Worldbits

Some thought-bombs from SXSW. Sorry not to properly attribute quotes. Was typing too fast to look up. If not in quotes, it is just my observation and, thus, suspect.

• “Closed formats suck!” [applause] — Raph Koster, referring to Second Life and prims.
• People are pretty much salivating for a Google Earth-powered virtual world.
• “I want to see high-detail interiors.” — referring to the next step in Google Earth’s evolution.
• DIY data visualization sites like Many Eyes and Swivel could create lots of valuable overlays for Google Earth.
• John Tolva: “page-based vs. spatial internet” vs. Ben Cerveny: “document-based computing vs. relationship-based computing”.
• Justin Hall’s Passively Multiplayer Online Gaming.
• “Why do all the robots ‘live’ in Japan? Because the Japanese have an animist tradition and they have no problem that a non-living thing could be talking to them.”
• “Why is it that as soon as we get the ability to do anything we want in a virtual world that we immediately try to recreate ‘Menlo Park’? Painting sought a new direction when photography made realism easy.’ Why can’t we do that with virtual worlds?” This is one way of stating the oft-heard praise of the playful Wii versus the realist firepower of the PS3. Why must virtual worlds be photorealistic?
• “Online consumers are essentially non-player characters because their actions are so constrained.” LOVE that.
• Avatar psychology (from an audience response):
  

  Do I contradict myself?
  Very well then I contradict myself,
  (I am large, I contain multitudes.)
  — Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

• “What is the role of the non-player character in a non-gaming world?” Um, how about a tour guide?
• You do know that Flickr, archetypal Web 2.0 site that it is, started as a game, right? The .gne extension you sometimes saw at Flickr stands for Game Neverending.
• Jamais Cascio asked: “Where is the 3D Wikipedia?”
  Answer: “I think that might presuppose a taxonomy of everything in the world and that might be, you know, a challenge.”
• “VRML wasn’t so useful for VR. It was too heavy. Online 3D spaces pull much more heavily from games. In the end, the commercial formats ended up being the good ones.” — Raph Koster
• “The number one form of user-created content is the screenshot.” — Raph Koster
• Word: “toyetic” — the toy-like enjoyability of something (Sketchup was the example).
• Word: “extimate” — opposite of intimate, but not the same as distant, referring to avatars — Jamais Cascio
• “It is far easier to make a Mii avatar than an SL avatar, ergo, there will be more Mii avatars. It is just that simple.” — Raph Koster
• “Humans actually relate to iconified individuals better than photorealistic individuals. 3D does not have to be photoreal.” — Raph Koster
• “We need some aesthetic honesty here. Mashups suck.” — Bruce Sterling
• Bruce Sterling describes the new global order, channeling Yochai Benkler:
  • First World – the global market
  • Second World – all forms of governance (local, regional, national)
  • Third World – socially-motivated, commons-based peer production (e.g. Craigslist, Wikipedia)
  • Fourth World – disorder (the largest and fastest-growing)