Matrix within Matrix

[sHiZo963]

Well, we all knew this was coming. Of course, it's just another distraction from objective reality - though this one may top them all in its scope.

Needless to say, many people are getting very excited about this, what with Playstation 3 sells exceeding expectations; corporations like Sony are just looking for ways to keep people immersed in their products. What better way than to actually CREATE a virtual world (matrix) for people to live in and interact?!

Introducing Playstation Home:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=oInP2DAa3BA

This software package will be free with any PS3 and includes a complimentary apartment space and a basic assortment of goods/furniture to interact with. The presenter mentioned "purchase" a lot - which means that users will have to use REAL money to buy VIRTUAL goods and services in this e-world. Want to "move" to a bigger place? Buy an e-mansion (if you can afford it from the measly income from your REAL job)! I can already see the "real" estate market booming...

And here's Little Big Planet:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=nuoOosTdFiY

...where users will be able to create their own content for games. "Creativity" is mentioned a lot - people will finally be able to use their innate creativity to make game 'world' content they always wanted! This alleviates a lot of pressure from game developers who will be able to use popular user-created content and most likely profit from their consumers' work. But hey, it's all fun and games!

The implications of all this are massive. We've already seen what virtual worlds like World Of Warcraft have done to gamers' lives - many have become life-less zombies, totally immersed in the game world, dropping out of school, forgetting about food, etc. This PS Home is clearly taking it to the next level - people will be able to literally 'live' in their virtual worlds.

I cannot think of a better way to keep people asleep than putting them into yet another MCS, one even less real than the one they're living now. The PTB will be able to control all REAL aspects of people's lives and as long as they leave them some freedom in the 'virtual' world, the sheeple won't mind...

It's happening, folks.

 

[Nienna]

There's another virtual distraction our there called Second Life. I heard it mentioned on another site and was so amazed that I looked into it just a little and came up with something that I thought was quite interesting. Although I won't rule out paranoia as to thinking that it is another way to keep people asleep.

Linden Labs is the where Second Life was developed and I took a look at the people behind the scene, and they are listed at the Linden Labs site. I am fairly sure that many of you have heard of this online virtual reality. Same as sHiZo963 was saying, you can buy and sell land and buildings with Second Life money that you buy with real money. There is already several different corporations that have bought into it.

Anyway, into my paranoia, while looking at the people behind the scenes, I came up with this fellow. I will bold the part that caught my eye.

Cory Ondrejka - Chief Technology Officer
As CTO, Cory Ondrejka leads the team developing "Second Life," Linden
Lab's award-winning, user-created digital world. His team has created
the revolutionary technologies required to enable collaborative,
atomistic creation, including distributed physical simulation, 3D
streaming, completely customizable avatars and real-time, in-world
editors. He also spearheaded the decision to allow users to retain the
IP rights to their creations and helped craft Linden's virtual real
estate policy.
Prior to joining Linden Lab in November, 2000, Ondrejka served as
Project Leader and Lead Programmer for Pacific Coast Power and Light.
At PCP&L, he brought the "Road Rash" franchise to the Nintendo for the
first time with "Road Rash 64" and built the core technology teams
that completed multiple products for Nintendo and Sony consoles.
Previous experience includes Lead Programmer for Acclaim Coin-Operated
Entertainment's first internal coin-op title and work on Department of
Defense electronic warfare software projects for Lockheed Sanders.
While an officer in the United States Navy, he worked at the National
Security Agency and graduated from the Navy Nuclear Power School.
Ondrejka is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, where he
was a Presidential "Thousand Points of Light" recipient and became the
first person to earn Bachelors of Science degrees in two technical
majors: Weapons and Systems Engineering and Computer Science.

