Our next guest on Copper Robot is novelist Jonathan Lethem, a New York Times bestseller and winner of the MacArthur “genius grant.” Lethem is author of Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn. His latest novel, Chronic City, features a fictionalized version of Second Life. We’ll talk with Jonathan about Second Life, books, writing, Brooklyn, and more.
WHEN: Sunday, Jan. 17, 6 pm Pacific Time/Second Life Time
WHERE: The lovely Seaside Theater, World2Worlds Island in Second Life, watch the live video on the Web, or listen to the podcast later on this Web site.
Lethem’s best-known novels put a fantastic spin on contemporary life in Brooklyn, where he was born and lived much of his life. Motherless Brooklyn is a funny and poignant story about a petty criminal with Tourette’s Syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder who solves the murder of his beloved boss. Fortress of Solitude is a realistic coming-of-age novel about a boy growing up in Brooklyn around 1970, that becomes a fantasy novel when the boy discovers a magic artifact that gives him superpowers.
In his latest novel, Chronic City, Lethem goes across the river to Manhattan, to tell the story of Chase Insteadman, a directionless former child star living on residuals from his 80s TV show. Chase meets up with Perkus Tooth, a half-mad pop-culture critic, and they forge a peculiar friendship around marijuana, hamburgers, and Tooth’s bizarre theories. A fictionalized version of Second Life is important to the novel. In Chronic City, Second Life is called “Yet Another Life,” and it fits in with a major theme of the novel, which is that none of the characters know what’s real and what isn’t. I loved Chronic City, and reviewed it here. Also, Wagner James Au interviews Lethem about the Second Life connection.
Much of Lethem’s work is science-fictional. Gun With Occasional Music is a hard-boiled detective story featuring talking animals, made intelligent using “evolution therapy.” Amnesia Moon takes place in a post-apocalyptic America, and Girl In Landscape tells the story of a colonist on another planet.
See you Sunday for what’s sure to be a fascinating conversation.
Paisley Beebe, the charming and delightful host of the Second Life program Tonight Live, interviews Yours Truly about the Copper Robot program, the state of journalism (it’s bad — remember you heard it here first) and my future plans after leaving InformationWeek for the wonderful world of self-employment.
I’m the first guest, watch it here:
The entire experience of being on Tonight Live was great. I enjoyed talking with the staff, and participating in the process they have for getting all the Second Life and Skype hookups to work correctly to create a smooth-running show.
However, I had mixed feeling about the interview itself. I had somehow given Paisley the impression that I’m going into PR, which is only partly true. I expect to be consulting in Internet marketing, which is, I suppose, a kind of PR. And I do expect to do some work for PR agencies. But I don’t expect PR to be my primary focus going forward. And I do expect to keep doing tech journalism, for as long as I can keep at it.
I also said something that I don’t expect will win me many friends in the PR community. Earlier in the program, I’d said that journalism is dying as a business. None of this is new or particularly controversial: Newspapers are closing, Web advertising is evaporating, jobs are disappearing rapidly. I added that I don’t know how much of a future PR has, given that PR people don’t have many journalists to talk to.
I know many PR people say that talking to journalists is not the main part of their job. On the other hand, the tone of those discussions, which I’ve only witnessed from the outside, indicates to me that maybe it is the main part of the PR job, but many PR people would like to change that.
Join us on the next Copper Robot program for a conversation about avatars. The movie Avatar is cleaning up at the box office. Those of us in Second Life are familiar with avatars–they’re the faces that we show the virtual world. But how do they relate to our physical identities?
WHEN: Sunday, Jan. 3, 6 pm Pacific Time/Second Life Time
WHERE: The lovely Seaside Theater, World2Worlds Island in Second Life, or watch the live video on the Web, or listen to the playback later on this Web site.
What is the relationship between our physical identities and our Second Life avatars? Pick one:
None. It’s called “Second Life” because nothing we do or say in-world has any relationship to the physical world. It’s another life, separate from the one we lead in the atomic world.
Or total. Our Second Life avatars are simply the extensions of our physical identities.
The longer we spend in Second Life, the more complex the question appears, and the less satisfactory the two extreme, simple answers seem to be.
