KerryJ’s Neotenous Tech

I can only guess that this is a money-saving move from the bean counters at Walmart — if it is, they’ll soon have fewer beans to jiggle around…

Walmart has decided to pull the plug on their music DRM server — so anyone who bought music prior to February 2008 has a couple of days left until they can NO LONGER PLAY THEIR BOUGHT AND PAID FOR MP3s.

In a letter (that I did not receive) to those trusting suckers who did the right thing and paid for their music, Walmart suggests we burn our MP3s to CD.  But we CAN’T BURN THEM AS MP3s.  Oh no.  We have to burn them as traditional music CDs.  Ones we WON’T BE ABLE TO RIP BACK.

ATTENTION CLUELESS WALMARTIANS: I haven’t played a music CD in 3 years and guess what??? My MP3 player (my mobile phone) DOESN’T HAVE A CD PLAYER.

Here’s the thing: give me the option to replace what I’ve purchased with the new non-DRM format or CHEERFULLY REFUND MY BLOODY MONEY. Technology has moved on from CDs.

I will move on from buying music from you and hope that millions of others follow suit if you don’t make this right.

I’m an expat American who is about to become an Australian citizen but will keep my US citizenship, so I’ve been flipping perspectives as I watch the US presidential and Vice presidential debates.  Are these people and their policies good for my homeland and the people there that I love? How are they going to affect Australia and the rest of the world?

I’ve watched both debates thanks to the internet and was delighted they were free from attitude perceptors/the worm/those stupid live graphs of what the audience thinks.  Good grief, can’t we be allowed to experience important events without being told what to think?

But I digress.

These debates covered pretty predictable stuff — the two wars, health care, the economy, gay rights — but left out a couple of biggies as far as I’m concerned: education and technology.

If Obama and McCain covered education it was not an outstanding memory for me of the debate.  The Biden Palin debate is still fresh in my mind though — and nowhere was education or technology mentioned.

If ever two issues do and will impact the economy of the United States it’s these two.  They touch on everything  - health care, communications, geopolitical literacy, arts, freedom of expression, finance, governance, war, peace - yet they weren’t considered a mention?

It was more important to reveal that both sides are pandering to the religious right of their parties by their hypocritical attitudes towards the rights of homosexuals than to find out what priority they give to education and technological innovation and infrastructure? Jim and Gwen, I’m really disapointed in you.

Are we trying to drink from a fire hose? Or are we just flooded with a lot of information that makes use feel informed?

From the people that brought us LOLCats –

more music charts

Last night I was at the Second Life building site of two friends and one wanted to show me a subterranean cave he just built.  I stayed where i was and just used the camera key on my 3D Connexion joy stick to check it out without moving.  I  could have done this using ALT plus my mouse or arrow keys too.

He was shocked that I could do this and was a bit offended by it.  This led to a great conversation about online identity and specifically identity in virtual worlds.

Part of the appeal of virtual worlds is that you can create any representative of yourself that you wish.  Arguably, you can in RL too — but it’s much faster and cheaper in SL to significantly alter your height, weight, gender and identity.

My friend’s main beef was that he is experimenting with different identities, wants to role play and have a bit of fun — and do it away from prying eyes.

We joked with each other that it isn’t the prying eyes of strangers that can pose problems to exploring virtual worlds and identities  but those of our friends, family and colleagues/employers present and future that pose the most risk should we want to shake things up.

I have two main avatars in Second Life - but as I use SL professionally, I am very aware that people in my professional life know my avatar’s name.  Unfortunately, enough know my secondary avatar as well.

Neither I nor my friends necessarily want to lead a dodgy second (or third or fourth life) — but to really experiment with a new identity, it has to stand on its own with no associations with the past.

Second Life does allow for multiple identities - so people who want to use it for work might consider having one avatar for professional use and one for private use.

I have two blogs — but both are professional and I identify myself.  I do know of some guerilla bloggers who remain anonymous for a variety of reasons.  For some — I wonder if it’s their alternate self being let loose, the flip side of the coin seeing the light of day.  Is the funny, loud-mouthed cynic a sweet, mild mannered artist by day?  Hmmm.  I do know some quiet, thoughtful types who claim to be WoW addicts — so it’s not exactly an earthshattering pensivity I’m experiencing here, is it?

So are we going to have to hide behind alternate identities if we ever really want to be our true selves online? And can we ever be? Or are our online lives like some reality show that could be stitched together with tags and fed through a feed stitcher?

Today was one of THOSE days - like one of those bad dreams where you go to work  and only afterward realise you are only dressed in your bottom of the drawer underwear.

Video via my eee pc.

This is a video blog post — RSS people, you can get the mp4 file here:

http://blip.tv/file/get/KerryJ-TechGodsAgainstMeToday430.mp4

or the 3gp file here:

http://blip.tv/file/get/KerryJ-TechGodsAgainstMeToday221.3gp

On the blog readers, here it is embedded:

Click to play