Adventures of Filthy Fluno
Me and You II by Flithy Fluno rendered in Prims by MenuBar Memorial. All very cool. I am glad that Microsoft synths can now be viewed by Linux and Mac users with a public free plugins. I love this technology.
Here is my synth of it, please take a look
Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Artropolis/163/174/29
Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life
Just jumped in and took this photo of a random member of Second Life. I guessed that this is a "newbie" who spent no money and has little information in their profile.
Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Blue%20Fusion%20Island/57/35/22
Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Duffield/2/224/75
Linda Lunt's long established business shows a style I call cyber baroque. A wild exciting style aiming at an emotional attachment to the viewer cyber baroque will often use sex as its theme just as baroque users religion. Why? I think it is because in our Age of Fun sex is the new religion.
Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Novazeit/134/128/111
Linden Labs is in the process of making a land mass for pornographic activity and I am going to watch as people and businesses move in.
As you can see above the land is new and just being settled, but I am sure it will grow much faster than other parts of SL.
Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life
Wondering, can a system of virtual interactions via avatars really win against a world of more "real" video and VOIP interaction. Is the imaginary space that Second Life builds more a distraction than a platform?
The visual Imaginary space of Second Life remains essentially a game. People play at society in Second Life and sometimes the game gets very intense. In South Korea players in a virtual world have been reported to attack each other in RL. This power of identity in imagination gives a space like SL or WoW a meaning and intensity Facebook or Twitter can't match.
And I am starting to think this is a problem. SL is hard to use. All the imaginary space comes with a overhead of poor usuability and performance. You are paying a lot to have a nice imaginary space compared to Facebook or Skype. The trend of mobility is promoting more simple interfaces and designs.
I would look at the trend in Internet community design and argue that it points to more simple and more mobile. Starting with spaces like Flickr, MySpace and Second Life the Web 2.0 user community has elected to use more simple HTML interface solutions like Facebook and Twitter.
Imagine a book that when you read about fire really burns you, would you want to read it? Would you carry it around if it weighed 10 times what a normal book does. Second Life is heavy because the technology of imagination is heavy. I am starting to wonder if it all is not just a waste.
Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life
Elon University
40 years later I return to the moon in Second Life. Moon exploration has always been a favorite of mine in Second Life.
Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life
Monkey Fitted With Hi-Tech Chip Moves Robot Using Mind Control, Thomas Moore Reports | UK News | Sky News
The animal can operate the robot with such dexterity that it can reach out to grab, and turn a handle.
The mechanical arm has an arm, elbow, wrist and simple hand, which the monkey controls with the power of thought.
Sky News was given exclusive access to the laboratory at Pittsburgh University in the United States.
The research is progressing so rapidly that scientists hope to start trials on paralysed patients within a year.
Neurobiologist Dr Andy Schwartz said: "What we're trying to do is go to a very dextrous hand - where the functionality is very similar to the human hand. If we could help stroke patients there would be a huge market for this kind of device."
They also hope to help patients who have been paralysed by spinal chord injuries or degenerative diseases of the nervous system.
Electrodes implanted in the monkey's motor cortex, the brain's movement control centre, pick up pulses within individual neurones.
The signals are relayed to a computer which analyses their pattern and strength to gauge what the monkey is trying to do. It then translates the signals to alter the speed and direction of the robotic arm.
The system is so quick that if the arm overshoots the monkey's intended target, it can rapidly correct the movement.
Dr Schwartz told Sky News: "It's pretty amazing because monkeys aren't used to moving tools.
Monkeys known for their intelligence
"We use them all the time. Imagine you're moving your arm to get that piece of food. Conveying that to a monkey is pretty difficult, yet the monkey learns it fairly rapidly.
"As the days go by, you see the monkeys start using it as if it is part of their own body."
The monkey cannot feel the electrodes in its brain, and did not appear to be distressed by the wires leading from a socket on its head.
At Brown University in New England, scientists have just started the first clinical trials of a similar device. Braingate allows tetraplegic patients to control a computer cursor by thinking about moving their paralysed hand.
Matthew Nagel took part in the first tests of a prototype. Before he died of an unrelated infection, he described how the Braingate device gave him back some freedom.
"I can't put it into words. I just use my brain. I said: 'cursor go up to the top right' and it did. And now I can control it all over the screen. It's wild," he said.
The new trial will be on 15 patients. Scientists hope to prove that the technology is safe and effective enough to use on a wider scale.
Head of the research, Professor John Donoghue, said the ultimate aim is for patients to regain control of their own limbs, which are more sophisticated than any robotic arm.
He told Sky News: "Our goal with Braingate is to have a physical replacement for a broken biological nervous system.
"So we'd like to have a physical system that senses what's going on in the brain, takes those signals inside your body and routes them off to the muscles, so when you think, you move.
"That's just what you or I do, so one day you could be sitting here with a person and you wouldn't know if they had the system or not."
More user generated art in Second Life
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Aeonia%20North/102/60/23
Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life
Recently I have had rather aggressive aversion to going inworld. This is more than just being tired of SL, rather its a desire to NOT go inworld, a preference to do anything or do nothing than do SL.
Not sure why this is.
Personally I noticed that when I was under a great deal more stress a couple of years ago I was enamored by Second Life, I could not play enough and I could not stop thinking about it. Over the past few weeks, during a period in my life where my overall stress level has come radically down I find I not only don't want to play, but have a desire to put distnace between myself and it
So what can I say I have noticed?
Well in my case the motivation for going in world was not boredom but the opposite. My RL used to be too busy and too stressful. Living out of hotel rooms, scrambling to obtain contracts and dealing with personal issues SL was a silly world in which I could indulge more childish needs and play games. Today RL is getting pretty set: eew more stable job, personal finances in great shape, graduate school near done. So I would rather just sit in a chair and watch the sun set than go in to Second Life. I force myself to go in to keep the blog going but its more interest in the blog than in the experience. I have recently actually attended some great lectures and podcasts in SL but I almost have to force myself to attend. My emotional relationship with SL is now getting the the way of my collaboration.
The fact that SL engages users on a more emotional level than say Facebook is a strength but more a weakness. People can fall in love with SL in a way they can't fall in love with Twitter, but people can just as easily fall out of love. Your emotional investment can flood out the information exchange.
This is the issue of the Imagination Economy, it functions on a level more chaotic than the Internet has tended to. To date the Interent has been something of a geeky experience of collecting and flaming. SL and other Virtual Worlds offer the opportunity to connect via Imagination in to a rich but more controlled world, with younger better looking selves and easy social relations. This can attract us but in time the suture does not cover, and we might revolt. That is what is happening with me.
Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caerleon%20Isle/75/114/143
Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life
CONSUME
A multi-artist collaborative art installation that explores our consumption of everything. CONSUME features artworks by SL's finest artists. 
Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life
YouTube - Another Perfect World - 30 minutes Preview
Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life
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