Galactic Interactions

Living La Vida Ludic

Posted on September 24th, 2008 — permalink

I was at SLCC a couple of weeks ago. One thing I noticed was that most of the most interesting and exciting stuff going on was related to education. Some of that was self-filtering– that’s where I went– but there’s no denying there was quite an education buzz.

One of my favorite talks was given by Barry Joseph of Global Kids, and was entitled Why second Life Can’t Tip: the Power and Perils of Living La Vida Ludic. I suspect that the whole not-tipping business was in the title to get people to want to come to the talk, but I have to admit that I found that part of the talk less interesting, and perhaps even borderline irrelevant.

However, the concept of La Vida Ludic is something that really grabbed me, partly because I hadn’t seen it layed out clearly and definitively before… yet, in the concepts, I recognized something in the way that I live my life.

Briefly speaking, “ludic” is derived from a latin (I think) word for games. As such, “La Vida Ludic” is the “game life”, or “playing at life.” Barry Joseph talks about how in our culture, we tend to have a very strict separation between work and play. One great example he gave was elemetary school. There’s a place for work– the classroom– and a place for play– recess. If you try to play in the work context, you get in trouble (he showed an image of a kid sitting in the corner wearing a dunce cap). Likewise, if you try to work in the play context, you also get in trouble (other kids harass for being a nerd and bringing boring work stuff into the play environment).

He went on to describe Global Kids’ way of educating kids leaning heavily on work in Second Life, and showed how a lot of the activites they do have serious mixing of work and play… and yet, because of that mixing, the learning may perhaps be stronger than it would have if we were too serious to be willing to include play in it.

I think I have long lived, or tried to live, my life with the philosophy that my work should feel like play. This is why I majored in physics when I was in college; I was going to major in engineering, but physics was just more fun to me. As I became a professional astronomer, I also picked up a hobby as an amateur astronomer. (I didn’t do any telescope observing before my last couple years of college, and only got my amateur telescope after graduating from college.) I’ve always wanted to be doing something that I enjoyed doing, so that at least some fraction of my work would feel like play. (I know it’s inevitable that some of work won’t… but, then again, some of my play (hobbies, etc.) feels like drudgery too!))

One of the reasons moving to Linden as a system engineer was appealing to me was that sometimes I would use adminstering my machines and writing code as a way of procrastinating “real work” when I was an astronomer. Mind you, this was still real work, as it was stuff that needed to be done, but I was more of a computer nerd than one really needs to be as an astronomer. Just as I enjoyed playing with data, as I enjoyed playing with the science in my classes and going on stage to teach, I also enjoyed playing around with computers.

A few months ago, I was at a “MoonLab” meeting in-world (”MoonLab” being the “lab” where those of us who are remote work). Some people were saying how they’ve set aside specific workspace in their homes– some computers dedicated to working, and when they’re at that computer, they’re “at work”. They have other comptuers they play with. To me, this has always seemed unnatural. First of all, maintaining all those extra computers seems like a lot of effort, not to mention costing space. But, beyond that, it just seems unnatural to me.

I’ve long mixed work and play, in my mind, with my time, and in my approach to life. And, it feels more human, more natural, to me to do it this way. When I’ve heard IT policies that strictly prohibit personal use of work comptuers, I think, are these people in touch with real people? I was told that once at LBNL, you weren’t allowed to make even local personal calls from desk phones; you had to go out to a payphone. Hello? Not only is that dehumanizing, it’s inefficient (people spend more time making their local calls). (When I was there, LBNL had a more human personal use policy for comptuers– do as thou wilt as long as (a) you don’t do anything naughty (e.g. porn), and (b) you don’t put an undue load on LBNL resources.) On the flip side, before I moved the Supernova Cosmology Project database from a very creaky and problematic flat file system to a PostGreSQL database, I installed and played with PostGreSQL on my machine at home to understand how it worked. I’ve done data reduction and work on my own computers. To force myself to keep it all separate would be especially hard now that I work from home, but was unnatural even when I worked at LBNL or Vanderbilt.