It may just be me, but that sounds like he could be a major player in the PTB scheme. Or it may be nothing at all. But I cannot think of a better way to keep a lot of people asleep than to keep them stuck in a virtual world.

fwiw

 

[Bo]

I cannot think of a better way to keep people asleep

World of Warcraft actually changed my whole way of thinking,

because when it started to go live, I played around 8/9 hours a day,at some point I became just so bored that I was surfing the internet for some information about the world, because something inside my head some sentence was repeating every day 'What if you wake up one day and realize that everything around you was just an illusion'

I always ignored it , I never wanted to listen to it but it kept repeating and repeating, and since I had most of the time nothing better to do then go to work , school(sometimes) and play WoW i started to search for 'the end of times' 'appocalyps' etc all that kinda doomthinking stuff , I also came accros lots of disinformation(which i found out to be disinformation by posting it on these forums, im happy i did and found out)
items for example 'you create your own reallity' but i kept searching and I came accros the cassio transcripts, I started to read them, after i was done reading it I was somehow sad.. and happy at the same time ,

its hard to explain when you see the people you love not realizing in what kind of world they actually live.
At the moment i have started to read books (carlos castenade series), really funny thou because i never liked to read books :D but now i do, maybe because knowing the truth is 'fun'.

I also agree that games like that keep the majority asleep , but somehow some will wake up? if that makes any sense lol.

and sorry for the long post, its still early and i just wanted to tell this, and I still play world of warcraft ofcourse ,but with moderation, you just gotta love gnomes :D

 

[ScioAgapeOmnis]

Check out the massive free online game where you can also use real money etc called Project Entropia. I think now it's called Entropia Universe. And that just says it all right there..

 

[monkee]

Dutch Largest bank opens a branch in Second Life. Many people are earning money from these kind of games.

On 7 December, ABN AMRO will become the first European bank to open a branch in Second Life, the three-dimensional virtual world created on the internet. Externally, the virtual branch will be very similar to the ABN AMRO Financial Centres. To begin with, the virtual branch will offer information and create a platform where (potential) customers of the bank can meet each other. ABN AMRO will be organising seminars on Second Life for specific target groups, such as business starters or new graduates (Young Professionals) and Preferred Banking clients. ABN AMRO will also use the virtual world of Second Life to recruit new staff.

http://www.abnamro.com/pressroom/releases/2006/2006-12-01-en.jsp

 

[anart]

Dutch Largest bank opens a branch in Second Life. Many people are earning money from these kind of games.

Many people make lots of money with the entire gaming industry - entire virtual economies exist and many people pay 'real' money for virtual items/characters/property - what does that say about their grasp on reality? Many people would rather live their entire lives in these virutal worlds because it is easier/prettier/more fun/their 'friends' are there/more interesting - if they learn how to become as similar to the programming within as possible, they become better and better at it - and what is left?

A human being? Questionable. A fully functioning awake human being - no way in Hades. Food for the moon - you can bet your bottom dollar on that one - even if it's virtual.

 

[monkee]

Many people make lots of money with the entire gaming industry - entire virtual economies exist and many people pay 'real' money for virtual items/characters/property - what does that say about their grasp on reality?

I can imagine that the virtual economy will have the same problems as real economy like overvalued properties. They might even crash like the real property market.

 

[agni]

Here are some stats from Seconf Life:

Total Residents: 5,003,300
Logged In Last 60 Days: 1,713,214
Online Now: 37,248
US$ Spent Last 24h: $1,546,169

Not to mention the value of their currency also fluctuates based on exchange rate.

Wait till one day they start adding game currency to Forex :)

 

[rrraven]

Reminds me of the book "Altered carbon" by Richard Morgan set 500 years into the future where all people have "stacks"implanted into spine that download everything,
to travel you get sent electronicly and "resleeved"into a different body at destination
no more jails instead you go into virtual prison and your body gets hired out as spare
to people who can afford it and you dont always get the body back you went "inside" with
all these games seem to get people used to the idea
maybe this should be in the book section but it relates more to this thread
Warning very violent book but fast moving and food for thought RRR

 

[sHiZo963]

I would like to thank the forum members for letting me know about Second Life - a matrix that's definitely already bigger than I thought was possible at this point in time: over 5 million residents and 1.5 million REAL dollars spent on VIRTUAL goods and services... unbelievable!! My jaw dropped at the numbers presented.

