Graphic Resolutions in the Virtual Environment

I wonder if the reason we do not have high resolution in the virtual environment is accessibility, in so much as we are all using that which was rendered to accommodate users with low spec pc’s, anyway in theory resolutions will improve dramatically with cloud computing.

Prosumer to Produser

In consideration of the above concept, this excerpt from Dr. Alex Brun http://slidesha.re/cqQ0LQ questions the term produser and asks if the term produser is appropriate for what we see online in web2 and other spaces where people are actively creating content and actively participating and moving away from being more conventional members of the audience who are not necessarily creating content in their own right.  He asks if it is really only about, production that consumers initiate or is it only about certain designs that a customer has submitted or at least modified or customised, is the involvement in the design process?  and is that all there is?  Is that as far as you can go he asks.

He suggests you look at the literature in various industries, posumers are seen much more as the high end consumers and nothing much more, the prosumers being addressed by the literature of the high-fi industries, car companies offering custom modifications, computer nerds can be described as prosumers from that point of view.  Dr. Brun thinks there are a number of ways of describing these people but does not think it is capturing the reality of participation in online environments, web2 environments, in collaborative context creation environments and asks if the prosumer remains dependent on the existence of a producer who is simply working to the whim of content producers and asks if that is all there is ?  He does not think so and suggests that really high end consumers who know a lot about what they consume are not necessarily active in content creation.

Dr. Brun thinks we have to look beyond the idea of the prosumer and the idea of production and the value chain that we have all grown up with which has been established since the dawn of the industrial revolution if not earlier.  This idea that there are producers, distributors and consumers and that they are really quite distinct elements within the chain but he thinks it is all changing and the idea of the prosumer really just adds a better feedback loop to this chain so consumers advising producers of what they really want.  He considers consumers perhaps providing some ideas for what these products should be looking like but ultimately still depending on the producer to manufacture their goods.

Interestingly, Dr. Brun does not think this is quite enough, he does not think that it captures the reality of the spaces like Wikipedia and many others that we might identify as going beyond the Producer-Distributor-Consumer model.  He tells us that there are a number of ways of describing this emergence in recent years and upon reflection he wonders if the term production itself is the appropriate term for what’s happening in these environments, particularly online in content creation is really production in any conceivable, identifiable way as we know from the past because he say’s really what’s coming out here is not to do anymore with the creation of finished products but is actually much more an ongoing process of revision of recreation of existing knowledge.  Wikipedia is a perfect example as its not about producing some sort of marketable commodity like Encyclopaedia Britannica, open source is another example as its not simply about creating a piece of software that can be used but it is the ongoing revision of these things, of the non-products of these things that are really quite distinct from conventional products.

Dr. Brun thinks its the continuous revision of existing content by people who might come to it in the first place as users, as all of us go to Wikipedia and see the content that exists there and then are also addressed as potential contributors, as potential produsers of this content, or hybrid produsers who are in the middle somewhere, not quite users and not quite produsers but are in a hybrid role somewhere in the middle between extremes and so it is the ongoing revision of this content that is identified and happens across a broad range of different contexts of different spaces and all of us have come across examples of this and it goes all the way from open source to Wikipedia through Citizen Journalism and any other spaces of creative production.

Destinations

In secondlife I visited the following five virtual environments.

The first was Comptons pub in Soho in London where I met 2 avatars in a spacious bar setting with lots of seated and standing/dancing areas.  It appears that it is an exciting spot when lots of avatars appear ….. worth another look

The second was Red Rock Mesa – Native Indian & Southwest acts, Native lands where I encountered two indian avatars looking for Mustang horses.  It is a prarie setting and the place to go if you like the wild west.

The third was Two Moons Island which was a cloudy, desert space with no signs of life or anything to tempt me back.

The fourth was Cloudchasers ‘Tomaisk’ Duck which even though there was no sign of life had lots to explore and a great small animation of waves rocking a boat with the reflection of the boat rocking in the sea below.

The fifth was The Abyss Observatory which has a lot to explore with five tours on offer, I took a tour which included lots of signposts in Chinese.  It is an island setting and worth a return visit

2nd Life

Hi,

My name is Bill Carton and I am currently in DIT as a mature student on MSAP .

Interestingly enough, back in the late 80’s I worked on a number of projects modelling the built environment in Autocad and 3d studio.  I remember having to hook up lots of pc’s to slave render a walkthrough or flyby which would take days of rendering for 2 minutes of animation.

I am be interested in this course to explore the virtual environment but also interested to find out about the engine, software etc as I was surprised to discover the current virtual environment model renderings not as advanced as I had expected after over 20 years of time