We’ll discuss these issues with two of Second Life’s leading avatars and the people behind them:
Kim Smith (SL: Rissa Maidstone), is an old friend of the Copper Robot. She’s co-founder of World2Worlds, the company that provides the venue, media streaming, and priceless production help with this program. World2Worlds consults with enterprise businesses, governments, and other organizations on putting on virtual worlds events, applications and programs. Prior to World2Worlds, she had a long career with positions of responsibility in technology training, engineering, and public works.
Harper Beresford (RL: Jennifer Grace Dawson) is business manager of SL clothing vendor RFyre, and author of the blog A Passion for Virtual Fashion. She’s been active on virtual worlds since the text-based MUDs of the early 90s, and has a masters degree in English with a partial Ph.D. in cultural anthropology.
By the way, alert readers will note that I called Kim primarily by the name she uses in the physical world, and Harper primarily by her Second Life name. That’s how I think of them–and I think that’s part of the discussion.
To get you started, you might want to listen to this episode of the Studio 360 podcast, it’s about Avatar the movie, and avatars, and it includes interviews with Avatar director James Cameron, as well as Felicia Day, star of the Web sitcom The Guild, about a group of obsessive online gamers. Copper Robot interviewed Felicia and her Guild colleagues in April. Also interviewed is an expert on Internet avatars; he describes Facebook personas as “avatars.” I’m not sure I buy that they’re avatars in the same way that our SL identities are avatars. We can talk about that Sunday.
Hope to see you there!
Update 1 pm: The blog Metaverse Journal looks at “Avatar: The film, the idea and the word,” noting that the major world religions have the idea of avatars at their centers: Our bodies are not ourselves, our spirits are our true selves, and our bodies merely avatars in the physical world.
That suggests an image: Our Second Life avatars are puppets, manipulated by our physical bodies, which are also puppets, manipulated by our true selves.
What gets me about cretins like this is that (a) they don’t bother to do any research and (b) they don’t even have the decency to hide their lack of research. They’re very upfront about the lack of research they did. It’s like they don’t even know that failing to do research is something to be ashamed of.
The fact is, Second Life requires an pretty intense amount of time investment. Admittedly, I’ve only spent limited time “inworld,” but the time I did spend was mostly wasted trying to figure out how not to walk in circles and how to find anything but my feet to look at. In otherwords, unlike other “social” platforms like Facebook and Twitter, Second Life isn’t exactly the easiest to use. You need to put in the time to figure out how it works, and to find your own “inworld” niche. And even when you do, I’d estimate you’d need to spend a good hour to two hours at a time time really get anything meaningful out of your experience.
“I’ve only spent a limited time inworld,” he says.
If I wrote an article about Afghanistan, but had only spent “a limited time” in Afghanistan, and hadn’t talked to anybody who’s spent a lot of time in Afghanistan, I’d at least be smart enough to try to keep quiet about it.
This seems to be the standard for Second Life journalism. I’m not surprised to see this kind of thing at TechCrunch, which sometimes does great journalism but often shoots from the hip too. But I expect better from the BBC, which relies on two-year-old reporting for its research.
Update 11:11 am: I had some difficulty posting this — I mistyped the HTML for the blockquote, which made the formatting funny, and in the course of correcting that, I accidentally double-posted this. As a matter of fact, I’ve spent days configuring this and my personal blog. Blogging “requires a pretty intense amount of time investment.” It “isn’t exactly the easiest” thing to do. You “need to put in the time to figure out how it works.” I guess that means blogging has no future. Somebody let Arianna Huffington know about that.
Listen to the Copper Robot interview with Tamra Hayden, singer and star of Second Life and Broadway. Tamra headlined on Broadway in Les Miserables and Cabaret, and has toured the US in plays including Phantom of the Opera, and Fiddler On The Roof. We talked about her life and career, and making music in Second Life and on the Internet.
Tamra grew up in Littleton, Colorado. Music runs in her family. “My great-grandmother was a one-woman band. She literally had the harmonica on a little harness hooked to a guitar, and a foot on a drum,” Tamra said.
Tamra’s grandmother could “play the stride piano like nobody’s business” with her left hand, while also playing marimba with three mallets in her right hand, and singing along.
Tamra started making music herself early on, learning to play the accordion at age five.
