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Category: Virtual Worlds
 
Posted Tuesday, April 28, 2009 by Hap Aziz
Or perhaps I should say they were the ultimate avatars until the resurrection hub was destroyed.

If you're unfamiliar with the BSG remake that began as a mini series on the Sci-Fi Channel in 2004 and wrapped up the series and the story just last night, the Cylons have taken on different forms from the robots of the original series. In fact, there is a whole new class of Cylon referred to by the humans as "skin jobs"--these are robots with complete human appearance. The interesting thing (and what makes it relevant to the discussion of avatars) is that these skin jobs cannot die. When one skin job meets an untimely end, its consciouness is immediately backed up and downloaded into a brand new body, allowing it to live again.

The process is analogous to what happens in computer games when a players character is killed in the game world--a new player character is added back to the playing environment, and the actual player has the advantage is being able to make use of newly acquired knowledge. I can see this as being a logical extension of how learners gather their information in the teaching and learning environment.

We seem to be on our way to that level of technology. How will we handle it?

- Hap Aziz
Posted Tuesday, February 05, 2008 by Mark Krupinski

Yes, that's my Second Life avatar: the Lost In Space robot* on the right.  I freely admit I'm a tech geek (aren't we all, to some extent?)... but that's not the point of this post.  Rather, I wanted to share a few interesting facts and recent stats about the SL environment.

  • According to Gartner Research, 80% is the projected number of active Internet users that will have a Second Life by 2011.
  • There are currenlty 12,260,372 residents of Second Life.
  • One-day new account signups for January 30 was 21,180.
  • There were 60,912 concurrent members during peak usage time on February 3.
  • During the past two months, there were over 1.1 million active users.
  • More than 300 colleges and universities (including Harvard and Duke) use Second Life as an educational tool.
  • Toyota's Prius was introduced in Second Life before becoming available in the real world.
  • IBM conducts job interviews in Second Life.
  • The Linden is the currency used in Second Life.  The current rate of exchange is about 250 Lindens per $1 US.
  • Dr. Nick Bostrom of Oxford University gives a 20% probability that civilization as we know it is actually based on a computer simulation.


* People often call the robot from Lost In Space Robbie, but that is incorrect.  Robbie the Robot was first seen in the classic Science Fiction movie Forbidden Planet and can be seen here.  The Lost In Space robot was known as the model B-9 Environmental Control Robot.  Both robots were designed by Robert Kinoshita.

- Hap Aziz