cosmic salon
October 2008 
SECOND LIFE EVENTS & NEW WORLD NOTES
Happiness
The "Best of Second Life Events" are published each week in James Au's fascinating blog, New World Notes.
Many of you have been reading my posts of these Events each week, but what you have not had a chance to see is the ongoing reporting in NWN of notable news from Second Life.
I will not be posting these weekly event updates for awhile, because of other commitments right now, but I would urge you each to not only check in to NWN for the event updates, but also for the news and articles about cool things happening in SL generally.
The link for New World Notes is:
Here are some current articles, by example, of what you can find if you check out and follow James Au's excellent reportage from "in-world."
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Universe In The Metaverse: Garrett Lisi Explores An E8 Polytope In Second Life
The E8 Polytope, on display in Rezzable Visions-- direct SLURL teleport at this link
Last weekend a candy-colored platinum blond named Wizard Gynoid stood in Second Life space, while a latticework of colored lines that describe the entire known universe were drawn around her. After some time, she was joined by a tall bald man in a white robe named Garrett Netizen. Some courtesies were exchanged, and Mr. Netizen surveyed the multi-colored latticework that started to surround them.
"Kind of looks like the inside of my head," he observed. Which as it turns out, was quite true.
Offline, Garrett Netizen is Garrett Lisi, a veteran surfer and snowboarder who also happens to be the author of "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything", which many people far brighter than me consider the most likely candidate to become the unified field theory, bringing all our knowledge of the physical world together into a single, elegant, comprehensible explanation. Einstein died trying to create one, but after hearing Lisi explain his theory, a co-founder of loop quantum gravity pronounced it “one of the most compelling unification models I’ve seen in years.” (This recent New Yorker profile is a good introduction to Lisi and his thesis, and the controversy over them.)
In between frequent stints on Maui's waves and Tahoe's slopes, and answering that whole ticklish fundamental question to all existence, Lisi occasionally visits Second Life. "I first tried out Second Life at the SIGGRAPH conference in San Diego in 2003," he tells me by e-mail. "I step my toe in every now and then to see how it's progressing." Usually too consumed in real physics, he adds, "This last visit was inspired by Wizzy's invitation."
Which brings us back to the platinum blond with the "Wizzy" navel ring glinting from her exposed midriff. What she created in Second Life and wanted to show Lisi was an E8 Polytope, an extraordinarily complex algebraic system geometrically represented as a kind of fragile, intricate crystal sphere. In Lisi's "Theory of Everything", the E8 Polytope is the framework which explains the working of all known physical particles. A former philosophy of science student, Ms. Gynoid and her colleagues created a Second Life scripting system that converts all the vertices of E8 into thousands of multi-colored fiber, which constantly draw and re-draw themselves. "The full color is the whole object," she tells me. "It cycles through subsets of the object. Each color is a set of strut lengths."
So last Sunday, Wizard Gynoid held the official opening of her E8 Polytope model, which floats in the inky blackness of Rezzable Visions. (Direct SLURL teleport at this link.) By the time I arrived, near a dozen avatars were there, furiously discussing the math and physics of her project. Shortly after I got there, Lisi himself showed up. Which from one point of view, is sort of like Einstein wandering through a museum diorama about general relativity.
"Garrett inspired this build with his Theory of Everything!" Wizard tells her audience, by way of introduction. An impromptu cosmological conversation from within the center of the E8 polytope ensues:
Continue reading "Universe In The Metaverse: Garrett Lisi Explores An E8 Polytope In Second Life"
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Monday, October 06, 2008
British Telecom Has A Second Life-To-Real Life Call Service. But Do You Want It?
Following the footsteps of Vodafone, UK telecom giant BT has AvaTalk, another service for communicating from within Second Life to someone's mobile phone. (Via Digital Urban, here's a video of it in action.)
If I'm reading the site right, however, AvaTalk recently ended a trial period, but updates are promised. Which gives us time to ponder, is this something you'd actually find useful? As opposed to another metaverse bridging channel like Skype, Twitter, or even SLim?
The site's visuals sort of position AvaTalk as A Hip Device For Young Singles On The Go. In my opinion, however, the most compelling application of this technology, is political dissent: An anonymous communication channel from within repressive countries. Unfortunately, that's mostly out of the question: according to BT's service FAQ, you can't use AvaTalk to call numbers in, say, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, or Sudan, among many nations with lots of people with important things to say and lots of authorities who'd punish them if they tried.
That off the table, what other applications can you imagine for it?
Image: www.btavatalk.com. Hat tip: Digital Urban.
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Wikitecture Featured In Architectural Record
Is this the article that will finally push the architecture profession to embrace Wikitecture, the SL-based, award-winning building system? It's in Architectural Record, a top publication in the field, and it nicely outlines the creation of Wikitecture by Jon Brouchoud (Keystone Bouchard in SL) and Ryan Schultz (Theory Shaw in SL.) And I love the accompanying mixed reality images, merging the design incubated in Second Life with photos of the Nepalese who stand to benefit from it.
Access: Public
Charlanna Beresford’s weekly round-up of upcoming SL events…