She dreamed of Broadway from an early age. “As I started telling people that I wanted to play Cosette on Broadway, they laughed and said, ‘Yeah, right, you’re from Denver, Colorado, how are you gong to do that?’ So I stopped telling people the dream because they’d squash it. And lo and behold I got to audition for Cosette and I got to play it. It was an amazing dream come true.”
She came to New York in the 90s, got roles on Broadway, and has supported herself as an actor and singer that whole time, except for a brief stint making and selling her own jewelry.
She started singing in Second Life more than two years ago, and found it very different from her other experiences. “It’s a huge difference and it took me a while to adapt to it,” she said. It’s physically more demanding. In a real-life performance with an orchestra, she takes breaks between songs, but in Second Life, she sings the same material straight through. “It’s very vocally challenging. I’ve learned to pace myself,” she said. She mixes genres to stay fresh–Broadway singing is intense but folk music gives her throat a break.
I asked her how she gets energy back from an audience she can’t see or hear, and that’s giving feedback in text chat alone.
She said, “If people are talking in text, I know that they’re involved and they’re engaged,” adding, “But I find I’m not needy that way. I could sing to an empty room. I just sing the songs I like and I’d be happy. But it’s more fun when other people are there who are actually enjoying it, so I do actually rely on people talking at me and commenting [in text chat].”
She said, “What I like about singing in Second Life is it’s a very intimate situation. There could be five people there, there could be 89 people, but it’s still a very intimate reality. I’m in the comfort of my home, which is really nice for me, I don’t have to be dressed up, and I can just talk to people who are in the room.
“I can see their avatars. I like that I can see something that represents who they are. Even though it’s not them, and even though it might not look anything like them, I get a sense of something about them. But I get more of a sense of them by what they say to me and how they react to me.
“I’ve thought about broadcasting out beyond and I know other people do, but what keeps me from doing that is I feel that I’m going to lose a sense of who I’m singing to. If I’m standing in front of a crowd of 30,000 people, I can only see the first couple of rows. I can’t see who’s beyond in a sea of black, but I know that they’re there and I can see that they’re there. But if I’m singing out to an Internet of strange people that I don’t know and who aren’t talking back to me I feel it could be a little strange.”
Tamra is making another big career transition, into independent music. Her new album, I Believe In The Fire, is now available on her Web site.
Singing as an indie musician is different from musical theater. In musical theater, she’d get a part and be told what to sing, and the producers would handle fans and marketing. But as an indie musician, that’s all her responsibility. “I have to gather the fans, I have to put it together and I’m finding it a little tricky and difficult, because it’s a different muscle that feels difficult to use.”
She finds Second Life helpful, learning from marketing and fan clubs in Second Life how to do same thing in real life.
Another thing she’s learned from Second Life: How to handle technology. She handles her own Internet streams while she’s singing. Her great-grandmother the one-woman band, simultaneously playing harmonica, guitar, drum, and singing, would be proud.
Tamra said she finds music to be its own reward.
“If someone asks me nicely I’ll sit down and sing for them. I love to sing. I had a voice teacher who said, ‘Never sing for free,’ but it’s already too late. As a matter of fact, I’m singing to honor her–for free. I love her and they asked if I would sing at this dinner for her and I was, like, ‘Yes–but I can’t wait to tell her.’”
Tamra also talked about how to stay fresh performing the same role over and over again, playing Hodel in Fiddler On The Roof opposite acting and music legend Theodore Bikel as Tevye, resources for Internet musicians, and how to get a start singing in Second Life.
ArminasX Saiman has a great write-up of Wednesday’s interview with Cory Doctorow:
Me, Cory’s avatar, HALEY Salomon, Armi (l-r)
Cory spoke of the Hacker Ethic, which is an unconscious urge within all of us to rework the world to better meet our needs. The software substrate, accompanied with the speed of the Internet has permitted this urge to be fulfilled for almost anyone who desires. Cory calls it, “The Golden Age of Hacking”. It’s what causes creators to create, and is the ultimate engine that drove the creation of the world known as Second Life.
Thanks, Armi!
I’m catching up on my podcast backlog, almost done with the podcast for singer Tamra Hayden from a month ago (a month?! Slacker robot!). Tamra sounds fantastic–her voice is great, of course, and our sound engineer did an outstanding job as well. I expect to have that recording up within the next couple of days. After that, I’ll make a priority out of getting the Cory podcast done, and with a little luck it’ll be in your virtual holiday stocking.
