alone. They exhibited a psychological tendency to reciprocate the requester’s “concession”: the change from a relatively unreasonable request to a more moderate request. The experiment’s moderate request: “Would you teleport to Duda Beach with me and let me take a screenshot of you?” In the DITF condition, that request was preceded by a request of the avatar to have screenshots taken in 50 different locations — requiring about two hours of teleporting and traveling.
Apparently, we - avatars, but it knowingly or unconscious - are not free from ‘virtual racism’ either: On one of the most striking findings, the effect of the DITF technique was significantly reduced when the requesting avatar was dark-toned. The white avatars in the DITF experiment received about a 20 percent increase in compliance with the moderate request; the increase for the dark-toned avatars was 8 percent.
Conclusion? Interactions among strangers within the virtual world are very similar to interactions between strangers in the real world. Duh. Over at Sciende daily, they think that is something to worry about, something I do not see reason for? Add to that the fact that how we threat strangers - and add ‘a contact of a contact of a contact contacts’ - has changed severely in the last few years ’cause of social networking sites like facebook, myspace, linkedin, … and you get a real interesting situatinon.
* The study was conducted in There it says, but strangely enough, they are using Second Life terminology like ’snapshot’ and ‘teleport’.
Brave New World of Digital Intimacy
Keeping track of your friend’s futilities
When Facebook first introduces their ‘news feeds’ (an overview of all changes & actions on your Facebook friends’ profiles) there was a huge uproar: ‘Facebook users didn’t think they wanted constant, up-to-the-minute updates on what other people are doing. Yet when they experienced this sort of omnipresent knowledge, they found it intriguing and addictive. Why? Social scientists have a name for this sort of incessant online contact. They call it “ambient awareness.” It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye.‘
Another great example is ‘microblogging’ where people post - fairly irrelevant - things like ‘What did I have for lunch’, ‘What will I have for lunch?’ and ‘What birthday gift should I get my stepdad?‘. This sharing of personal (futile) data has gone even further: ‘When the new iPhone, with built-in tracking, was introduced in July, one million people began using Loopt, a piece of software that automatically tells all your friends exactly where you are.‘
It’s charms? Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. This was never before possible, because in the real world, no friend would bother to call you up and detail the sandwiches she was eating. Merely looking at a stranger’s Twitter or Facebook feed isn’t interesting, because it seems like blather. Follow it for a day, though, and it begins to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.
How do you decide on you contacts & friends?
But the offer of possible Twitter, Facebook & Plurk friends is huge. And you can hardly keep track of them all. How do you decide who gets added as a friend or contact, and who gets refused? And how harsh are you at making those decisions? Do you fear you’ll hurt their feelings when refusing friendship? And whom do you offer friendship too? I have two different rule sets for this, it seems:
- Real Life: Mainly using Facebook (human & Vint share an account) and earlier on ICQ & MSN. I won’t easily initiate a friend request. There are a whole lot of people from my region, schools, etc on there, that I know off, talked to, but don’t care about much. I really need to consider someone a real life friend before I engage into offering friendship, that is about 4 people I met at parties or through friends that I feel sorry about we did not get the chance to talk more (yet) aside. As for accepting friendship, I am likely to not refuse, if I - if only shortly - met you in real life at a party, at a friend’s, … I fear I will be rude by refusing. So I’ll add them, but not bother to read their stories, … .
- Virtual World: My behaviour here is - strangely enough - exactly the opposite of with the real life befriending behaviour. I am more likely to just add someone who’s avatar name rings a bell as ‘achieved this’, ‘is interesting’, ‘knows what he/she’s talking about’ and ‘hell, I don’t know them, but they are surely doing interesting stuff I want to keep an eye upon’. On the other hand, I’m also much more likely to refuse friendship from an avatar name that does not ring a bell (or a human I don’t know that does not state his avatar name). Mainly because else it would become impossible for me to keep track, but also because well… they are just avies… . :/
What is the maximum number of ‘friends’ a person can have?
