Meta-Nonsense

Reader's Digest: The Metaverse Market Index, an offshoot of Metaversed.com, is a project of ambitious social and political climbers who wish to appeal to large corporations and obtain their backing in order to give them research on subscription and revenue figures from virtual worlds to help them determine their ROI, and to shape public policy about the Metaverse. To gain credibility, the MMI should step back from such close corporate connections and also cease its bid to become "the one place" for all conversations and research about VWs and interoperability.

Several people have noted the interesting coincidence involving my being canned from Metaversed.com with the Sheep bleating about my critical podcast on CSI NY, and today's Metanomics event featuring Satchmo Prototype of the Sheep. No accident, comrade! The event wasn't originally in the Metanomics schedule, which has been set way in advance as it is tied to a course at Cornell University -- but the organizer, Prof. Robert Bloomfield, had indicated he would be taking suggestions for speakers.

I don't know whether Giff prevailed on Metanomics to get in the show, or whether Nick Wilson sycophantically asked the Sheep to come in order to "make nice" after this podcast that caused Giff to hysterically and furiously fire off a blog post denouncing Metaversed as "tabloid" and me as a speculative poor journalist for telling the truth -- a blog he later pulled when conniving with Nick.

You would think this podcast was a Howard-Stern like rant to hear them all talk, but it is worth simply listening to the podcast, which wasn't a problem at the time it was made, to understand the absurdity of what is going on here, and the behind-the-scenes pressures. There's nothing incorrect, false, speculative, wrong, or vitriolic in this podcast. It makes the simple point that the SEARCH is buried under the OnRez view and that big companies taking over the SEARCH have a civic responsibility to manage the public trust and create a kind of "Yellow Pages" that does not favour just them and their properties.

Other bloggers have quietly made the exact same point about the buried search, with no Sheep neuralgia. Giff Constable himself on his own blog (from which my comments have been scrubbed) or in acid responses on my blog have supplied the odious quotes about his supreme indifference to the public weal by stating that he's under no obligation to include the Lindens' paid-for classifieds in his browser -- it's like your ad for the Times not obliged to be shown for the Post. He snottily declares any notion of a public trust as "state-run like the Soviet Union" -- as if Verizon's Yellow Page was like Pravda or even Google, which can't *stop* you from being seen once you have enough clicks.

The arrogance and failure to grasp the impact on small business inworld of this kind of cavalier attitude has been really surprising to me. I'd like to think Giff Constable was sincere in believing there was something "wrong" in what I said -- I no longer believe there is. It's merely a concerted campaign to try to wipe out critics, sanitize business blogs, and pave the way for more corporate battering of Second Life. Ugh. That is doesn't *have* to be so ugly and crude and greedy can be seen by the other corporate projects in SL that haven't been this aggressive.

When Metanomics was first announced, I contributed a very long post. This resulted in Giff Constable (of all people) writing me "Great post, Prokofy" inworld, and Robert Bloomfield himself recommended it as required reading. Nick sneered that it was too long. Too bad. It takes awhile to make the counter-case, as Peter Ludlow has explained about Chomsky.

And the counter-case here -- and why it had to be long -- was just about all the speakers for Metanomics were not involved in SL, not even involved significantly in any other worlds with RMT economies, but were part of the past age of heroic games, or even MUDs. If the purpose was to have a mini history of gaming and worlds and MMOs, that would be fine, but that wasn't ever stated as the purpose. Instead, it merely looked like a craven bid to gather up some top names in the industry before starting a new venture and "get them all on board" by flattering them (I didn't say it so starkly then; I will now).That's why when they announced the Metaverse Market Index, I called it the Social Climbing Index. I posed a number of really stark and frank questions about whether the Lindens were basically folding up the inworld economy and whether in fact there was no future for world economies as such.

When Bloomfield first began his encounters with virtual worlds, he appeared on Terra Nova, with academic credentials to impress the closeknit self-referential little circle there. Not sure how he schnorred his way into this very claustrophobic group of Ludologists who play mainly MMORPG war games, but by saying he wished to find a world for holding business simulations for his accounting classes at Cornell, he got quite a few people, including me, to make suggestions. I told him he should dump all those very predictable war games with their game gold and very much known quantities, and go to Second Life and try to make a real business to teach the models. At first he dismissed this, but then very enthusiastically came to SL.

He jumped in and talked to a lot of people at length, including me, and then came up with a panel of the stock exchanges and investment companies. I was made very uneasy by seeing this rogues' gallery put in a setting that added the luster of an Ivy League school to them, but at that stage, it didn't seem to faze Robert. He was also enthusiastic about getting an SL SEC starting and supporting a Better Business Bureau, and seemed to take awhile to "get it" that with all these exchanges, companies, "monitoring" bodies inworld, these anonymous avatars were amateurs representing nothing -- or worse, scammers. He tried to play the "meta role" here, gathering information from some of the top stock exchanges at a time when there was enormous lack of consumer confidence in them, which he said he'd analyze and present -- and it never came, because he apparently lost interest, got busy -- but also understood "this is not where it's at".

