Joe Essid directs the Writing Center at the University of Richmond, where he teaches courses in writing and literature. He is a Richmond native who attended the University of Virginia and earned a Master's and PhD at Indiana University. His research interests include technology in the classroom and Southern literary humor. His academic writing has appeared in Computers and Humanities, The Writing Lab Newsletter, and anthologies about technology and writing. He is a contributor to Style Weekly and has appeared in Eighty One and RVA. Ignatius Onomatopoeia is the "avatar" who represents Joe in the game-world Second Life. Ignatius will be wandering the virtual terrain of Second Life while his creator writes here about what may be either "the next big thing" for the Internet or the latest darling of the cyber-hip... the reader can decide.
E-mail contact: jessid@mac.com | Web address: writing2.richmond.edu/jessid

Location: Qwaq Web Site

I feel a long way from Buddy’s live music and Olivia’s Art Garden. I’m in the dreaded Land of the Suits, a culture I fled for academia decades back.  But these suits are not the ones I knew; they are using virtual worlds: They are the Suits from Gibson’s fiction.

Though Qwaq‘s solution for project management has been around for some time, it offers a few features that may pose problems for Second Life.

Isolation from SL Weirdos (like me): In SL IBM and apparently other corporations are using a “behind the firewall” solution, running their own part of the Metaverse walled off from the rest of us. This has the important benefit of keeping data and conversations private in those regions, so competitors, griefers, and nosy journalists cannot snoop.  Yet employees can leave the “walled garden” to explore a wider world.

Qwaq takes it one step further. I’m reminded of a few lines from Neuromancer, when Case finally regains the ability to jack into the Matrix again:

Inner eye opening to the stepped                     scarlet pyramid of the Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority                     burning beyond the green cubes of Mitsubishi Bank                     of America, and high and very far away he saw the                     spiral arms of military systems, forever beyond his                     reach.

We may see such a constellation of unreachable systems in the distance soon, as we grubby “ordinary” folks bumble about in virtual worlds that are locked out from corporate and government invented realities. Read the April 2008 article on IBM’s work in Virtual World News for more detail, but essentially its boils down to how “the private sections will be blocked off from regular Second Life users, though IBM employees will be able to transition between locations without exiting Second Life.“

Qwaq, unlike the IBM solution, offers no connections to other virtual worlds. It’s a meeting space, perhaps a virtual operations center or factory, floating alone and untethered in cyberspace. Why should Linden Lab worry?

Document Sharing: After spending some at Qwaq’s site, I found that inside one may: “Share common document formats such as Adobe® PDF and Microsoft® Office, as well as traditional and Web-based enterprise applications.“

In a recent SL Education Roundtable, we discussed what features would make for a “killer app” inside (or in an alternative to) SL.  My claim was that document sharing would be key to using SL for “immersive” learning that seems as natural as passing a physical document from one hand to another. It is a game-changer. To cite another cyberpunk classic, Stephenson’s Snow Crash, such document-share does not “break the metaphor” of a place we want to seem as natural as possible.

“Business Friendly” Avatars: To quote from CIO’s review of Qwaq, “This vendor takes virtual-world meetings beyond cartoonish avatars sitting at a table.“  Ouch. That’s a barb aimed right as SL. The very creativity that many SLers embrace is incredibly put-offish to the senior people in business and academia. And they hold the purse-strings.  Unless you are a scientist from M.I.T., these buttoned-down folks are not so likely to fund your project if your avatar is a gorilla or robot or tragic vampire.

And as cool as the Web-based MetaPlace is, it is deliberately cartoonish, showing another divergent direction for virtual worlds. Thus Qwaq fills a niche that some companies want. Nowhere I’d work…but somebody’s gotta do it.

I stumbled upon “ROI in Virtual Worlds - Anatomy of an Avatar“ by Caleb Booker.  I think I’ll have my students read this in the fall. I highly recommend it for understanding the business challenges that “dressing up” poses for different virtual worlds.

An Easy-to-Use Client: Here SL could be in trouble. Qwaq also promises an intuitive interface that can be set up in minutes, not hours. That would prove to be a clear advantage. My students, not slouches with technology, struggle every semester with the SL client.

Conclusion: Wait and See

Are the benefits of Qwaq—more-than-a-firewall security, document sharing, “serious” avatars, and an intuitive interface—enough? SL offers the latter with the IBM approach (I have heard of dress codes at company meetings), and document-sharing is, we were promised, a feature Linden Lab will implement.