In 1998, the anthropologist Robin Dunbar argued (pdf link) that each human has a hard-wired upper limit on the number of people he or she can personally know at one time. Dunbar noticed that humans and apes both develop social bonds by engaging in some sort of grooming; apes do it by picking at and smoothing one another’s fur, and humans do it with conversation. The maximum numbers?
- apes: 55 friends
- humans: 150 friends
So what about you’re 100+ facebook friends, you’re 80+ twitter friends, you’re 300+ Second Life friend list and you’re 100+ plurk friends? We should divide those ‘friends’ into two types of contacts: your close, intimate circle of friends and what they call ‘weak ties’. In the dark ages, before the internet bloomed (and boomed), you would have quickly forgotten about those ‘weak ties’: met at a party, abroad, at an old job, … and never heard of or seen again. But now we get regular short updates about their lives which makes us feeling ‘related’, and that makes ‘weak ties’ a good thing: ‘Sociologists have long found that “weak ties” greatly expand your ability to solve problems. For example, if you’re looking for a job and ask your friends, they won’t be much help; they’re too similar to you, and thus probably won’t have any leads that you don’t already have yourself. Remote acquaintances will be much more useful, because they’re farther afield, yet still socially intimate enough to want to help you out.‘
But to much ‘weak ties’ can also have negative side effects: critics warn that having to much personal information on to much people spreads your emotional energy too thin, leaving less for true intimate relationships. Following people (almost) solely online, might create a bond with them that’s almost ‘parasocial’ - imagine the bond you have with your favourite artist - in stead of being friends: ‘They can observe you, but it’s not the same as knowing you. For more on that, read Danah Boyd. Another danger is that if you already know every little detail about someone’s life, you do not feel like you need to take the time anymore to visit them in ‘real life’, thus expecting Facebook or the like to make up for - very much needed - quality real face to real face time.
A return in time
Remember those stories of your parents, whom tell you if they were up to no good, the next morning, the whole village knew? Social networking sites and the internet in general return us to that era in time: do something wrong or extremely embarrassing, and the next day, all of your friends will know. Write something down in a fury, and it will be archived by Google forever. And not participating it just like missing out on the weekly tea & gossip moment: you have no idea what the others are up to, and even worse, have no idea what they are saying about you. There’s a reason why I have a Google Blogsearch alert on “Vint Falken’. ;)
The ‘internetz’ and social networking have changed the internet - for the average user - from the perfect tool for privacy and reinventing yourself to a place where - if you want to do that reinventing - you sure as hell need to get your lies together well - as I’m sure some Second Life users can testify! As said in the ‘Brave New World of Digital Intimacy’ article in the New York Times (where the second part of this post is based upon): “History: ‘On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog’. On the Internet today, everybody knows you’re a dog! If you don’t want people to know you’re a dog, you’d better stay away from a keyboard“.
Get to know yourself (through web 2.0)
Another side effect of microblogging and social networking tools is that you are likely to get to know yourself better: ‘The act of stopping several times a day to observe what you’re feeling or thinking can become, after weeks and weeks, a sort of philosophical act.‘ Add to that that you are getting more feedback on every day activities - ‘I ate 4 eggs.’ ‘Hmm, not healthy!’ or ‘I have not smoked for 24 hours!’ ‘Great, keep up the awesomeness!’ - which will also influence your behaviour (hopefully in a positive way). You need to think more about how to phrase something - often in under 140 characters - so others can easily understand. This makes you think about the essence of the act or thought you’re writing about: ‘The process of, say, describing a horrid morning at work forces you to look at it objectively. In an age of awareness, perhaps the person you see most clearly is yourself.‘
For more, I suggest you go and read the New York Times article, it’s really worth a few of your thoughts regardless if you’re a heavy social networking addict or a light user, and even if you totally detest the whole online befriending business.