Robert asked me to be on an NPR show about Second Life -- but engineered it so that I was fifth-wheel, meant to play the colourful native to his first wheel with the "meta analysis" and Julian Dibbel's second wheel with credentials as game-gold "author". I was shunted off from the second half of the show with the analysis, although of course I frankly run circles around either of them in being able to analyze the synthetic SL economy, having lived it and worked in it for 3 years. Whatever.

Getting the big businesses sponsoring metaversed.com on board for the MMI was much more "where it's at" then sitting around with 20-somethings from Atlanta or Sydney listening to them RP a business game. Surely!

So the MMI was born rather hastily in my view -- but what isn't in the Metaverse! -- and I was even asked to sit on its advisory board, which I found puzzling, as I'm not a big business or an economist, but a small business and a blogger. It was abundantly clear I was being asked to be on it in order to prevail upon me not to critique it prematurely.

But no information was given me, either as an "advisory board member" and then next thing I know, after I've asked Nick Wilson to sponsor my press pass to VW07 thinking he's have no one else going in North America and would be glad of the eyes and ears, was that Robert Bloomfield was going, too, precisely to drum up endorsement and financial support for the MMI -- and that I was not to cross wires with him.

Ever the social climber, Bloomfield kept me at about 10 arms' lengths, didn't tell me about the before or after parties, barely saying hello, and demonstratively meeting with people like Castronova (with whom he's going to in fact compete, hopefully) and making sure I knew I wasn't invited to come along. Understood! Robert is one of those newbie metaversals who still thinks meatworld credentials are all that matter.

At one point I was toiling late in the evening at the hotel's one working Internet terminal in the lobby, trying to file a story to Metaversed.com, and Robert was taking a business meeting with some important-looking dudes not 2 feet from me, and he never once said hi, how's it going, or introduced me or acknowledged my existence. In the Metaverse, everyone knows you're a dog.

I guess they missed the memo about my being chosen as Time's Man of the Year! har har

It was then I could grasp that long before I even made a podcast critical of the Sheep's viewer, long before I told some heckling machinima asstard that I'd punch him out for raising my son's accident in a private conversation after the Metanomics meeting on Muse Island, that I was going to be dumped as simply too much baggage for the social climbers who needed to bring on board big businesses and look sanitized from critics.

That big businesses *themselves* don't lay this insistence on someone like Nick or Robert of course is beyond them to grasp, because they're driven by ambition and even fear -- and also, of course, suffering from newb status. Hey, slide down that dufflebag, dudes!

I realized that the MMI was going from studying or analyzing the actual inworld economies of worlds, to in fact studying the market sector called "virtual worlds and online games in business". The market is the real-world market, not the synthetic market.

This is a bit curious, as Nick must have told me 10 times while at VW and giving editorial assignments that I had to focus on business IN virtual worlds and not the business OF virtual worlds.

Of course, CBS is in a sense a business "in" virtual worlds and not the business "of" virtual worlds like Makena or Blizzard of Linden Lab. Except...when in one year they drop $7 million on one company, the Sheep, for projects like CSI or L-word, you have to figure they *are* a virtual world of their own, nearly. Where does the dividing line between "in" and "of" leave off?

The purpose of MMI is as follows:

To provide a comprehensive source of reliable and meaningful information about virtual worlds, and a single location for discussion and collaboration about key issues, including data interpretation, shared terminology, interoperability, and a venue for educating the public about the uses and future of the metaverse.

The claim here is that the target is "about virtual worlds" -- but rapidly, we've morphed to the "business of virtual worlds" in fawning over a company like the Sheep.

What these big companies want, really, are ways to advertise to the people in virtual worlds. There's the motivation that big old media has of losing viewers and advertising dollars. There's the motivation that advertisers have of looking for new venues to satisfy their old media customers. There's the motivation that IBM has not to be left behind the Next Big Thing as they were ostensibly in the first iteration of the Internet . There's the motivation of Samsung, Sony, Cisco to sell not only their existing products but the various widgets that will help connect and maintain this new 3-D Metaverse.

Thus to throw in a term like "interoperability" is to try to pwn the same thing that those who were trying to hold pre-meetings without others in San Jose -- and there's another interesting thing -- Bloomfield was *in* the pre-meeting, I discovered to my amazement, yet neither Nick or he will reveal a thing to me about it. So here I am, a reporter for this website with the first day's biggest story -- the LL press release announcing the IBM/LL initiative, which I got an early copy of, and the pre-meeting scuttle, which I also had multiple sources on, but I'm writing a piece on it without the input of my supposed "colleagues" and having to dig around the corridors..

So actually it was *then* that I knew I was lunchmeat hehe -- not later -- when people aren't collegial, when they don't share information even within one project where they supposedly are to be pulling together, you know there's something "up".