I love this: The fantastic Rita J. King (SL: Eureka Dejavu) of Dancing Ink Productions blogged our recent interview with Cory Doctorow, imagining parts of it as a fotonovela.
Click to view full-size
The audience chatted about their own struggles with employment in a changing world during Copper Robot. Calliedel Boa … dropped a link to her recent blog post, “You’re Hired! How Would You Like To Pay for Your Job Today?” in which she shares her outspoken views on outsourcing and her perceptions on the job market.
Kaseido Quandry: Gods deliver me from ever working in anyone’s office again.
epredator Potato: Having left corporate life, it’s much better out here, self-organizing.
Calliedel’s blog is worth reading:
I’ve been going on many interviews and applying for many jobs and the recent American scam seems to be paying to work somewhere. Not the old fashioned employment job service fee but the company telling me I am hired. I get excited I aced all the interviews, applications and BAM! I get the words I’m waiting to hear followed by “How would you like to pay for this? Money order, Credit Card?” And I am dismayed. In a “Right To Work State such as Florida I am certainly not going to invest the precious dollars I do have for a job that has a disclaimer stating I can be fired at any time.
We had a fantastic interview with Cory Doctorow, blogger at Boing Boing, Internet activist, and author of Makers, Little Brother and other excellent novels that routinely keep me up until 4 in the morning.
Thanks to Cory for coming, the gang at World2Worlds for hosting and providing media streaming, and the Copper Robot community for coming ’round and participating. I only wish we could have talked longer.
During the interview, Cory kindly offered to come back in the spring, when his new novel, For The Win, comes out. I responded, “Um, uh, thanks, I definitely want to have you back but I don’t like to repeat guests more than once a year.” That was the sound of me being an idiot. Of course I’ll be happy to have Cory back in the spring.
I used to be able to get together with Cory a couple of times a year, back when he lived in Los Angeles. We haven’t been able to do that since he moved to London, and I forgot how pleasant it was to speak with him.
My wife reminded me that when you talk to Cory, he makes you smarter than you thought you were, which is entirely a great feeling. It’s also rare. Cory is a genius, which is rare enough–but that quality of making you smarter, and feeling smarter, is rare even among geniuses.
He dialed in early for the final tech rehearsal, and we just started talking, and kept going through the show, which was lovely–although at times the crew at World2Worlds were pulling out their hair, as I was so engrossed in the conversation that I was less responsive to certain important IMs than I should have been.
I’ll get to work editing the podcast soon. I’m woefully behind on podcast editing–my life has been far too interestingrecently.
This time, instead of doing the interviewing, I’ll be the subject of the interview, on Tonight Live With Paisley Beebe.
Paisley runs an interview program in Second Life, as do I. It’s the same time as Copper Robot, 6 pm Pacific time Sunday. But I’ve never really thought of it as competition. I figure if you don’t like my guest that week, you can go see Paisley. If you don’t like her guests, you can come see me. And both of us are available for playback after the live event is done. So it’s all good.
Second Life is still small enough that any good content benefits all of us.
So I’m delighted to be a guest on Paisley’s show. We’ll be talking about journalism, Second Life and my life after InformationWeek.
Come see us at 6 pm Pacific time at the Tonight Live studio. SLURL, watch it live, or watch the playback later on the Treet.TV web site or on iTunes.
This morning the Federal Trade Commission released its report on kids and virtual worlds. You can read the report, entitled Virtual Worlds and Kids: Mapping the Risks,here. (I’ve posted similar thoughts over at Terra Nova, apologies for the cross-post).
What initially strikes me about the report is the distance between how the report’s being billed and what it actually says. The billing of the report—and thus the likely media tagline—is that the “FTC Report Finds Sexually and Violently Explicit Content in Online Virtual Worlds Accessed by Minors.” But a more accurate statement would be “FTC Report Finds Surprisingly Little Sexually and Violently Explicit Content in Online Virtual Worlds Accessed by Minors, Especially Compared to What Minors Can Find on the Internet.”
That matches my own perception. There actually isn’t much sex or ultra-violence in Second Life, compared with the Internet as a whole, or the real world.
