I was intrigued by the course introductions and it gave me a change to bring out some of my interests, many of which have involved Internet collaboration on shared digital artworks and models. This kicked off some work on a personal “Life Wall” which was fun. Only a small number of Lifestream events were triggered by this work, but it was a fun exercise. I thought originally it would be a way to get ahead with a digital artifact for the course exercises… but eventually decided to do that on more interesting topics as the readings and discussions progressed.

I, Ai – Personal Identity, Avatar Identity

I have been a user of professional simulation environments and also multi-user immersive social games and virtual worlds for several decades, so I was in my element for some uses of such platforms in the MSc in e-Learning courses. This is reflected in my Digital Artifact entitled “AI – Avatar Identity” and the associated Lifestream events, and also in the contributions made in blogs, in my personal learning space.

I, Us – Community Participation

I enjoy collaborative projects and have had a number of long lived on-line groups I interact with. I chose to do the Digital Cultures course on-line community ethnographic study on the Gerry Anderson Model makers’ Alliance (GA-MMA) at http://atate.org/mscel/ethno/.

I, Robot – Think Like a Robot

The creation of the digital artifact “Think Like a …” and related blog posts led to a number of Lifestream events where I discuss the use of educational argumentation from an artificial intelligence agent viewpoint. And even beyond that to take a robot or alternative species viewpoint. This is a useful device to prevent a dominant human species position always being assumed.

Digital Cultures + Digital Artifacts

My other explorations on digital artifacts on and around the course themes have generated Lifestream events and include:

• bat Life Wall
• Another Planet – Experimental Digital Artifact
• Austin, Ai and the Personal Satellite Assistant – Blog Post
• Posthuman – Connected – Blog Post
• AI, Cyborgs and Robots – Blog Post
• By the Side of a Methane Lake on Titan – Blog Post
• Ai’s Home Page – Na’vi and Beyond (work prior to Digital Cultures Course and expanded during the studies)

WallWisher Walls

I have been an enthusiastic contributor to the Wallwisher walls set up at the start of Digital Cultures and IDEL11 for participant introductions, and used for a number of exercises through the course.

This was a new shared media and social tool to me, and it works very well. I have also used Wallwisher walls in a number of my own digital artifacts. The Lifesteam events do not reflect Wallwisher contributions very well, and only seem to post a single event for the initial post onto a wall.

Lifesteam Access

My Lifesteam is at http://edc11.education.ed.ac.uk/austint/my-lifestream/

Technically the Lifestream events for many types of feed from Delicious, some blogs, Wallwisher, etc., leave a lot to be desired and often only state the blog title as the source with little indication of the real content I am afraid.

A PDF format archival copy is available at http://atate.org/mscel/archive/EDC11-Lifestream-Austin-Tate.pdf though the printed version is not laid out as well as the original WordPress blog.

The majority of my work on the course finished last week, and I am now engaged mostly in reading over again selected papers that are relevant to my essays and final assignments on the EDC11, IDEL11 and ULOE11 courses. Some Lifestream events relate to tidying up and preparing extra screen shots for some of those assignments.

OpenVCE Developments

I have been busy on my main research project in the USA on the OpenVCE platform to provide virtual collaboration spaces for distributed teams engaged in emergency and medical responses. I established the OpenVCE group area on the US government’s non-classified “All Partners Access network” (APAN) which uses the ‘Telligent collaboration platform and provides the Adobe Connect services we need for observer access to virtual worlds meeting spaces. This burst of effort on my research project has also involved some further experimentation with the Unity3D platform, for example adding Tokbox VoIP. And also looking at the Collada conversion of the Second Life/OpenSimulator 3D build for the OpenVCE region. This allows the build to be taken directly into Unity3D for future use. These activities generated quite a number of Lifestream events.

Avatar to Avatar Chat

My earlier EDC11 digital artifact was “Ai – Avatar Identity” and one element of this involved an amusing chat bot to chat bot conversation transcript generated on the OpenSim region used for the artifact. It used MyCyberTwin technology for “Ai” and “Be” chatting together. The resulting transcript is at http://atate.org/ai/ai/res/2011-10-09-chat-log-ai-and-be.txt.

So, it was funny this week to see that MyCybertwin in Australia has announced a contest with cash prizes for the best chat bot to chat bot conversation (using though their own limited set of example entities), and indeed a “Turing Test” challenge too. See https://mycybertwin.com/ui/aivsai.jsp.