What's "up" is the desire to get these big behemoths to fund the stand-alone MMI organization, to be made a non-profit, to sponsor the MMI studies. Such a project would probably need an annual budget of at least $3-4 million for even a modest staff and set of seminars and publications -- or given that it won't likely eat the dog food of virtual worlds and travel all over hell's half acre in order to be on the conference circuit, more like $5 plus.

I don't doubt they'll raise this, and hurriedly get 501-c-3 status and a staff or attach it to the existing university status (they're advertising for "business managers" although what they mean, as it's a non-profit *cough* is "executive director" or "program manager") -- because there is real hunger by companies for hard numbers so they can tell their customers what the ROI is. And here, I don't blame them, and the interest of large businesses like Samsung or Cisco is vital to bring some real-life normalcy to the idiocy of MMORPGs which have been allowed to behave like children's games in sandboxes for far too long. Not only do they indulge their designers and managers in tantrums and tyranny that even petulant Hollywood producers would not get away with; they are secretive and unaccountable about what their numbers and revenue are.

It's stomach-turning, of course, to think of big corporations preying on these numbers merely to sell stuff, but perhaps they're starting to learn that they have to be more like The Office and less like CSI: NY to succeed (and even that story isn't over yet).

The obvious thing that's wrong with the MMI as it is now crystalling is this concept of "in one place". As I've been saying, even as someone who grew up in Rochester, I can't imagine concentrating anything in Ithaca, New York ROFL. Especially when Jerry Paffendorf, Christain Westbrook, and Mark Wallace have already announced that the center of the Metaverse is in the Williamsburg neighbourhood of Brooklyn ROFL, in what I guess we have to call Soot Valley or something, given the grime on the windowsills from congested roads and elevated subways.

No matter -- the whole point of these worlds was supposed to erase geographical boundaries *cough*.

I just don't like the idea of anything -- especially Metaversal analysis -- to be "concentrated in one place". I imagine all the big players don't like that either. There are people all over the place starting various think tanks (Ren Reynolds) or declaring themselves the self-governing organ of the Metaverse (Ed Castranova and the Ludologists, not a rock group). Thinking avatars will just step around them.

I can only say, having been involved in a number of "meta type" networks and organizations and federations in my field over the years, that it's important first to get all the major stakeholders together and convene not one meeting but many in places where people can really pull away and think about how much likeminded they are or not, and what shared goals they can achieve or not (conferencing in Perugia or Aspen or whatever). THEN you pick the staff and people to run it. And you concede that there may be lots of different networks but you strive for collaboration where you do have concentric shared goals. This sounds like it is being done backwards.

The blurb for the Sheep event tells you what is needed out of the MMI: "This will be a good opportunity to delve into what corporations need to know about venturing into virtual worlds, how they might justify their budgets for such endeavors, and how one might define and measure ‘success’."

But the public at large, and the entire Metaversal community, if you will, needs a lot more out of these platforms than ROI for corporations. The Serious Games gang are likely to have a lot to say about this. Educational institutions. Non-profits. Even corporations that don't look at the spaces for their ROI extraction capacity, but more as PR or corporate philanthropy opportunities. Oh, and another set of people. THE USERS. Including the small businesses and medium business in these inworld economies.

Meanwhile, to gain credibility, MMI has to stop sucking up to people in the industry and picking them as name-droppers merely to get backing, and start having serious critical discussion -- the academics should stand alone with some sort of footprint before the corporations overwhelm them (the gaming and world industry already buys itself workshops and panels at every major conference, and the discourse is already polluted with that profit motive).

They need to have reputable speakers who have been heavy critics of Second Life's numbers like Clay Shirkey, and those who are more supportive like Henry Jenkins, and not make the speakers' series and the articles merely help sell the ads.

Unfortunately, Nick Wilson is showing how seriously fire-wall challenged he is by putting gushing copy about Kelly Services -- a recent ad buyer for metaversed.com -- in the articles section. I had to blink when I saw a piece praising Kelly's use of an "ingenious" camping device (!) -- they are going to put avatars to work for Lindens as forced-animated autonamotons illustrating job functions (!).

Of course, all of them don't realize that inworld businesses like Maly's furniture store or Kitchen Korner have been using very complex camping scripts for more than a year. You can now find people integrated into builds looking as if they fit -- painting walls, mowing the lawn, gardening, scrubbing floors, making food -- they are in fact already illustrating how these scripts can be used.

The idea that you need to pay campers -- and couldn't rely on ordinary curious visitors! -- to operate the scripts in, say, a medical simulation or office simulation -- is just for the birds. The idea that you'd pay micropayments to people to come and do that is insulting and adds to the whole nefarious camping culture which is part of the brake on the economy preventing the creation of more innovative and rewarding entry-level jobs.

Of course, a test for credibility I could pose is to *not* disinvite me from being an advisor to MMI -- technically, I wasn't yet, as my communications from Nick reference only Metaversed.com However, I "got it" sitting in obscure ignomy in the corner of the Marriott lobby.

