Slashdot Mirror
Nine Souls, One Body
Second Life blog/newspaper New World Notes reports on an interesting resident, wilde Cunningham. wilde is actually nine separate people on one account, all of them with physical handicaps that keep them in a care center. From the article: "We formed the man avatar first, because that day, we had more men in the group. We always wanted a female one, but we haven't taken the time to create her yet. Mary and Johanna would like that very much. We decided on how wilde would look first by starting with skin colors. We have both black and white in our real life group, and didn't want to have those because neither is better than the other. So we picked orange."
I mean really. What is supposed to make it interesting or relevant? The cheap emotional hook seems to be the substance of the article, too. Is this what Slashdot is becoming?:
Local World News
Cast:
* Bob- Brandt Waterman
* David- Jazz Witherspoon and Daniel Smith
* Jay- Carl Bellflower
Tom V.O.: You're watching Local World News -- local news from around the world. And now, here's your anchorman, Brandt Waterman.
Bob: Hello. I'm Brandt Waterman. We have an update on tonight's top story. Jazz Witherspoon, our field reporter is on the scene in Hamilton, Ontario. Jaaaazz.
[The story's entitled "Button Glut"]
David: Yes, Brandt. I'm standing outside this humble home in Hamilton, Ontario, where a man who calls himself "The Button Man" resides. [Display of Paul in a shirt covered with buttons] Art Keeslan has over thirty-thousand buttons in his private collection. He is a man we can truly call "A Button Collector." Those are the latest facts, Brandt; I'll keep you updated on any new developments as they occur.
[David starts to walk out of frame, but comes back when called.]
Bob: Jazz, does the button man plan to continue collecting buttons?
David: No official word on that. But the feeling on the street is that this is far from over.
[This time David stays still.]
Bob: Well, we certainly wish him the very best. Later tonight, we'll have an update from the war-torn Gaza Strip...where Betty McFee will tell us all about Tripper, the counting dog. And, we'll met a man who makes art out of garbage. In a few moments, though, a lighter side to tonight's news. But first, a fluffy marshmallow shaped like a bunny was found today in-- Oh, I'm getting more breaking news. What a news day this has turning out to be. It seems a local boy is making good, as we speak. Carl Bellflower has the story. Carl.
Jay: [singing] Rock a'bye your baby [speaking] Hi, I'm Carl Bellflower, the singing news reporter. [That's "Singing" "News" Reporter] Daniel Smith, valedictorian- La Flant High, and top of his class- Harvard Law School, is being considered for a job at this prestigious law firm. Oh there he is now. Daniel.
[David hears he's being called and turns around. He nods at the only man he sees; he doesn't notice Jay.]
Jay: Daniel!
[David looks again, but Jay quickly turns around and acts nonchalantly. When David gives up and walk inside the building, Jay looks pleased.]
I wish they would post an explanation of stories like these. I can't go to the website because work blocked it, so how the hell am I supposed to translate this small paragraph into something tangible.
All I can say is the story itself is very poorly written, the slashdot submission equally poorly written, and the story itself not particularly interesting in any way aside from a fairly boring human interest story with absolutely no analysis or conjecture. So disabled people interact using an MMORPG barely anyone plays. Wow.
:)
I invite someone to respond and get modded insightful for explaining why this matters like I'm a 10-yr old.
*crickets chirping*
is that the company apparently doesn't care if its users share their accounts with others.
I just read through their TOS as well, and haven't noticed anything to conflict with that idea.
This sounds like a short story in one of the recent Year's Best SF edited by Daid Hartwell. The premise in the story is that any collection of human beings whom in themselves are deemed legally incompetent, may gain legal recognition as long as the collective posseses all the faculties of a normal individual.
Were that I say, pancakes?
Never mind that it would take like 20 minutes for that collective mind to formulate a response and type it in.
Oh, you didn't know?
My wife and I used to "team up" to solve Tomb Raider puzzles -- it was a pretty cool thing. She's spot something I didn't, or would have a different approach to a certain action sequence. We would each keep our own solo games rolling, but the cooperative game would be our fave, always.
I guess the thing I find most cool about this article is that these are nine physically disabled people who live in an institution (a care center) and they play cooperatively in a virtual world. In that world, their avatar does not have any of their physical limitations and they can do things that they simply would not be able to do in RL. It must give them a real sense of freedom. What's more, they don't appear to anyone else in that virtual world as a person (or people, in this case) with any disability.
I worked for a couple years in a care center and things are so regimented, so planned, that a variety of new experiences is really hard for people to come by. Some folks would watch TV all day. Others would live for the morning paper. Still others would look forward for an entire week to the arrival of the library lady and new books. If I brought a few old magazines in, they'd be devoured from cover to cover and passed around from room to room. These were the people who were in the best shape. You could see (and were often told as much by the residents themselves) that they had so very little control over ANYTHING in their lives, and that many felt abandoned by their relatives to a facility that was little more than a prison. The sense of hopelessness was incredible, at times.
I'm sure that whatever qualitative issues people might have with the game they play, one has to admit that nine people acting as the same avatar is pretty incredible even for people who have no physical limitations. I'm willing to bet that each of the players probably thinks about the game when they're not playing, and that they probably dream about or in the virtual world that they play in. When they motor over to the computer to log in I'm sure it gives great satisfaction to do the things they've been thinking about since their last session, or try something they dreamt about.
If you're a resident of a care center, you're treated as an object. You're acted ON -- you're fed, you're bathed, you're clothed, you're read to, you're moved from place to place -- you control nothing except your own mind. I think it's very cool that they get to control something, some representation of themselves, for at least as long as they're logged in. For those brief periods, I'm sure that the boring beige halls and walls of the facility fade away, the wheelchairs are forgotten and time flies. How cool. How totally frickin' cool.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
We all have what's called a "real life" to worry about, thanks.
YM First Life? It's a classic but a lot of people are getting burned out on it.