On my research project related to supporting the OpenVCE communities I was engaged in setting up a new group portal on the APAN (All Partners Access Network) hosted by the US Government for non-classified work between government agencies, NGOs, organisation and individuals across the world. This replaces the previous HarmonieWeb portal. the APAN network uses the Telligent Collaboration framework to provide the usual blogs, discussion forums, wikis, group chat, etc. And then provides an Adobe Connect service attached to that for the supported communities. We provide “web observer” meeting access to virtual words meeting spaces via Adobe Connect services through these portals. I was involved in a number of training programmes and setup exercises which led to a range of events in the Lifestream as I took on the group owner role on APAN.

I did some further experimentation with the Unity3D platform, and used a Collada mesh translation of the OpenVCE OpenSim region buildings created via a converter service from Tipodean technologies in the USA. We are further experimenting also with the OpenSim-based MOSES grid hosted by the US Government also for work with non-government agencies internationally.

We believe that a combination of the APAN OpenVCE Group for a community web portal and a simplified meeting space in either the OpenSim-based MOSES grid or on a Unity3D setup might offer a long term stable basis for continuing work in the OpenVCE.net community. Currently a Drupal server at Edinburgh is used for the community web portal, and the virtual words service is hosted on the VCE region in Second Life.

I have been working on my Digital Cultures course final project for a couple of weeks now. It is a study of Identity, Avatar and On-line Identity, Community Identity and the use of an Analytical Eye over these topics.

http://atate.org/ai/pi/

I would welcome feedback from anyone who has a look at the artifact in its current state. I am still working on elements of it.

I got ahead with my contribution to the posthuman pedagogy and produced my input over the weekend, entitled “Think Like a Robot”. So I was able to provide it to the class at the very start of the week for discussion. Some commenting on this and other entries as they came in towards the end of the week formed events in my Lifestream.

Eye on the EDEDC Final Assignment

To create the story I wish to tell for my EDEDC final assignment, I have been pulling together a number of threads explored during the Digital Cultures course and on other MSc courses such as IDEL11 and ULOE11. This has led to extracting some of the elements on different social media and platforms, especially aggregating content into my personal learning and asset collection space at http://atate.org/space/

Uncanny Pedagogical Experiences – Joking Apart

I have kidded on a bit with Siân Bayne in some discussions over the use of what I treated as "cute" terms like the "uncanny" and "ghostly" or "zombie" experiences. I got the idea of the uncertain and mind challenging environments she was described as a learning opportunity. And I do appreciate its a term that has some history (see Uncanny). But the Bayne (2008) reading did start to make more sense to me as a coherent approach to some people’s experiences in virtual worlds. I think I have used teleconference, distance collaboration and other forms of multi-user environments for so long, and have had experience of MUDs and MOOs as they grew from their text beginnings, so that its a more natural experience for me… just like I would not call using the telephone uncanny because I can heard a disembodied voice from a distance. But I can certainly put myself into an avatar shape or type which I know I find unusual or that feels “wrong”.

I found a very nicely constructed site in Second Life this week which allowed for just such an experience, and I blogged about it to draw it to the attention of others on the IDEL11 and EDEDC courses. See "Meta Body – Try an Out of Your Body Experience" – http://edc11.education.ed.ac.uk/austint/2011/11/18/meta-body-try-an-out-of-your-body-experience/

Second Life Pic of the Day

I added a further RSS feed to my Lifestream… the Second Life official feed from the blog which selects a representative “pic of the day”. This is something I already follow on Twitter and find useful. I feel this reflects the continuing improvement of the visuals in Second Life and OpenSim, indicates new facilities as they come along and show cases top builds inworld.

Reference

Bayne, Siân (2008) "Uncanny spaces for higher education: teaching and learning in virtual worlds", ALT-J Research in Learning Technology, Vol. 16, No. 3., pp.197-205.

Uncanny – See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny

See http://atate.org/mscel/think/

When discussing the nature of an individual’s beliefs about intelligence, knowledge or the learning process, I have noticed in a number of discussion forum threads on EDEDC and ULOE11 where it can be a useful device to put oneself into the position of an artificial intelligence agent, knowledge-based computer system or a robot. Or go further and think like a creature, or even a disembodied network.

Please add any comments you have here.