In Joseph’s talk, he talked about how doing things in Second Life naturally leads to a Ludic life. After all, Second Life does use technology that you primarily see only in a gaming environment. Many people are still under the misapprehension that Second Life is in fact a game. But even though it’s not, there’s no doubt that there are playful aspects to it. I sometimes go around as a dinosaur…. Sometime soon I’ll post some photos I’ve taken here of work meetings, and the morphologies with which people show up to those meetings.

The sad thing is, our culture and legal system is fundamentally hostile to the ludic life. I suppose I could write some fraction of my computer, laptop, office space, etc., off of my taxes, but I never will do so… for to do so legally, I would have to strictly use it for work and not also play, and that would put more of a damper on my lifestyle than any tax break I would get would be worth. I got into trouble because the first time I did a play in-world, I billed myself as Prospero Linden– figuring that since we’re all encouraged to be in-world and interact in-world, this could only be good press. Besides, it was just me doing stuff. But, alas, I got reprimanded for that, because it’s a work account and when I’m using it I’m representing the lab. And they’re right; the business could be held responsible for things I do in that form… but, unfortunately, it also means that one has to keep one’s work and one’s play separate.

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Prospero Linden’s Rez Day

Posted on August 6th, 2008 — permalink

If you look at Prospero Linden’s profile, you will see that his rez date is 2007 August 6. What this means is that today is the first day of my second year of employement at Linden Lab.

I’ve already done the navel-gazing introspective about the life-changing decision I’ve made. A such, I won’t blather on that any more here. Instead, I’ll just pop up a few images to celebrate and mark the day.

My primary non-Linden Second Life account is Prospero Frobozz. His appearance has not changed much since he was first created in November of December 2006 (eight or nine months before I would start as a Linden). His rez day is actually February 2006, but because of issues I was having at the time with the 3d drivers in my Linux box (which I didn’t bother to fix until much later), I didn’t actually log into Second Life until the end of the year. I deliberately designed Prospero Frobozz to look something like me (although a lot sleeker). It wasn’t long before I found a skin that had a beard that looked right, and I’ve been using that skin ever since (together with mesh hair that has a bald spot):

Although, despite advice to the contrary, I did not intend to hide my alt’s or real-life identity associated with Prospero Linden, I decided not to make him look like me. Indeed, vaguely motivated by the appearance of Julian Lopez-Morillas as Prospero in the 1980 Berkeley Shakespeare Festival production of The Tempest, which I saw may times (getting in for free by volunteering as an usher). That was long enough ago that I didn’t remember details, so I settled for “tall with curly black hair”. The very initial Prospero Linden on his rez day looked like this:

However, by now I was more clued in to Second Life than I was on Prospero Frobozz’s rez day, and fairly quickly I found an appropriate freebie skin (at, if memory serves, Men In Action), and purchased an outfit to fit the “Prospero the Wizard” theme:

Prospero Linden retained this appearance for many months (although acquiring a number of different outfits), although occasionally I would appear as something else. In particular, I established a tradition (sometimes violated) of going to the “Moonlab” meetings in a triceratops avatar created by Flea Bussy. (The “Moonlab” is what Linden calls the laboratory where all the not-an-an-office Lindens work… we’re on the Moon.)

Prospero Linden obtained his current appearance at the March, 2008 Conceirge party. As part of the festivites, Dee Linden had random drawings for residents who “won” a half-hour of a Linden’s time, to do with them as they pleased. (Well, within reason.) I was won by Barbie Starr, and she said that she’d always wanted to do a Linden makeover. This was actually all win for me, for I came out with a much more attractive avatar than I’d had previously. It actually took closer to 90 minutes than 30 minutes, but it was good. One thing about the current Prospero Linden is that he is huge… extremely tall. People comment on that when they see me next to somebody else in-world. This is Prospero Linden’s current apperance (standing in front of the land where he holds his office hours in Teen Second Life):

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“Planets Around Other Stars” — talk in Second Life this Friday at 8am PDT

Posted on July 31st, 2008 — permalink

I’ll be giving the latest in the “Dr. Knop Talks Astronomy” series of talks associated with MICA this Friday at 8am SLT (aka PDT). The talk will be at the Galaxy Dome in Spaceport Bravo. The topic is Planets Around Other Stars:

Until the last decade of the 20th Century, we knew of exactly one star system that had planets: our own. At the dawn of the 21st Century, we knew about a few handfuls of exoplanets, or planets around other stars. Today, we know about more than 200. In this talk, I’ll describe the history of exoplanet searches and discoveries, I’ll describe the methods that we have used to find planets, and I’ll give you an update about the current count and nature of exoplanets that are out there.

