Philip Linden, CEO and founder of Linden Labs which created Second Life, gave an in-world address to Second Life residents at the first Town Hall meeting that featured audio interaction. Philip joked that this was mostly due to his poor typing skills. Philip addressed a number of important issues in Second Life, including the state…
Kofi Annan calls for cyber-security on World Info Society Day
Yesterday, the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan issued a statement on the first World Information Society Day, May 17th. His short speech centered on the importance of "cyber-security": In an increasingly interconnected and networked world, it has become critically important to safeguard our vital systems and infrastructures against attack by cybercriminals, while instilling confidence in…
Happy World Information Society Day!
Hey, everybody, it’s World Information Society Day! On 27 March 2006, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution A/RES/60/252 proclaiming 17 May as annual World Information Society Day. According to the ITU, the commemorative day will "help raise awareness of the possibilities that the use of the Internet and other information communications technologies (ICTs) can…
If it’s not neutral, its not the net
Dan Berninger, senior analyst at Tier1 Research, has an interesting take on the Net Neutrality debate. He notes that the Bells are free to limit people’s access to content via discriminatory throttling of traffic from less-privileged providers (i.e. tiny bloggers like me) in favor of large corporate providers willing pay the toll. But the Bells…
My mad moves in Second Life (videos)
People were asking me about what kinds of dancing goes on in Second Life. I uploaded a couple of quicktime videos of me doing some new steps I acquired, including the "butt dance," the "flapper," the "kata" (my favorite) and the "kick dance" (large-ish file.) Footage taken at the "Baby Dolls" club in virtual Amsterdam. …
Dancing with myself… with other people
Lots of the social activity in Second Life takes place at parties, with the usual things that go on at parties — drinking, chatting, people being silly. The thing that usually signals that a party is going on is music and dancing. I recently have been to a number of different Second Life clubs, live…
Beyond Broadcast towards Citizen Empowerment
Returning to my little universe after the Beyond Broadcast conference in Harvard this weekend, my take-away is that we all face the daunting challenge is how to re-invent our institutions in a digital age. For public broadcasting, this means incorporating new technologies to better serve their communities with relevant content and to better invite them…
Activist Tech: from listservs to virtual worlds
I went to a workshop on “Technology and Social Activism” at the Beyond Broadcast conference this weekend. I suppose it was ambitious to expect anything other than a quick fly-over of interesting initiatives in using technology for activism, since this could have easily been the subject of a three-day conference. As one participant Sean Coon…
Virtual Darfur: Civic Engagement or Fake Activism?
There has been an interesting debate going on between Ethan Zuckerman of Global Voices and Hamlet at New World Notes. It’s a discussion centered around the Second Life virtual Darfur Camp built by several activists to highlight the plight of refugees from the conflict in the Sudan. Ethan’s contention is essentially that while it might…
Charles Nesson’s closing remarks at Beyond Broadcast
Charles Nesson, Weld Professor of Law and Co-founder and Faculty Director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School gave some closing remarks to today’s panels at the Beyond Broadcast conference. Here’s some flavor of it: We face large questions. We have the net in our hands. We are all capable…