This new phenomenon of "virtual lives" is certainly becoming widespread: from PCs to gaming consoles, most everyone will be able to access and live in a virtual world. Not to mention the target audiences: middle-class kids to young adults, those most capable of 'waking up' to what's going on and being able to do something about it.

And the PTB sure seem to want to push this stuff out fast... it is also entirely counterproductive to what we try to do here - pay attention to objective REALity: interesting how that works.
This whole thing stinks to me and I have a feeling it's quite important. As such, I will be sure to follow the development of this phenomenon as much as I can and keep ya'll updated on its "progress."

 

[Bo]

If you are reading Carlos Castaneda, you need to know that much of what he writes is made up out of whole cloth. He studied with a man named "Kachora" who took over after Don Juan died. If you wish to know more of the Yaqui teachings, research this name.

and how do you know he studied with a man named 'Kachora'? what is your source?

 

[sHiZo963]

Agni posted the following back on March 26, 2007:

Here are some stats from Second Life:

Total Residents: 5,003,300
Logged In Last 60 Days: 1,713,214
Online Now: 37,248
US$ Spent Last 24h: $1,546,169

These are the current Second Life stats:

Total Residents: 6,588,455
Logged In Last 60 Days: 1,734,041
Online Now: 43,222
US$ Spent Last 24h: $1,390,055
LindeX Activity Last 24h: $204,145

Also check out: http://secondlife(dot)com/whatis/economy-graphs.php
...where they show exponential growth curves for premium users, land purchases, US money exchanged for LindeX (the in-game currency), and user hours until March 2007. The user hours info is especially frightening to me, with users collectively giving up over 15 MILLION hours to live in the virtual world.

The mainstream media is just eating this up:

Virtual world a real escape

With no tickets required, no money spent and no need to leave your seat, touring in the virtual world of Second Life holds a certain appeal for travelers willing to delve deep into the Internet to find their escape.

Visitors need only download a free program, then log in. With the help of elaborate 3-D locales designed and built by the world's residents, tourists can watch their online embodiments, known as avatars, lounge at the beach, dine at a romantic restaurant or go out dancing at a crowded nightclub.

[...]

http://www(dot)chicagotribune(dot)com/business/chi-0705112294may14,0,5108085.story?coll=chi-business-hed

...nevermind that all of the above activities are purely illusory. I can't believe people actually think it's 'fun' to watch their virtual characters tanning on an imaginary beach under a digital sun, eating digital food, and "dancing" whilst sitting in front of a computer screen in a dark room, shut out from the real world.

More real people are leading virtual lives
Millions of people are investing time -- and money -- in avatars in the online universe.

Gone are the days when the only people who hung out in computer-generated fantasy worlds were characters in The Matrix and lonely kids who couldn't get dates.

We're talking real people spending real money to lead alternate lives in Internet-based communities as avatars who move and talk in real time.

Among the most popular virtual worlds: Second Life (secondlife.com), which has about 6.2 million residents; There (There.com), which has about 750,000; Whyville (Whyville.com), with 2.27 million, and Habbo Hotel (Habbo.com), which has about 50 million worldwide.

''There are tens of millions of people worldwide who live in virtual worlds and take them very seriously as a new means of entertainment, communication and social interaction,'' says Beth Coleman, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor of comparative media studies who is writing a book on virtual worlds and their occupants.

"The biggest difference in this and the kids 10 or 15 years ago who played fantasy role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, and, later, the people who engaged in multiplayer online role-playing games, is you can't really characterize current users as geeks or loners. These are people with lives, real friends.''

[...]

http://www(dot)miamiherald(dot)com/460/story/106953.html

...real people who are losing their touch on reality.