Welcome to the Metaverse, Prokofy Neva! You are Disinvited!

Comments

[Alex]

I'm intrigued by what Giff wrote in the comments on that link:

"To be clear about another important point, the only data we pull out of the viewer right now is the viewer version number and the operating system. This data is not tied to an avatar."

This is, alas, not true. The in-client browser on the onRez viewer is doing some very odd looking caching if you hack behind the scenes (sorry, yes, I'm a techie). I would not *touch* that in-client browser for any secure web access until the Sheep folks clarify exactly what they're doing in that department. (And let's not start on the entering-your-SL-name/password combo into a non-Linden product, thereby breaking TOS, question).

[Prokofy Neva]

I'm less worried about entering the password, although I'd like answers on that.

What I can't accept is that they are not tracking what is searched -- the attention economy. Surely they are capturing that -- if nothing else, by taking the avatar key as they enter the sim and tracking that, not through the browser possibly, but inworld. If they aren't today, when the viewer hooks up to their OWN search, surely they will.

[Giff]

I am not technical enough to know what caching is going on, but I do recommend that anyone read our privacy policy at http://shop.onrez.com/static/privacy/

Love or hate us, one thing we won't do is lie about what we do with information. If we collect some information through the OnRez viewer, we will disclose it.

I'll paste one relevant paragraph here:
"When you use our Services, our servers automatically record information that your browser sends whenever you visit a website or online service ("Log Data"). This Log Data may include, but is not limited to, your computer's Internet Protocol address, browser type, the web page you were visiting before you came to our Site and information you search for on our Site. When you download our Viewer, we record that a download took place but do not associate this data with Personal Information. The Viewer only stores (in encrypted form) your Second Life password information if requested, and it is not used by The Electric Sheep Company. When you open up the Viewer and are presented with the Web-based splash screen (opening screen), our servers automatically record Log Data. When the Viewer checks for new updates, it also automatically sends version number and operating system information to our servers. Also, if you choose to submit a crash log, certain information is automatically generated that can potentially include your username, local path information, version number, operating system, driver information and other technical data about your computer setup. A crash log cannot be submitted without your explicit consent."

I don't think my blog post had anything to do with Nick's decision to cease SecondCase. I think my blog post went live after the fact. I believe that he asked me to take it down because he thought it would cause unnecessary drama, and so I obliged. I have no reason to lie about this since I stand by the words of that post 100%.

I also don't think it had anything to do with Metanomics asking Satchmo to come speak. Satchmo regularly speaks at industry events around the world.

Big picture: I think Prokofy makes interesting comments and has good observations about this space all the time, but unfortunately they often get wrapped and delivered in a rather angry package. In the case of our viewer, I think Prok convinced himself of a danger that was simply not there. Our viewer was not going to take over the world in a night, and pre-loading LL's "search all" with a query from a simple input box wasn't going to destroy classifieds or the economy.

I do not think any of your fears materialized, and you ignored any attempt I made to help you understand that, choosing instead to attempt to sow fear as you often do at any change in SL no matter what the rouces. You refused a chance to see the viewer in-person and talk about it.

You definitely disagree with our implementation, I gather, but to write about how it spells doom for the world and how it's evil, etc... is a little over the top, no?

I am not objecting to your right to rant about us, but I did think Metaversed needed to decide what kind of news organization it wanted to be - tabloid or balanced/informed.

By the way, the only person who has stated that I am indifferent to the public good is you. My comment that we are not *obligated* to include LL's classifieds is a statement of fact. You interpret it as nastily as possible, as usual.

[Prokofy Neva]

Unfortunately for you Giff, I have Nick's direct email in which he says that in fact he asked you to take it down, and you did -- and *his* reasoning is that he feared that if he was canning me, and I saw your angry post, that I would accuse him of caving to Sheep pressure -- that is the "drama" -- which isn't "drama" but Metaverse Politics.

But we can see the time stamps in Technorati's RSS feed. He *did* cave to pressure. You *did* remove it at his request to play this little game to hide it from and create fake impressions for me (!).

Your pasting from your TOS merely confirms that you scrape data, mine it, and use it to sell products.

The idea that my concepts of your destructive of search places/classifieds is somehow extreme is certainly a legitimate opinion for you to have, but my identifying this crisis isn't "yellow journalism" when *you yourselves" claim a million will come in the door in 6 weeks just for this project; when *you yourseves* say 126,000 signed up in a day, or that 6,000 extras last night are "all yours".

Hello? This will have a DRAMATIC impact on the ecology of the inworld economy. It *already* has. Given that SL is *already* in an economic slump that is caused not only by casino cashouts, but by big corporate projects siphoning producers and consumers out of the economy completely, your enormous whack at classifieds will have a huge effect.

You are launching an inworld ad sales agency -- and you expect us not to understand that you will harvest the information from the browser use or avatar key tracking and identify where the hot spots are for sales?!

