Announcement: "Research Surveys About Our Second Lives"

 

"Tom Boellstorff and his students have designed a survey to ask about how we are using SL during the COVID pandemic. (There is a second survey to take if you are in Animal Crossing.) There is more info in the notecard. Thanks for helping with this research.

"Hello! I have exciting news to share. As part of my research project on 'virtual cultures in pandemic times,' my graduate students and I have created a survey. I’d love you to take it and to share it with anyone and everyone! We worked to make the survey as fun and brief as possible. For each there is a place at the end where if you wish, you can let us know that you’d be interested in participating in an interview. We also have a survey for Animal Crossing: New Horizons. If you’re in both places, do both surveys, and feel free to pass along the Animal Crossing survey as well."

Second Life survey link: https://ucisocsci.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_b1QNAZ5rxiA9LA9

Animal Crossing survey link: https://ucisocsci.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_26sKrRubahncwPH

VWBPE Begins

The Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference officially started yesterday, the Kickoff event at 8 AM SL time. The Keynote was at 9:30, given by Tom Boellstorff.

There would be several events that day. Among them was one in which Patch and Grumpity Linden were talking about recent developments in Second Life, and near the end answered a few questions.

The VWBPE goes on until late Saturday April 6, with a schedule of events here (link).

It was a long day yesterday, and yours truly needs to rest before writing more.

Bixyl Shuftan

LA Times Reports on Anthropologist Researching Second Life Use By Disabled

Many residents of Second Life have mixed opinions of mainstream media coverage of Second Life, feeling it focuses on the more salacious aspects of the Grid, notably sex. But LA Times reporter Ben Brazil recently wrote about anthropologist Tom Boellstroff's work in studying Second Life, which after the first few years began to focus on it's disabled users, which he reasons make up forty to sixty percent of it's population.

Boellstroff and his co-researcher Donna Davis talked to about 200 disabled residents. Davis told the Times, “We so often hear about the dark side of technology. But I think that Tom and I have found that there is a bright side. People can connect in these virtual spaces in really important and meaningful ways.”

The National Science Foundation has funded his study, contributing $277,000 US dollars. Boellstroff "is writing a second book" about his research on the disabled and hopes that his efforts "will cause technology developers to pay heed to the issues of disabled people when creating virtual reality products."

Read more on the LA Times article (Here) 

Source: New World Notes

Bixyl Shuftan

SL Video: "Our Digital Selves: My Avatar Is Me"

(Click here if the video fails to play)

From Draxtor Despress on May 17, "'Our Digital Selves: My Avatar is me!' tells the story of 13 global citizens and their avatars as they transcend their various disabilities through artistic expression and making a home for themselves in the VR Metaverse. The film follows researchers Tom Boellstorff and Donna Davis as they facilitate deep connections between real human beings in virtuality by giving away digital land to build anything the participants of this project can dream up. As Boellstorff and Davis finish up their 3-year study made possible by a grant from the National Science Foundation [entitled 'Virtual Worlds, Disability and New Cultures of the Embodied Self'], the film provides a window into a world of seemingly unlimited possibilities for borderless human interaction, irrespective of physical location and or ability. 'Our Digital Selves' weaves together physical and virtual cinematography as the protagonists’ backstories are re-enacted via Machinima. The film will is available for free on YouTube and as a download for qualifying institutions at http://ourdigitalselves.com/documentary "

 Contact Drax at draxtor.com for more information

* * * *

Virtual Ability would publish three interviews of people in the video. Alice Krueger would interview Tom Boellstorff and  Donna Davis. Gentle Heron would talk to iSkye Silverweb and Slatan Dryke in her interview article. 

Press Release: Labor Tech Discussion at Virtual Ability

Labor Tech discussion
Hosted by Tom Boellstorff and Winifred Poster
FRIDAY March 16, 8-10am SLT
Sojourner Auditorium, Virtual Ability

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Virtual%20Ability/54/170/23

Join us on Friday, March 16, 8AM SLT for an informal discussion about labor and technology. Some members of an informal group of researchers studying labor and digital technology (for instance: call centers, “sharing economy” things like Uber and AirBnB, uses of social network sites like Facebook and Instagram for earning money) are going to make brief presentations about their research, and we’ll have a couple of brief presentations about some research about labor and disability in Second Life too. There will be plenty of time for open discussion. Please join us!

Hosts:
Tom Boellstorff is an anthropology professor from the University of California at Irvine. He is the author of the book "Coming of Age in Second Life."

With support from the National Science Foundation, Tom and Donna Davis (University of Oregon) are engaged in an SL research project “Virtual Worlds, Disability, and New Cultures of the Embodied Self.” How is the internet changing how people think of themselves as individuals and interact as members of communities? For this project, they focus on the disability experience in virtual worlds  where disabled persons can appear any way they choose and do things they may not be able to do in the physical world.

Since some early human first picked up a stick to use as a cane, people with disabilities have been at the forefront of technology innovation. What can their creative uses of and adaptions to online social interaction teach us? Tom and Donna explore this question by collaborating with disabled persons as they create and interact socially in virtual worlds, and discover how they use different kinds of devices in their homes to experience these online environments.

This research will have implications for improving health care and social support. But it also will use the insights of disabled persons to better understand now new online technologies influence how we think about our bodies, how we think about social interaction, and how we think about the role of the internet in everyday life.

Winifred Poster is a professor in the International & Area Studies / International Affairs Program at Washington University, St. Louis. She is the author of "Invisible Labor: Hidden work in the contemporary world" and "Borders in Service: Enactments of nationhood in transnational call centres."

Her areas of interest are feminist labor theory, digital globalization, and Indian outsourcing.  For the past two decades, she has been following high-tech firms from the US to India, both in earlier waves of computer manufacturing and software, and more recent waves of back-office work and call centers.  Her focus is on the intersection of post-colonial computing with the political economy of service labor.  She's curious how information communication technologies are changing the meaning of work, dispersing it transnationally, incorporating new types of workers, and reshaping identities.

Presented in voice with text transcription.

SL Video: "The Drax Files: World Makers (Episode 31 - Tom Boellstorff)"

(Click here if the video fails to load)

The latest Drax Files from Draxtor Despress, Aug 12, 2015, "New Drax Files on the question what is REAL. Comment and share with a skeptic if you like. ... Anthropologist Tom Boellstorff sees no difference between doing ethnographic research in Indonesia or among the residents of a digital universe like Second Life."

Press Release: Disability and Virtual Worlds - New Frontiers of Appropriation

 PRESENTERS: Tom Boellstorff, Donna Davis, Gentle Heron (panel at AoIR)
SATURDAY October 26, 9:30-11:10 am SLT
Sojourner Auditorium, Virtual Ability Island

Virtual Ability (54/170/23)

Three SL researchers will present a panel at the Association of Internet Research (AoIR) conference titled "Disability and Virtual Worlds: New Frontiers of Appropriation." The panel will occur in both real life and SL simultaneously.

After the 3 panelists present, there will be an opportunity for the "live" and SL audiences to interact. You won't want to miss this opportunity to chat and answer questions from Internet researchers.

PRESENTER BIOS:
Tom Boellstorff is the author of Coming of Age in Second Life, and co-author of Ethnography and Virtual Worlds:
A Handbook of Method.
Donna Davis is doing research with the Creations group, for people with Parkinsons.
Gentle Heron is the head of the Virtual Ability community in Second Life. She is a former educational researcher,

Voice + text transcription.