I’ve never been in the virtual world of second life, so is this what it is really like?

This topic, it seems, refuses to die down. First we had the amazing story of Eve Online, which precipitated the question: How far are we from a virtual world? And now, we have an answer to that question. The virtual world is already upon is, if gold farming is anything to go by.

Gold farming, basically, is the very real ‘work’ of selling virtual items (mainly virtual money) for real cash. I cannot do any better in explaining this phenomenon than the New York Times in this interesting story about Chinese gold farmers.

These words perhaps capture the spirit of the whole article, “… something curious has happened to the classic economic distinction between play and production: in certain corners of the world, it has melted away. Play has begun to do real work.”

Check out the video(and here is a link to another one) :

I find gold farming quite interesting obviously because I’m an avid gamer myself but also because of something else. Can such a business model work in Kenya? I certainly know very many excellent Kenyan gamers so the ‘workforce’ is there already. I think it is yet another wonder of the Internet.

What do you think of Gold Farming, and virtual worlds?

The recent incident over at Eve Online has got me thinking about virtual and real and when the distinction will become blured to apoint of not being recognisable. Will it ever get to that point. There was a similar story over at TechCrunch today. First, check out the awesome video:

Then, read the post at TechCrunch, which includes descriptions and a demo of very cool services and tools. Be sure to also read the comments. I particularly liked this one: I wonder if eventually you could have a virtual world in which you “virtually” explore the virtual world. Kind of a recursive virtual world! It’s kind of a crazy idea. I’m sure the philosophers would have a lot to say about this. Cool post. Thanks for bring to our attention all of these up-and-coming virtual world services.

So, what do you think of all this?

Anyone that has ever played a multiplayer game knows that a multiplayer game is never just a game. It’s real. An interesting article in the New York Times underscores this fact. Apparently, the administrators of Eve Online, a popular massively multiplayer online game, are going to hold elections to come up with representatives of the players who will oversee the game’s administration and ensure it is fair and transparent. That sounds like good old politics to me. The player Representatives sound like nothing but MP’s or senators. The following says it best:

“Perception is reality, and if a substantial part of our community feels like we are biased, whether it is true or not, it is true to them,” Hilmar Petursson, CCP’s chief executive, said in a telephone interview. “Eve Online is not a computer game. It is an emerging nation, and we have to address it like a nation being accused of corruption.
“A government can’t just keep saying, ‘We are not corrupt.’ No one will believe them. Instead you have to create transparency and robust institutions and oversight in order to maintain the confidence of the population.”

Personally, I knew it was just a matter of time before that which separates virtual and real is obscured to the point that it is unrecognizable. What do you think?

Random Question: Won’t the player representatives now get extra perks from the game administrators to ‘keep them happy’?

I haven’t tried it yet, but here’s the link.

While checking my email today, I found a nice surprise: “President Kibaki wants to be added as your friend.” Despite my personal views, that was quite flattering. As far as I can tell, President Kibaki’s Profile on myspace has been set up to help out in the campaign for the upcoming general elections. I think it’s high time our politicians embrace technology fully. Kudos to the president for that. Let’s hope he doesn’t run into any trouble.

I think the profile is a little strange, especially the ‘I Love you’ message. All in all, I like what he’s trying to do. Just a bit hard picturing the president seated behind a computer whiling his time away on myspace.

What do you think of this? Is it really the president behind this?

You do too. They are all around us, reminding us constantly of their life and death.

What happens to your online self when you die? “More than a year after his death, Aaron Huth continues to haunt those who knew him. His profile on the behemoth six-degrees-of-separation Web site Friendster.com still lets people know that in May of 2003 he was listening to bands like the Birthday Party and the Postal Service and reading Nietzsche. His likes and interests were frozen for posterity on May 26, 2003, the last time he logged into the site.” Read the rest of this article over at citypaper.com.

I have always been intrigued at what happens when you die. Offline, we may never know but online, your ‘life’ never ends. There is simply no way for sites like myspace or facebook to differentiate between dead users and inactive users. Your online profile will be frozen in time for as long as the internet exists and will remind everyone of what you were doing during your life. Of course people may forget you and stop visiting your profile but a la google, someone in the future may search for something and end up in your profile. How is he supposed to know you’re dead? The internet may be filling up with dead people, and we have no way of knowing whether they’re alive or dead.

“Voices. That’s what people are, in the hypertextual world. A multiplicity of disembodied voices. In that view, there is no concrete difference between the words of the living and the words of the deceased. The real lives of the speakers are only things that occur in the background of the wired world.” Read the rest from this in a very thoughtful article on this topic.

Image Courtesy of VintageRos.