Of course Satchmo was asked to speak, because Nick had just been accused by you of being a "tabloid" merely for having a podcast -- whose subject he agreed to! -- criticizing your viewer. You can't *hardly* expect anyone to see it otherwise.

It does spell doom, if our classifieds and SEARCH PLACES can't be seen and your "one million" that YOU claim comes barrelling in the door, and replaces the past million with TV tie-ins. Sure as hell *does* spell doom -- and you have made that clear, by telling us your attitude toward search places and classifieds: you are under no obligation to carry them, it is advertising in another company's newspaper, not yours.

There is nothing tabloidy about recounting of the facts of the viewer cover-up; there is nothing tabloidy in following the logical conclusions to your harsh attitude about proprietary search, and your utter shirking of any corporate responsibility for a yellow pages. It just boggles the mind what the Metaverse will come to with this kind of aggressive pwnage.

One can *only* interpret your indifference to the public good as nasty, when the world of people paying 80 percent of the Lindens' revenue are obliterated by your viewer and your steering to your shopping properties.

Once again, I'll recount that I am not blogging from "fear" but from legitimate analysis and field observation. This idea that we are all scared ninnies running around like chicken little with our businesses in danger isn't appropriate for me -- and frankly, for many of the people with businesses, either, who certainly don't have all their eggs in one basket online -- and not even in SL itself anymore, quite frankly.

And the idea that I'm supposed to be "helped" or to "learn" because you put some ridiculous evasive corporate spin on something is completely offensive.

I knew *exactly* what the viewer had in it because my sources *had seen it* and *shared my concerns*. It turned out to be *exactly* as indicated on Hamlet's blog a few days before its release. Any Sheep employee said they were NDA'd up and couldn't comment, so to claim that it wasn't released due to secrecy, but just due to being busy is ridiculous -- you could have run the exact same jpegs as Hamlet.

And the idea that I'm somehow "negligent" and "a tabloid journalist" because I don't "ask for a demo" is absolutely unacceptable. Hearing Anthony's presentation at CSI, and seeing your booth at VW07, I couldn't see any evidence that there was some kind of OnRez Viewer that would obliterate classifieds -- it sounded at first as if it were merely the same kind of HUD as at L-Word, which seemed completely reasonable and normal.

How can you ask to see a thing that is not in evidence as being at issue? Furthermore, you know full well that you enjoy a close and chummy relationship with the house organist Hamlet nee Linden Au, and showed him the viewer, and that his asking presented no controvery for you.

I blogged about this viewer for DAYS before the show opened, and if you really could "show it to me," you would have. And yet...showing it to me would not change a thing about what *I already knew was a problem*.

We're not going to be agreeing on this Forseti, but you'll have to realize that when you accuse me of "bad journalism" falsely, you'll get the hardest possible whack-back from me. I'm not guilty of bad journalism. I reported the problems of the viewer as they first became known to me when I could immediately see the alarming implications -- especially if one million came and a good share of them remained and displaed everyone else.

Once again, you don't rely on classifieds or search all for sales, so you simply don't care. It simply does not matter, and you simply don't feel any responsibility for it. I do.

[Giff]

Prokofy, in future, as for getting the facts about anything, you know that I am quite willing to have a conversation or debate with you if you are not screaming at me. We manage to talk in a civil fashion when we meet in RL. If you want facts, just email and IM me and I will respond when I can. I repeat, I will not engage with you if all you want to do is scream at me.

[Mr. E. Rang]

"And the idea that I'm somehow "negligent" and "a tabloid journalist" because I don't "ask for a demo" is absolutely unacceptable."

Reporting information as fact without ever researching it is "negligent" and "tabloid journalism".. Your brand of journalism is simply sensationalistic, very rarely contains an ounce of fact, and looks to inspire conspiracy theory and dramatic speculation amongst its readers.. That IS tabloid journalism any way you flip it..

Considering yourself a serious and accurate journalist is what is really unacceptable here..

[Maxx Something]

I wish there were more people like Prok to step up to the plate and change the elitiest and privilaged attitude that is becoming more prevalant in Second Life. I haven't been in Second Life as long as most, but it doesn't take more than a few licks of comment sense to realize that a handfull of people are trying to seize power in second life and enhance their own wallets at the expense of smaller content creators. However, this is a captalistic society, and greedy little power hungry people need their perceived sense of power, and if their only means of acheiving it is by clamping their dripping fangs over the commerce in Second Life, well.....I can see they are trying to do far more than that but the negative impact on commerce is bad enough. Easy enough to label anyone with a dissenting view as a conspiracy theorist, a tin-foil hat wearer, a yellow journalist...all pretty names. I see nothing tablod or sensational in what Prok is doing. I think it's far more disturbing that the people who feel they are the privilaged few in Second Life post and get their friends to post rebuttals trying to falsely demonstrate that a person is crazy. 99.9% of the popopulation of SL isn't even aware that power grabs taking place. They exist happy in their little matrix dancing away at whatever club is popular that week.

