Entry tags:

events, news, politics

Idea Stew
At the end of a week where everyone I know was overworked in the atomic world, and I was sick for two days (WARNING: nothing is whinier than a Digital Person with virused wetware!), today is full of intellectual ferment:

• Nobody Fugazi blogs about the opening of a sim based on Sharia, Islamic Law. Here's the website/manifesto for the Al-Andalus Caliphate In Second Life. While I can only oppose much of Sharia, for its treatment of women and queers, I think the project is a marvelous one in many ways. I don't know much about the subject at all, but I believe al-Andalus was the pinnacle of Islamic free inquiry and multicultural tolerance, and I wish the sim owners well in re-creating it. And, what an interesting experiment! There's an open market in culture in SL: some themed sims grow and prosper, like Caledon and The Wastelands, some wither and disappear, depending on whether they offer a satisfying experience to Residents. What will become of al-Andalus? It's fate in the marketplace of culture will have a huge impact on all our worlds...

• Lillie Yifu has a tremendously well-reasoned political manifesto of a very different sort up at 2nd Sex. It's brilliant, and I think history will mark it as one of the founding political documents of the Metaverse - but I don't think I agree with her. I need to really think through her argument and my own views....

• the Life 2.0 Conference agenda is *finally* up! Highlights include two days of LSL scripting bootcamp, and a presentation by the author of that article in the MIT Technology Review that centrasian_wise  and I liked so much!
  

• I finally used up the last of the very generous compensation I got from Philips Design: here's my Amazon haul, which just came today:
• Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots
• Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence
• Almost Human: Making Robots Think
• and, a recommendation from Nobody Fugazi at our last Philips Design meeting, Devices of the Soul: Battling For Our Selves in an Age of Machines

Lest you think I've been kidnapped and replaced by some sort of brain-person, I've got an announcement of the much more Sophish sort!

Mark your calendars for a week from tomorrow - it's monthly dance party time at the Aerie DanceFloor again, and this month I'm throwing a Pajama Party!  It'll be 3:30-7 PM SLT next Saturday, and the full announcement, with DJ info and a SLURL, will go up here on Monday. Shake out your sexy lingerie, or bust out your bunny slippers, and get ready to boogie!