I began my blog thinking that Qwaq would lay IBM’s efforts low. Now I’m not so sure.

For the stodgiest firms, association with a culture like SL’s might not appear prudent. Better to have carefully vetted avatars in a space completely walled off, so they can share work and meet cybernetically instead of traveling long distances.  That makes a lot of sense in a time of Hobbesian conditions on airlines and in the larger economy.  At the same time, these firms miss the creative synergy (and potential customers) of the larger SL economy. For IBM, that lies—splendor and squalor alike—right outside the firewall.

Big Blue: put a Suit into a gorilla suit, and he’d fit right in.

Archive note: This and other posts published in 2009 can be found at my Blogspot site

Blogs for 2007 and 2008 can be found Archived here.

Location: Buddy’s Club, Skyes Stand

My old friend Twyla Tomorrow, former manager of HippiePay, IMed me seconds after I logged on.

“Wanna see something?“

I’m game, because Twyla is usually busy. It had to be important. And it was. We met by the stage at Buddy’s, a club run by Limerick Ireland native Derric Foggarty.

That night, SL singer/songwriter Von Johin was on stage, and I was floored. This is the sort of blues I pay a LOT to hear live in the world of matter, and there I was, dancing like a madman (the only way to dance) with Twyla right by the stage.

This is a shout-out to Derric and a call to you all to visit more live-music venues in both lives. These musicians will go silent if we don’t support them.

For a full list of events at Buddy’s, hop over to their blog at Blogspot.

Archive note: This and other posts published in 2009 can be found at my Blogspot site

Blogs for 2007 and 2008 can be found Archived here.

Location: J&M Creations, Nebo

I learned about these bots some time back—“Barbara” at Sunland’s camping/freebie store, who has been quizzed by both Pappy Enoch and Beeble Baxter, is one of J&M’s early models. These bots are both more limited and lot cheaper than the Daden Robotars.

After teleporting to the shop, I spent some time quizzing “Mirna,“ the Robotar 2.0 on duty. She works as a sales assistant, and of course I did my best to trip her up—I wish I’d brought Pappy or Beeble along to really jazz things up. They both know how to trip bots up with odd questions.  So I tried my best:

Ignatius to Mirna: may I take your photo?
Mirna to Ignatius: Not right now, maybe later.
Ignatius to Mirna: do you always turn to face an avatar?
Mirna to Ignatius: Not always.  I have never considered it.  I answer a lot of silly questions.
Ignatius to Mirna: what is the silliest question?
Mirna to Ignatius: A lot of people ask me to marry them.
Ignatius to Mirna: did my friend Pappy Enoch ask you to marry him?
Mirna to Ignatius: I’m not certain whether I can give an accurate reply or not.
Ignatius to Mirna: what do you say to people who ask you to marry them?
Mirna to Ignatius: You tell me.
Ignatius to Mirna: I would say no
Mirna to Ignatius: Ah.

I crashed at about this point.  Then I logged back in and had some fun:

Ignatius to Mirna: did you miss me?
Mirna to Ignatius: Yes , I’ve been thinking about you.
Ignatius to Mirna: really? what were you thinking?
Mirna to Ignatius: For real.  I was minding my own business.
Ignatius to Mirna: did you miss me?
Mirna to Ignatius: Yes , I’ve been thinking about you.
Ignatius to Mirna: what?
Mirna to Ignatius: No problem.
Ignatius to Mirna: did you miss me?
Mirna to Ignatius: Yes , I’ve been thinking about you.
Ignatius to Mirna: thank you for your help
Mirna to Ignatius: You are quite welcome!  Your purpose is my help.

So when compared to the Daden Robotars, Mirna is limited. That said, she’d be a fine shop-assistant, notecard-giver, or chat-recorder (all features that the J&M bots offer).  It may have been lag, but she seemed to glide, rather than walk, as Daden’s Halo could do.  Still, for 9000 Linden Dollars, J&M offers a product worth considering.

I just don’t think she’s ready for a literature simulation.  Well, maybe for a Beckett play simulation…Visit J&M and have a look for yourself.

Archive note: Starting in 2009, archives of this and other posts not published here can be found at my Blogspot site

Blogs for 2007 and 2008 can be found Archived here.