[Prokofy Neva]

Giff, I'm not screaming, I'm publishing *counter propaganda* to your shrill and outrageous claims that any publication where I had a podcast becomes a "tabloid" merely because I critically discussed your viewer. That's just quite simply outrageous. And many of us frankly are simply not buying the idea that you can make a proprietary viewer out of the Lindens' viewer they open-sourced. The jury's out on that one for me, certainly.

There's still the whole awful matter to come of a) your search engine made from the scrapings of Second Life and your mining of that data for your use and b) your networked advertising system based on the scraping and on buying whatever ad space there is to be had in world -- and we don't have a commitment yet that this won't involve pumping up the microbaron extortionists 16 m2 empires.

E. Rang, you're quite simply retarded -- and maliciously so. I sure did research this viewer -- and I was *absolutely right* about it.

There's nothing tabloid about what I said: the alarming grab at the public good of the Yellow Pages, which is something the Lindens, even being the sole proprietor of Second Life, did maintain all this time in their SEARCH.

Enabling companies to take over this function -- by covering up tabs in their own OS'd viewer, by scraping the world and publishing their own search from their own website from which they mine data -- these are very, very VERY real issues. In the real world around the Internet, they are debated openly and critically, and no one is accused of tinfoiling if they question what Google is doing to people's privacy.

It's no conspiracy theory to point out the obvious of what the Sheep are doing:

1. Make a viewer that a million new people will use -- ok, even just 27,000! -- and obscure the underlying tabs used by the rest of the economy.

2. Drive people to SHOP and to properties, events, fashion sims, etc. owned by the Sheep

3. Introduce a new search engine made from Grid Shepherd's gleaning, and mine it

4. Introduce a networked ad system that makes use of all the information sucked out of the first 3 elements and sells and buys ad space.

If you can't see the alarming power grab involved in this, by a company that hasn't built up the public trust nor considered the public trust, you have some serious moral and perception deficits.

Apparently you mean to say "whenever I see an opinion that challenges the powers that be in the Geek-o-verse, I call it tabloid journalism".

[Prokofy Neva]

This just in: Nick Wilson writes me on email that he has "stepped back" from MMI and that "understandbly" I missed this post:
http://metaversed.com/24-oct-2007/pushing-mmi-forward

Except...I didn't miss it lol. I read it 3 times. It's written in that sort of "I need to spend more time with my family"-speak that is a bit hard to decipher.

Does step back but "remain supportive" mean that he's out? Completely? Or...what?

The domain name is still linked to metaversed.com

Robert Bloomfield IM'd me right before the show after skimming this blog and said that in fact MMI will have its own web site. He pointed me to one of those lame and lethal wikis. When I bitched about the lame and lethal wiki, he said there was a forums where I'm not necessarily pre-banned! Well!

MMI will have to live to prove its independence and competence, like anything else proclaiming it must have an ingathering of the tribes all on its territory, and analyze everybody else.

And that means it has to publicize the board and advisors and funders and bylaws and all the rest, like any normal NGO. I don't know if they realize that the 990s they file with the IRS can be accessed by any member of the public who pays $3.75 for xeroxing to the State Atty General's office to see who paid more than $10,000 in contributions, and what the compensation of the executives are. The State Atty Genl runs a pretty tight ship in NYS.

[Desmond Shang]

I'm not surprised at all by much of the unfolding events here lately.

I think we are seeing a maturing of the industry, at last, which will be *very* interesting and have some fairly deep implications.

* * * * *

Bookstores in the United States, supermarkets, clothing stores - they all give a slight discount to those who keep coming back if you carry their card, and usually, the implication is that one allows one's data to be scraped.

With other industries, data scrape is so de rigueur that it's *expected* - Google, for instance.

All of these businesses fighting for mindshare, for marketshare, for a framing of your viewpoint. Often paying for it, too.

Loyalty.

It makes complete sense from a business perspective, for the Electric Sheep to take care of their e-loyal.

The issue, to my mind, is not that they are doing it. The issue is that there are so few others else (so far) that are doing the same.

Yet it's just a matter of time. I'm almost dead sure it will happen: use a dedicated UI, get a discount somewhere.

It won't be just the Sheep. For every Coke a Pepsi arises, usually little different, plus the usual string of Royal Crown Cola's.

Allegiance.

This is where it gets *really* interesting. Once you are a frequent flyer, once you identify yourself with a brand, your interests and theirs get intertwined.

Harley riders care about the Harley Davidson Company. The guys in first class *care* if Virgin keeps flying. Their agenda is, to a degree, Virgin's agenda, if they want to keep getting the champagne and the massages.

* * * * *

I think we'll see a fairly significant transformation in the next five years.

A shakeout, where metaversal loyalties and allegiances are the unwritten but clear political capital.

