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Twenty years ago, playing games over a distance might have meant that you played turn-taking games like chess over email, and you were cutting edge. I remember people playing chess through snail mail! You would make your move and wait for a reply.

What is happening now is taking place in real-time in virtual environments that are interactive and look better than many films. Decisions, actions, and communications happen like they would in a face-to-face conversation, but they are done through a proxy, that is first and second-person perspectives with an avatar: a graphical representation of yourself in the game space.

Here is my avatar in Second Life.

He is a mix of Yoda, Pei Mei, Zatoichi, Master Po, and Real Ultimate Power. I would have liked to have made him old, but this is only possible if you learn to use some tools outside of the game to create more specialized characters. There are many who do this custom avatar creation, and the cool thing is that you could make your avatar something other than a person. Maybe a virus or a mailbox.

In fact, many people are already creating a comfortable living creating products for in game use. If you have not seen it yet, there are already success stories of people capitalizing on the new economies that virtual worlds have created.

In this Business Week article, one school teacher in Germany has made substantial gains flipping virtual property!

Imagine that you have the tools and access to build in these environments. In Second Life you do. You can visit models of the Sistine Chapel, Yankee Stadium, or even visit government agencies like the Center for Disease Control. You can build what you like on your virtual land.

What make this kind of play appealing is the ability to play and communicate when you want, and the possibility of meeting people from all over the planet. The prospect of building models and interacting in this environments should be very appealing to educators. This is an extension of the diorama. (Tomorrow I will talk about a project using these ideas in the classroom).

(Read more …)

Ei, chihuahua…

University of Minnesota-Morris professor PZ Myers writes on the follies of a Christian science fair. The winner? “Creation Wins!!!” The losers? Ignorant parents, teachers and judges…

I’ve refrained from commenting on politics up to now, but this is too absurd to be ignored any longer.

According to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility:

Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush administration appointees. Despite promising a prompt review of its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah’s flood rather than by geologic forces, more than three years later no review has ever been done and the book remains on sale at the park, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

As we approach the end of 2006, and continue our march through the 21st Century, some of us are left behind — evidently in the Dark Ages. Science and reason continue to be downplayed and minimized through fanciful thinking by the Bush administration. This level of leadership intelligence is also displayed by my cat. Mind you he’s pretty dumb. In fact, he’s so dumb that he thinks that if he can’t see you, you can’t see him. Whenever he wants to hide from something, he only hides his head. The Bush administration likewise hides its head under the ground (apparently ignoring the surrounding geological evidence as it does so), and believes it can transcend reality through ignorance.

As we move into 2007, I implore Mr. Bush to:

• Accept the role of science in schools
• Discontinue the “sanitization” of scientific releases by his political operatives
• Quit trying to revise history to serve his political agenda
• Get his head out of… uh… the ground

Technology Review has an interview with Danny Hills, cofounder of Thinking Machines. In the 1980’s the company sought to develop the world’s first real artificial intelligence. They failed. Why?

We look to our own minds and watch our patterns of conscious thought, reasoning, planning, and making analogies, and we think, “That’s thinking.” Actually, it’s just the tip of a very deep iceberg. When early AI researchers began, they assumed that hard problems were things like playing chess and passing calculus exams. That stuff turned out to be easy. But the types of thinking that seemed effortless, like recognizing a face or noticing what is important in a story, turned out to be very, very hard.

Read the entire interview…

Recognizing natural human evolution is likely over, Popular Mecanics is carrying a story on technological trends and advancements that will build better humans.

Update – New Scientist is running a similar article.