Remember that a basic Second Life account is free!

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Academia : do I miss it?

Posted on July 13th, 2008 — permalink

Ethan Siegel asked me a question in a comment on an earlier post: do I miss it?

It’s rapidly approaching a year since I began working for Linden Lab (Prospero Linden’s rez day is August 6, 2007), and it’s now been just about a year since I submitted my resignation letter to Vanderbilt, officially ending my career as a professor of Physics and Astronomy. It had been a long road; I’d been in grad school at Caltech from 1990-1996, a post-doc at LBNL with the Supernova Cosmology Project from 1996 to 2001, and a professor at Vanderbilt from September, 2001 to June, 2007. I had dedicated my life, years of schooling and work thereafter, to this career. Once, upon meeting the chair of the department of Harvey Mudd (my college) at an American Astronomical Society meeting, he described me as “one of Harvey Mudd’s successes”… for, as many post-docs will tell you, it’s very difficult to get that tenure-track faculty position. But, as I told people many times, even though “most” pre-tenure people who actually put themselves up for tenure end up getting it, pre-tenure is hardly a cake walk.

I left. I jumped ship entirely– and in this field, it may well make it impossible for me to go back. Because there are so many more people than positions, any college that is hiring will be able to hire truly excellent people who never left, who don’t have a gap in their resume. Now I’m working as a computer engineer, trying to help build and maintain the metaverse. Some have said to me (including a professor of astronomy from Caltech) that I may well be doing more for Astronomy than many in tenure track positions– for, after all, Tim Berners-Lee, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin, each did more for Astronomy (even though they weren’t thinking about Astronomy when they did it) than the vast majority of lifelong astronomy teachers and researchers. Who knows.

But, back to the original question. Do I miss it? The answer is an emphatic yes, and an emphatic no. What else would you expect from me?

(more…)

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SL5B Science Panel, Today, 5PM PST

Posted on July 1st, 2008 — permalink

I’m going to be one of five panelists on the “SL5B Science Panel”. What is SL5B, you ask? Second Life’s Fifth Birthday! It was five years ago that Second Life started it’s open beta. Everybody talks about Second Life as being so “new” that it’s hard to believe that it’s been around that long.

Indeed, it’s hard for me to believe that I’ve been a part of Linden Lab for approaching 20% of the time that Second Life has been live…

The panel will be at SL5B Linked (181, 190, 25).

Panelists on the SL5B panel are:

Ourania Fizgig (RL: Adrienne Gauthier) is an instructional technologist in the Astronomy Department at the University of Arizona. She brings ASTRO101 students into Second Life and is also managing the International Year of Astronomy 2009’s presence in world.

Troy McLuhan produces multimedia exhibitions and events in Second Life. His background in applied math and physics, and Purdue PhD in astrodynamics serve him well in his active role in the Science Center group as well as his space related initiatives. http://www.troymcconaghy.com.

Pema Pera is an astrophysicist and head of the program of interdisciplinary studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, USA, and involved with MICA, The Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics, a group of astrophysicists and others interested in astrophysics. He is also interested in building virtual communities, and in computational science as well as in broadly interdisciplinary studies. See his paper on http://arxiv.org/abs/0712.1655 (click on “pdf” for the full article).

Prospero Linden is Rob Knop in real life. Until year ago, he was a professional astronomer, first on the team that discovered the acceleration of the Universe’s expansion, and then an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University. Last year he joined the engineering team at Linden Lab. He gives monthly astronomy outreach talks (as his alt, Prospero Frobozz) in association with MICA, the Meta-Institute of Computational Astronomy. http://www.sonic.net/~rknop/blog.