The pundits at Terra Nova will talk about it as it unfolds to the public, but they will be late to the party. It's already going down.

The loyal consumer-armies are going to be the ones in the trenches, in the battle for metaversal hegemony.

And the time to 'get in' to leverage that is now. Right now. This season, this week, tonight.

I think you'll have one minor ironic victory in all this, Prokofy.

In five years, the technorati won't be invited to all the best parties any more - the businessmen with good hair and smooth style will take charge as the industry matures. And the geeks you despise will be back in the corporate basement eating pizza at midnight, hoping to be thrown a stock option or two by someone wearing a halfway decent broadcloth shirt.

If there was one thing the 1990's taught me, that was it.

[Prokofy Neva]

What do you mean five *years*, Desmond?

Five *minutes*. Ok, five months.

I think I'll remain loyal to Linden Lab for now. For King and Country. But that's because they're the least worst of all the others, like democracy.

Hey, if we can get those geeks back in the cellar, I'll buy the pizza, this round's on me lol.

[Maklin Deckard]

"I wish there were more people like Prok to step up to the plate and change the elitiest and privilaged attitude that is becoming more prevalant in Second Life." - Maxx

I agree Maxx. Sometimes Prok can be a bit over the top...but that is called PASSION for a topic. All I see from Giff is soulless PR...gaming words, loaded phrases right out of marketing. When I read a Prokofy post, I may or may not agree, but I am going to read it and be challenged if I don't agree. Giff and the ESC crew...their posts are about as mentally challenging as reading the back of a cereal box...all fluff, PR spin and marketspeak crap I have seen / heard from dozens of corporations over the years. OCCASIONALLY they arise to the level of mildly aggrieved that someone thinks ill of them...but they are never passionate. They are just, IMO, creepy in their slavish identical corporate position statements.

[Maklin Deckard]

"The loyal consumer-armies are going to be the ones in the trenches, in the battle for metaversal hegemony. " - Desmond

Then the 'Sheep' name is quiet apt, eh? I honestly cannot understand brand loyalty...I have zero loyalty to faceless corporate drones and maketeers. How is it that the masses are so easily taken in?

"I think you'll have one minor ironic victory in all this, Prokofy." - Desmond

Lost me here, Desmond, what victory?

"In five years, the technorati won't be invited to all the best parties any more - the businessmen with good hair and smooth style will take charge as the industry matures. And the geeks you despise will be back in the corporate basement eating pizza at midnight, hoping to be thrown a stock option or two by someone wearing a halfway decent broadcloth shirt." - Desmond

And personally, I won't cry many tears. :) You know my background, from our discussions, engineering and IT. Problem is there are professionals and there are geeks. I consider myself the former. The latter? Those are the same annoying 'all or nothing' folks that believe since we cannot stop copying 100%, we should do nothing...that LL can't stop griefers 100%, so it should do nothing. They're the same ones that go to meetings and derail them discussing trivialities of open source and wave about their (MINIMAL or inaplicable) real world experience..like the geek that will remain nameless that was lecturing a Linden at a meeting I attended on 'load balancing the asset server'...That when in IM told me of his 'vast' five years experience with a 10 server network. :)

Here, I must agree with Prok. I don't particularly like geeks myself...its the combination of smug superiority, black and white thinking, features over fixes (hello LL programmers, I mean YOU!), and failure to recognize their experience does not necessarily SCALE, that gets to me.

You've been in both sides of the house (tech and management)...You think it'd be a bad thing to have the SL geek shoved back into the basement? :) Give me an IT professional any day.

"If there was one thing the 1990's taught me, that was it." - Desmond

I remember it too. But most of these geeks on SL and in the current OS movement weren't OLD enough to have worked in the 90's...it interfered with cartoons and middle school / Jr. High. :)

[Maklin Deckard]

"Hey, if we can get those geeks back in the cellar, I'll buy the pizza, this round's on me lol." - Prokofy

Remember to send me a ticket to that party, Prokofy! :)

[Desmond Shang]

Prok's victory would be in the eventual maturing of the industry.

It happens in all fields.

The random prospector finds gold, others like him rush in, and soon you've got a little boomtown going there.

And a lot of trash talk starts about how awesome and smart the people who made the early cash were. Well, we are all geniuses in a rising market and a boomtown - and the cash seems to validate it.

The money dresses up the early prospectors, but it doesn't really make 'em smarter.

Eventually the boomtown attracts the Big Interests who come in, spend just a little (on corporate scales) and make things more efficient.

Usually by buying up all the prospectors and putting them to work as mere 'miners'. Though, by selling it slickly enough, the former prospectors will be made to see it thus: they are 'experts' and 'professionals' now (See the certificate? But gotta run, there's the whistle saying lunch is over and it's time to dig!)

Bottom line is: the moment you are working for someone else, you are there for one reason alone: to make them rich, not you.

Maklin you hit it on the head, because you know me a bit - indeed, I opted out of the whole technorati/management game for the most part, and went into biz for myself. I think I added ten years to my life, if not twenty.

