The+Journal+of+Christian+Fall

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__**What's been going down:**__


 * 1-28-08- My curiosity leads me to check out the "[|Ron Paul]" Island. I talk with the executive CEO of Metaverse Broadcasting Company and find out about how the do things in SL. Sadly, Dwight is nowhere to be found.
 * 2-15-08- A random dance party at the Cafe Wellstone ensues while Dr. Rice fails to maintain control of class.
 * 2-21-08- Research meeting with Louise Pausch in which I discover the twisted nature of SL consumerism.
 * 3-25-08- More postmodern and ultra consumerist findings in the Grid.
 * 4-7-08- Sight seeing around SL

//January 28, 2008//

Mention in class of a piece of land in SL connected with Ron Paul and other political campaigns sparked my interest, so I searched Ron Paul. Teleporting there found me in a business district island. The first building I walked into was Metaverse Broadcasting Company, where I am able to conveniently converse with the executive CEO, Robustus Hax. Here is a picture of my journey:

I asked him about the goings on of his company in SL and how running out of SL is beneficial to his company. He said their operation is mainly compromised of running a broadcast channel in the SL world. The MBC media building hands out free televisions that are set up to broadcast their channel wherever you put them. I also asked if I could see their studio, if they had any such thing. Fortunately they did and Robustus teleported me to an "Empire State Building" where they had a complete life-like studio.

One bit of our conversation led me to an interesting connection with our discussions in class. He said that part of the benefit of running out of SL was that it was cheaper. People worked for less, or free in SL and production costs were drastically lower. This sentiment echoes some of the same desires of the multinationals we have read about in //The Shock Doctrine//. These desires are to cut cost and jobs as much as possible. I think that is interesting that corporations even see SL as a means to cut cost and raise profits.

//February 15, 2008//

Bust a move!

Second Life adventures in class find me participating in my favorite RL activity, random unprompted dance parties. In RL, I personally have no shame in busting a move in even the most public places, but I fear that my colleagues don't share the same fervor for such activity. Even so, no one had any problems jumping in. This begs the question for me about what types of behaviors will translate from RL to SL. Another journal has already describe people's desire to make SL avatars look nothing like their RL. So what types of behaviors will people try? Does having a virtual SL allow people to drop any inhibitions and embark on any sort of activity?

//February 21, 2008//

Second Life research for class finds me stumbling on sites such as these:

My intention is to make this image hard to see as there is a picture of a naked Second Life woman hanging in the wall. The reason I post this is because this is a store which mostly sells jewelry, but on this wall are posted skins, outfits and piercings. The wonder of SL is that people can become literal blank slates which they can write themselves however they want. This display begs further research from my last posting about what behaviors cross over into SL? Do we make our avatars into these perfect Abercrombie models, or will we choose instead the quirky avatars and Batman suits as many of my classmates?

This connects to our discussion of //Fight Club// by Chuck Palahniuk and the corporatist idea of filling the void between the products and the values in our lives. While in RL, corporations have tried their best to fill in every aspect of value in our lives, there are physical limits (at least for now). Dick's Sporting Goods may be filled with an entire department of products designed to fit our leisurely activities such as running, we have yet to see Nike sponsored skins for us to buy. In RL, it seems that the body may be the limit to in our label-filled lives. But in SL, this boundary no longer exists. Faces, genitals, and skins are for sale right next to outfits, piercings and jewelry. The gap between ownership (products) and value(body, ambitions) no longer exists.

//Friday March 25, 2008//

Just thought I would share some more interesting tidbits from the Grid. Every now and then something catches my eye as something that just freaks me out in Second Life. The picture above is one of those moments. I have already commented a little on the unrestricted possibilities on what can and cannot be marketed in the Grid. Above is a picture of an auction of women. I did not do further investigation because frankly it irked me quite a bit. I wonder if this is some sort of prostitution service or what. So there you have it folks, not only body parts and skins, but entire people are on sale in SL. The above picture struck my interest because, as a native Kentuckian, I couldn't help but notice this Redneck sign. This goes along with some of my other questions about what transmits from RL to SL but this has more to deal with cultural transmission. As Klein talks about in the Shock Doctrine, one of the tenants of new American Political thought is the attempt to wipe away an old culture and write a new, Western culture. For instance, in Iraq countless museums and library have been destroyed as a means to wipe out the old culture. Then the new culture of McDonald's and other corporations are brought in. So is this another connection? With SL, we have a completely new place to write culture. Is everything going to come in? If not, what goes and what stays? I don't think I'll be able to answer any of these questions for sure, but I can make more observations.

//April 7, 2008//

Just thought I'd show you the landscape that UK Island has become. I think it's interesting because in Real Life, this looks nothing like the University. I chatted with one of the builders on the Island who was building an imitation of Memorial Hall. I told her it looked nothing like the real hall and she told me they were only concerned with the facade of the building (postmodernism, yay!). Ricetopher Freenote has commented in class that UK decided not to create a copy of the real university into the the Grid. Compare this to university like UNC Chapel Hill that look something like this:

Little do you know, but in real life, Christian Fall dreamed of going to Chapel Hill. I've also been on the tours and was blown away at seeing the similarities between the real campus and the Second Life campus. This picture actually shows the "lucky" water fountain at Chapel Hill that supposedly will give you A's for the semester if you visit it on the first day of classes. This is similar to the statue of President Kennedy at UK's campus. But no such manifestation exists on UK island. So I guess what this is really getting at is the issue of what we will create when we have no restraints. How will we manifest ourselves when we get a completely open slate. I personally have manifested myself with a huge beard and glasses because I cannot grow a beard in real life and I don't wear glasses in real life. Other students have manifested as aliens, Transformers, or Batman. UK has chosen to manifest as graphing in certain essential part of campus (Cats paths!) but has created an entirely new and unique campus. I wonder if it is maybe because we are an old and boring campus. Are we making up for our first life inadequacies as an institution? Chapel Hill has a beautiful campus, so really there's not much else that needs to be done besides copy it into Second Life. But UK has approached it differently. I think this is an interesting dynamic and brings something new to the conversation around Second Life.


 * Research**

I have decided to focus on an aspect of our American Political Thought class for our research on copyright. I am going to be focusing on the idea of the blurring of spheres of privatization and the public. What I am really interested in is the idea that Second Life is an entire public created by a private group. What happens when a public is entirely controlled by a private organization? Every piece of information from this public is recorded and can be used however the private organizations wish. What kind of behaviors do we see from the individuals? What kind of behaviors do we see in the institution? What about the value of commodities and the incentives for piracy? In a world where the only things of value are those that you can create and designate as no-copy, is there more incentive to copy in order to produce your own wealth? I'm hoping to look into some of the issues surrounding copyright in a world entirely controlled by a private organization.

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/55889,second-life-sex-toy-creates-copyright-hotbed.aspx -instance of a person suing over copyright infringement in Second Life http://secondlife.com/corporate/brand/trademark/reference.php -trade mark laws as they apply to referring to Second Life [|http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=copyright second life&btnG=Google Search] -article discussing the piracy of commodities, also talks about the incentive to create http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/11/13/copyrights-and-content-creation-in-second-life/ -businesses concerned over copybot, copying is not necessarily infraction of copyright laws http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2007/11/07/merchants-decry-second-life-copyright-chaos/ -more on business men being up in arms, giving them more incentive to sue than to create