My pal Tony just invited me to join his "Fantasy Congress" league. I was a bit dubious about this effort to make the US legislative process into a game, but it seems actually quite well thought out. From the FAQ: Fantasy Congress™ offers you the power to "play politics." As in other fantasy sports, you…
Category: Information Society
iCommons lists CC-licensed free music sites
iCommons posts a great list of CC-licensed music from around the world, including Mexico, Finland and Portugal. (Hmmm, wonder where Brazil is?) Can’t wait to explore the free music goodness. Oh, and Torley’s free techno still kicks ass.
Every Time You Vote against Net Neutrality, Your ISP Kills a Night Elf
Hilariously titled "Every Time You Vote against Net Neutrality, Your ISP Kills a Night Elf" an article by Tony Greenberg and Alex Veytsel of Ramprate argues that online massively-multiplayer online games will be the first to get the knife if Net Neutrality provisions go out the window. They contend that online video will survive in…
My post on “Our Common Humanity” blog
I was invited to contribute to a new blog associated with a UN-affiliated meeting on "Our Common Humanity" taking place from November 28-29 in New York. I decided to do a general "best practices" post pointing to innovative uses of ICTs to promote positive social change, including some of my favorites like WITNESS, Global Voices…
Joi Ito talks to CNET (transcript)
The always interesting and cool venture capitalist / gamer Joi Ito gave an interview to Daniel Terdiman of CNET at their in-world headquarters yesterday. Joi touched on such subjects as copyright and IP in Second Life, Creative Commons, the game industry, and work and World of Warcraft. Daniel will be posting a fuller interview shortly. …
Joi Ito to be interviewed at CNET HQ in Second Life tomorrow
I just heard word that CNET reporter Daniel Terdiman will be interviewing well-known entrepreneur, lEEt g@mr, virtual worlds innovator, and overall cool dude Joi Ito tomorrow (Friday), at 4PM EST/1PM SLT. Joi will talk about his experience using virtual worlds as a tool to manage co-workers, his World of Warcraft guild, and his investments. To…
State of Play Symposium Dec 1-2, NYC
Although the full-strength State of Play IV Conference in Singapore in January still seems to be in jeopardy, there’s a smaller, equally interesting State of Play / Terra Nova symposium happening in a couple of weeks in New York City, December 1-2. The event will feature a number of cool panels on such topics as…
RootCamps in SL line-up for the coming week
The Second Life version of RootsCamp has quickly taken shape in the past day or so, with several exciting sessions coming together. RootsCamps are informal real world gatherings for progressive (mostly) American activists and organizers to discuss the results of the recent elections and start planning for the 2008 Presidential election. From what was only…
My Mission: Arming Ewoks with light sabers
Sitting in an ouzo bar late at night in Athens last Friday, I got asked by a colleague out-of-the-blue what my "vision" was. Never an easy question to answer whether enebriated or not (I wasn’t.) I think I replied something along the lines of, "Hey, how about that Acropolis!" Sitting on the subway this morning,…
Random Coolness: Your image as 1,024 fans or dancers
I was reading Torley’s always odd blog, which referred me to a cool Japanese site called www.madin.jp where you can transform any simple graphic into 1,024 very tiny people either dancing or holding up signs like at a ballgame. Or as Babelfish translates it: The device where the cheerful 1024 people of the systemic tights…