I'm not sure what I hated more - the BS of management, or the smug superiority of the techie back room. Both had their rewards but both drove me away, in the end.

Ironically though, no matter how far you run, once you've been dipped in those scenarios long enough, a bit of it becomes a part of you. And thus it was for me.

Were it possible, I'd become a small town grocer on a beautiful coastline somewhere, in a place that barely has electricity. And enjoy life day by day in the fullest way possible. I really don't care anymore what car I drive, or if it's possible to shop at home - those were pretty empty achievables, once you got there.

But paradise is lost, I think.

Any one of us here has probably been so poisoned by the modern tech lifestyle so thoroughly, that we'd corrupt any idyllic small town with our mere presence. Just watch them build a Starbucks just for us.

[Maklin Deckard]

"Eventually the boomtown attracts the Big Interests who come in, spend just a little (on corporate scales) and make things more efficient." - Desmond

Oh, maturing of the industry...like when all the tech-startup owners of the 90's got bought out by real businessmen and given titles to act as 'visionaries'...while no longer running things day to day. Understood. :)

"Any one of us here has probably been so poisoned by the modern tech lifestyle so thoroughly, that we'd corrupt any idyllic small town with our mere presence. Just watch them build a Starbucks just for us." - Desmond.

All I need is a broadband connection and a larger city within a couple hours driving distance, and I am cool. :) I already live in a smaller town, away from where I work.

Me, I always wanted to run a small hobby/game shop...or my other hobby, a tropical fish store like the wonderful ones when I was a boy. But the first is being slowly destroyed by the PC, the MMO and the no-brainer collectible card games, while the latter were crushed by the petsmart's of the world. *sigh*

[Maklin Deckard]

"I really don't care anymore what car I drive, or if it's possible to shop at home - those were pretty empty achievables, once you got there.

But paradise is lost, I think." - Desmond

You know, I kinda wonder if that is part of the reason people like us build / are drawn to Caledon. And why Prokofy fight so hard for her own versions of a virtual world.

Perhaps in some way, we've all reached some goal and found it not as sweet as imagined? And are creating an alternative that is more palatable? Food for thought.

[Prokofy Neva]

I think the big corporations already hired the prospectors, Desmond and Maklin -- they hired the best builders, the best designers of skins/clothing/etc and the best event planners/greeters. They could probably hire some more, as they burn through them, but it's a small pool. They don't need any more to be matured through the torturous process of the world -- although they'd be better off if they understood they shouldn't destroy that.

Because those corporations will just train their own staff and likely make less use of consultants in the future, if they don't just buy them outright as in-house studios.

They have a very clear intention to destroy the economy -- they don't *like* the economy. They may think they should leave it alone to die or survive on its own -- at best.

But they can't not destroy it, the way Barnes & Noble can't not destroy the little bookstore, because Barnes & Noble survives due to all those little book store shoppers switching over their loyalty. They aren't going to pay $10 a copy or forego a good used copy to be delivered to their home for pennies just to sustain some goofy old lady with a book store on the corner and cats running around, even if she remembers the days when Gurdjieff and P.L. Travers were drinking tea and signing books.

What tekkies never want to admit is that by making everything digital and ostensibly saving costs in some places, they added these huge expenditures to the entire real-life economy. The inflation of the 1970s is part caused by the oil shortage and oil cartel, and in part caused by the surge of business machines like faxes and computers and everything else that simply cost a lot more.

Paying for a computer today costs what my family might have paid for a house in rent in 1968 -- inflation makes that true, but it's also true that every family has to buy lots of digital machines that they would never have dreamed of having 30 years ago. The thousands of dollars that used to be spent only on a car and the house itself are now also spent on computers, faxes, digital alarm clocks, latte machines, security systems. And the money to pay for that has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is women joining the workforce and the double incomes, but also economies of scale, that bring you the Radio Shack and the Petsmarts that can deliver your hobby and electronic stuff cheaper than the little guys' stores -- so the whole thing perpetuates itself.

Health care costs are the other hugely spiralling cost, and this, too, is in part driven by the need to have computers, faces, MRIs, digitalized equipment.

[Maxx Something]

****I think the big corporations already hired the prospectors, Desmond and Maklin -- they hired the best builders, the best designers of skins/clothing/etc and the best event planners/greeters****

Not sure they hired the BEST. they sure hired those with the biggest egos and name recognition. But name recognition is more about who are your friends and certainly does not preclude quality.

I don't buy that "best" stuff, either.

coco

[Maxx Something]

Some of the people the hired are obviously very good at their craft, no doubt about that. Many have been in SL for years working at it. Just saying that I think they were hired based on social status.

Yes, they are good, but there are lots and lots and lots of people in SL who are good. Just LOTS.

Which reminds me, I need to do a piece on SLRecord about one of them pretty soon. (On the other hand, my cable is out, and I'm in the middle of a house.)

coco