The Case Against Camping (2008)
Rebecca took great offense at the illustrations and turned her venom on me. She threatened to sue me. Telling her I did not select the images made no impression on her, nor did she seem to understand just what an editorial is. I eventually told her to go f**k herself. It made for a most interesting comments section.
Read MoreBeing Virtually Virtual (2011)
Letting people into our real lives can be dangerous. Even if the window into our lives is a narrow one, we must be concerned with issues of privacy, safety, and security.
Read MoreGhost in a Machine (2009)
This song is about the virtual world Second Life. If you are unfamiliar with that 3-D world, it won’t make a lot of sense; if you are familiar, it will make perfect sense.
Read MoreYour Virtual Life is Waiting (2007)
What would you do if you could build a world—and a perfect body—from scratch? What would it mean if you could fly? If you were fabulously wealthy? What happens to our consciousness when we can simultaneously control multiple or inhuman bodies, each with its own personality? Computers make possible the creation of complex virtual worlds which can enrich, extend, and redefine the human experience. Linden Lab’s Second Life is such a world, a three-dimensional space created entirely by its inhabitants.
Read MoreVirtual Personae: Part I (2011)
In a paper written in 1993, Allucquere Rosanne (Sandy) Stone described an incident that took place in 1982 on the text-only CompuServe CB chat simulator: Sanford Lewin, an American psychiatrist and a male, created an account using the name Joan Green and contrived an elaborate masquerade as a physically disabled female neuropsychiatrist.
Read MoreVirtual Personae: Part II (2011)
In the anonymous and often highly sexually charged world of Second Life, gender is of primary import. Most avatars are human, and almost all are decidedly male or female. Most, like me, are young and thin and beautiful and extravagantly dressed. It’s the avatarian norm.
Read MoreSecond Life Song (2006)
My Second Life led me in directions I didn’t anticipate– for instance, I met the love of my real life there– but when I was new in Second Life I thought I might try performing live. I never got around to it, but using my avatar name as a pen name, I did write two songs about my experiences. This is the first. I wrote it my first week in world.
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