Sunday 13 February 2011

The Culture of Creative Content

We all know how easy it is to fall in love... and this can happen without any logic, at a distance, with little real information.

Philip was heralded as the New Messiah, it seems only recently, and our hopes and dreams were projected onto his shoulders. Fast, Easy, Fun was not derided as a pile of manure, but heralded as a new insight into the way SL should market itself to people too stupid to download a viewer.

So, obviously, as my memory is longer than some peoples, it seems, I am not gonna be subjecting Rodvik to my transference, knowing how illusory words have become and knowing that the president of a company or a country may still be the glove-puppet of the Bean Counters.

Notwithstanding, however, it is encouraging when your eyes meet across a crowded room, and a stranger speaks some sweet words, like...
“I don’t want to get all geeky about it, but I sort of see this day coming when there’s a formalization of identity that happens. We haven’t had the tools before to formalize our broken up bits of identity.”

Sounds good to me... someone who sees the value of privacy being determined by the user.

Likewise when he extolls the virtues of Content Creation, the gods know how often I’ve talked about the need to improve tools (the sooner the better).... however...

We have had promises before, and the recent offering from the Lab, the terrible “Improving Lines of Communication with The Community” ... (here) .. is both badly written with poor english and poorer ‘feel’ ( as commented on by Tateru...here).. and seems to me to point to the Great Improvement being “Do It Yourself”. By this I mean it looks like yet another job which the Boys should be doing is being farmed out to us.

Instead of customer support.... just ask another ‘resident’ ... use the Forum, use SL Answers, or the email lists... (here).....I read this as saying....”the less we have to do with you lot, the easier or lives will be”.

Which brings me round to Content Creation, and that great new aim of Rodvik to improve life for builders, so we can continue to make a great new world. ...User Groups... (here)... now am I stupid, or blind? It looks to me like there is no User Group dedicated to Builders, Content Creators or Artists..... and on the email list I am having the same problem.... erm.... maybe I missed it. Or, maybe, like the Artists Endowment to the Lindens, it’s still in a development stage (is it over a year ago that was announced??)...

So, I’m not falling in love with Rodvik just yet, though I have heard from an employee that he is very popular at the Lab too. I guess it’s that english accent (girls swoon) and the interest in Soccer (guys bond). If he wants me to go weak at the knees though...I’ll be wanting a few new tools.

A very good post on this whole subject I thought, comes from the talented pen of Lalo. As usual an insightful realisation, namely that whereas it took visionaries to build this space platform we call SL, it is now the colonists that run and control its future.

The culture we have built and the environment we have created is a tough one. We have regularly been disappointed, disillusioned and dis-spirited by the messages emanating from Planet Linden. They have sent malfunctioning software, idle spin, and increased taxation to us as we orbit Earth in this flimsy craft.

Adversity has tied us close together.
Having no Communication with those in control has tied us close too.
We know how it is to live here, we know what we need, and while we may be wooed by soft words, we have become a group who will need a bit of convincing.

So..me... I’m still waiting to see something useful come out of the Lab.

:)))

2 comments:

  1. Heh Heh, I was about to sit down and attempt to get all happy, warm, and fuzzy after reading both Dusan and Lalo's posts. I'm now glad I waited till this morning and read your post. As usual your semi jaundiced view of The Benevolent Monarchy has given me perhaps a more grounded vision. Yup, what's that Latin from one of our own? Acta non verba?

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  2. Yep, I'll be getting warm and fuzzy once they start rolling back the difference between the ease of building in InWorldz and the stupid restrictions placed on us in SL.

    Just a few lines of code is all it would take.....

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