A very beautifully designed Second Life region is worth exploring. I suggest you arrive in the Meta_Body area first. Use this teleport link:

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Porto/132/109/703

Look at the (freely available) avatars to explore your identity and see which feel strange to you, and some which might appeal. Consider why (Bayne, 2008). There are a few male and more female avatars available to try. Select the strangest before you embark on a tour of the lovely areas which are on the land surface, on small islands, on sky islands, and underwater. Sit for a while on some of the areas. Click on things to see what they do.

Eventually find your way to a white ice themed area with a lady playing a white piano. Try touching the black “Omega Star Dream 5″ sphere for an animated tour through some of the lower elements of the region. If you cannot find this use this SLurl to get there directly:

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Porto/105/91/62

Reference
Bayne, Siân (2008) "Uncanny spaces for higher education: teaching and learning in virtual worlds", ALT-J Research in Learning Technology, Vol. 16, No. 3., pp.197-205.

My own input to the Posthuman discussions came via my Digital Culture’s blog entry on Posthuman – Connected and a lot of very interesting commentary by classmates and Jeremy (as Tutor) along with notes by me on that. David has also been commenting and adding his thoughts as comments to this blog entry.

I have noticed that I seem to be a long weekend ahead of discussion on the forums on all my MSc in e-learning modules, not just Digital Cultures. I tend to use Friday to prepare the ground for the start of the next week, get the readings organised, file previous material, and I think of start of the weekend as the change over point. That seems to put my Lifestream entries a few days, and sometimes as much as a week, ahead of similar topic events from others. So I felt rather lonely on the WallWisher Walls where I was more than 4 days ahead of any other entry appearing. Then we had an episode where we had two wall accidentally for a while. All sorted now, and entries appearing. Unfortunately, these entries are not reflected in the LifeStream as noted before. I continued to comment on the new virtual community ethnographies as they appeared through the week.

Work on the Moodle/SLoodle experiments was at a lower level this week, though I did a blog post expressing my feelings about the labyrinthine complexity of roles and permissions in Moodle against how I felt it ought to appear. This image from the posting expresses how things seem to me:

Underground Activity

My on-line activity on one aspect of the Digital Cultures course has “gone underground” a little in that I am preparing elements of my final assignment in a web area of my Personal Learning Space and elements of this are not reflected in my lifestream yet.

Research and International Links

Some Lifestream events relate to my research with the OpenVCE.net community and its emergency response groups. There has been a build up of events that relate to a shift of one of the web portals from HarmonieWeb, which provided Adobe Connect services in particular for the OpenVCE.net community, to the All Partners Access Network (APAN). This could be interesting as APAN uses the Telligent Community Platform integrated with Adobe Connect and XMPP/Jabber text chat for synchronous meetings. Details of the transition, which I am managing, are being built at http://openvce.net/apan. More tweets and status messages will appear on this over the next few weeks as I keep the OpenVCE.net community informed of progress.

Another international community I am involved in is KSCO – the Knowledge Systems for Coalition Operations community. We are in the run up to the closing date for submission of papers for KSCO-2012 which I am an organiser for. It will be run in February 2012 this year in Florida. We have just had approval for a proposal we made for a KSCO special issue of the high quality journal IEEE Intelligent Systems, so some Lifestream events relate to communicating this to the KSCO community.

Hayles (1999, pp 23-24) mentioned Philip Dick’s novel, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” (which was the basis for the Blade Runner movie) through which a number of personal identity and ethical issues are explored. I have previously mentioned some of these issues as having been raised at http://www.philfilms.utm.edu/1/blade.htm

This transferance of the argument to an artificial agent can help avoid the over emphasis of human traits or superior species assumptive arguments. The more we observe of animals and consider artificial agents, the more we will come to realise we are just another type of soft machine. Recent studies apparently show we can even share blood transfusions with chimpanzees, as they are so closely related to us. Dolphins may have a different type of intelligence, but should we put such intelligent creatures in zoos? A recent article by Montgomery (2011) on “How Smart is an Octopus” is fascinating. See http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6474/

Hayles, N. Katherine, (1999) “Towards embodied virtuality” from Hayles, N. Katherine, “How we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics” pp.1-25,293-297, Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press

Montgomery, Syd (2011) “Deep Intellect: Inside the mind of the octopus”, Orion Magazine, November/December 2011.