Now, schools have even started hosting classes in Second Life:

A second look at school life
Quin Parker on the 3D computer game that's offering teenagers a new way of learning

Second Life is a massive multiplayer game with more than 5 million players and its own economy and culture. Using Second Life for teaching - in universities, at least - is not a new thing. Harvard and New York University already hold classes there. The University of Edinburgh has set up an artificial intelligence laboratory, and there is even a special archipelago of islands where colleges can buy land using the local currency, Linden dollars.

Schome - a portmanteau of 'school' and 'home' - was launched three years ago by Peter Twining, director of the centre for curriculum and teaching studies at the Open University. The aim of Schome is to encourage students and staff to think about how education systems could be developed and improved, and give input to students about their environment.

[...]

Classes, covering a variety of subjects, happen according to a calendar on the Schome Park project website. They are odd, but also oddly conventional.

For instance, classes in archaeology take place on a recreation of Hadrian's Wall. Physics students, who are mentored by staff at the National Physical Science Laboratory, have been conducting experiments to calculate the value of gravity within Second Life.

The ethics and philosophy seminars, which are set in a Japanese Zen garden, are comparatively simple, taking the form of an online chat lightly prompted by Jen Booth, a researcher at the University of Warwick. Of course, the very concept of a virtual world is itself a subject for discussion: people can fly, objects can disappear and reappear out of nowhere, and your avatar - the character you play in the world - is almost endlessly customisable.

[...]

Dr Twining suspects that many pupils may be learning more than they realise - how to function in a community, and how to build their confidence by leading discussions. In fact, for pupils burdened by the every day crises of teenage life, an alternative school where you can choose your own appearance is probably a boon.

"I have never met any of these children in real life," says Dr Twining. "I don't know who they are. All I know is their avatar. My guess is those children are projecting themselves as something they're really not. And I guess that's something very liberating."

http://education(dot)guardian(dot)co.uk/elearning/story/0,,2051195,00.html

...yeah, it's quite liberating to NOT have to be yourself - the anti-thesis to the Work, to be sure!

Also, now you can congregate for worship in Second Life, too!

In Second Life, nobody knows you're a lapsed Catholic
Virtual houses of worship await you in the online universe. Can that emu sing a hymn in tune?

In this three-dimensional metaverse — a vivid, ever-changing universe created by gamers — characters can buy virtual clothes from real-world manufacturers, hold virtual rallies for flesh-and-blood politicians, and now, increasingly, worship in sync with the congregations in bricks-and-mortar churches.

The fast-growing world of Second Life has developed a rich spiritual dimension in the last year, welcoming congregations of Buddhists, Jews, Muslims and numerous Christian denominations.

Groeschel's evangelical LifeChurch.tv is the latest entrant, and today will broadcast a live Easter service in its entirety. Gamers who teleport their Second Life characters (known as avatars) to the church's virtual campus can use mouse clicks to manipulate their alter egos into kneeling, swaying or raising palms to the heavens as Groeschel's fast-paced, MTV-style sermon flickers across the computer screen.

[...]

LifeChurch, founded in 1996 as an edgy, youth-oriented congregation, tacked .tv onto its name to refer to its website. As the church expanded, it built satellite campuses across Oklahoma and also in Arizona, Texas, Tennessee and Florida. Most Sundays, congregations in those far-flung locations gather in school auditoriums and watch a broadcast of the service.

Gamers who visit the Second Life campus will feel as though they're in one of those satellite sanctuaries. They will have their avatars take a seat in the auditorium and watch a live video feed of the service on large screens at the front of the virtual room.

The online setup cost the church between $5,000 and $10,000 in programming and other expenses, according to Bobby Gruenewald, another pastor at LifeChurch.

Gruenewald has not been able to track the total number of visitors to LifeChurch's virtual campus, which is on Experience Island. But a snapshot of traffic Monday showed 3,912 avatars teleported to the church — considerably more than visited MTV's virtual Laguna Beach or Toyota's Scion City. (Of course, that same day, 8,693 avatars visited a coffee shop built to look like the set of Showtime's racy TV series "The L Word.")