Bjorlyn Loon (Lynn Cullens in RL) has been writing and communicating about science and technology for 30 years. She has worked in archaeology, carnivore studies, historic preservation and the history of science, but has a real passion for biology and conservation. In Second Life, Bjorlyn has directed the Communications Team for Burning Life, founded and manages the Science Friday group and sim for Ira Flatow, was a recent award winner with The Tech in SL, and now is the full time Director of Communications for Metanomics, the popular business and policy program on virtual worlds.

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Shakespeare in Second Life : Staged Reading of “Twelfth Night”

Posted on June 23rd, 2008 — permalink

As many of you know, I’ve performed already in the first two “miniproductions” with the SL Shakespeare Company.

Currently, SLSC is putting on a staged reading of Twelfth Night. They are doing one act each weekend, with three performances of each act. Every time there is a different cast, and even when there are the same people they are reading different roles. I was in one of the three performances of Act I, and will be in a handful of other performances, although because of my schedule I’m not going to be in very many of these.

See the SLSC website for showtimes and more information.

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Public astronomy talk in Second Life, “Kepler, Newton, and Einstein: ‘Wrong’ Theories and the Progress of Science”

Posted on June 11th, 2008 — permalink

I’ll be giving this talk in Second Life tomorrow (Thursday) at 10AM PDT (in-world time). This talk was originally scheduled for last Friday, but Second Life was having serious problems at the time as a result of networking problems from our upstream ISP.

The talk will be part of the Dr. Knop Talks Astronomy series hosted by MICA. It will be at the Galaxy Dome in Spaceport Bravo.

Remember, basic Second Life accounts are free, as is the client software!

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Technical talk on Dark Energy and Vacuum Fluctuations in Second Life this Friday

Posted on May 8th, 2008 — permalink

In addition to the popular-level astronomy talks I’ve started doing as part of MICA, there will also be regular “journal clubs.” This is something you’ll see in physics and astronomy departments sometimes: people take an interesting paper from the recent literature (really, from preprints nowadays), and lead a discussion about it with their colleagues. It’s one way of trying to keep up with some of what’s going on in the literature, and it’s also a way that one scientist can share his particular area of interest with his immediate colleagues.

This Friday, George Djorgovski will be leading a journal club in Second Life at 8AM SLT (pactific time) on the paper Dark Energy from Vacuum Fluctuations by Djorgovski and Gurzadyan. Note that while in this case, the author of the paper is talking about his own paper, that’s not always the case. In journal clubs I’ve been too, sometimes people talk about their own work, and sometimes they talk about other interesting papers from the literature. For instance, when I was at Vanderbilt and still working with the Supernova Cosmology Project (which used optical and infrared astronomical data), I gave a journal club about the WMAP 3-year results — very releavant to cosmology and my work, but not something in which I was involved.

The journal club will be where all of the MICA meetings currently happen, at the ISM Workshop in Spaceport Bravo.

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Popular Astronomy Talk in Second Life : The Death of Stars (2008-May-02)

Posted on April 28th, 2008 — permalink

I’m going to be giving my second “Dr. Knop Talks Astronomy” popular talk in Second Life as part of the fledgling Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics.

The talk will be at The Galaxy Dome in Spaceport Bravo, this Friday (May 2) at 8AM pacific time (which is the same as in-world time in Second Life).

Drop by if you’re interested! Here’s the longer description of the talk:

In Fire and In Ice : The Death of Stars

Stars live for millions or billions of years, but they don’t liveforever. When a star reaches the end of its lifetime, spectactular fireworks can result. In this popular talk for interested layman, Dr. Knop will outline what it is that keeps a star together during its lifetime, and what happens to stars of various different sizes when that process finally breaks down. He’ll talk about the ejection of planetary nebulae, the cooling of white dwarves, and the most spectacular of stellar events, supernovae.

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Is the Large Hadronic Collider going to end the world by making black holes or strangelets?

Posted on April 11th, 2008 — permalink

No.

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