The Easter service this morning will be an experiment — and it carries some risks. "Griefers," or online vandals, have been known to disrupt church activities by manipulating their characters to streak nude through a chapel or belch loudly during meditation. There's also a danger that nonbelievers posing as Christians could engage visitors in text-messaged conversation and teach them false theology.

http://www(dot)latimes(dot)com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-virtual8apr08,0,5161696.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Finally, I also found this most-interesting item, considering what's going on in the REAL world with real estate:

Coldwell Banker's Second Life
Don't think the Second Life land rush is over. Now a huge real estate firm is entering the 3D virtual world, as the service's headlong growth continues, reports Fortune's David Kirkpatrick.

Real estate deals may be slowing in the real world (comment: quite the understatement!), but in the three-dimensional online one of Second Life the market remains hot. Now Coldwell Banker, one of the nation's largest real estate brokerage firms, is entering Second Life, aiming to help bring order to the chaotic world of virtual real estate.

Coldwell Banker will open a virtual sales office and start selling virtual land at 9 a.m. on Friday. The company released the information exclusively to Fortune.

It's more evidence that the Second Life naysayers are on the defensive. Despite skepticism, software and system troubles, and extraordinary hype, the three-dimensional virtual world juggernaut continues.

Coldwell Banker has bought extensive tracts of property on the central "mainland" of Second Life. (Most companies own "islands" scattered all over.) It subdivided this digital land into 520 individual houses and living units, half of which it will sell and half it will rent.

Coldwell, which employs over 120,000 real-world sales agents in the United States and operates in a total of 45 countries, isn't in Second Life to make money (comment: riiiiiight...), says Charlie Young, the company's senior vice president for marketing. "In the end this is about buying and selling homes in the real world," he says. "We're trying to figure out how to reach what we call the 'new consumer'." Executives insist that any profits will be reinvested in Second Life real estate.

"We didn't want to make a play in Second Life just as a pure advertiser," Young explains. Like a few other savvy companies (One example is iVillage, which conducts tours of fun spots of Second Life), Coldwell Banker tried to figure out how to participate in the Second Life community, and "provide real value," in Young's words.

"A small number of land barons mostly control real estate in Second Life," he says, "and we thought we could bring real estate to the masses."

It's true that Second Life real estate transactions are daunting and confusing. Paul Carr, whose book "The Unofficial Tourists' Guide to Second Life" will be published April 19 by St. Martin's Griffin Press, predicts that with Second Life populated almost entirely by casual and newly-arrived users, a trusted brand that stands behind virtual land transactions will be welcomed by many.

Carr says the danger is not so much land barons like Anshe Chung (who famously claimed she had amassed over U.S. $1 million in digital assets in Second Life) as it is "people who offer to sell you the Golden Gate Bridge. For every legitimate real estate broker there are a thousand scammers."

Unlike almost every other big company, Coldwell's offices in the virtual world will be staffed with real people (in the form of avatars of course). They will not only sell virtual real estate, but also answer questions about real world transactions.

The employees will help combat a big problem of Second Life - the loneliness that sets in when you are wandering anywhere other than the sex clubs and new-member gateways. Much of the impressive virtual world landscape, even sections constructed at considerable expense by major corporations, is eerily empty.

Visitors to Coldwell's sales office (in a community called Ranchero) will, if they choose, be flown by helicopter to view available properties. (Coldwell is also selling houses in the Second Life neighborhoods Crowfoot, Elboya, Gorbash and Scurfield.)

Coldwell has designed and built its own houses, which buyers will not be allowed to alter. They will sell for about $20 (U.S.) each, lower than the average for similar properties in Second Life (comment: what a deal! wait-a-sec, I thought you weren't here to make money...), says Young.

Author Carr cautions Coldwell and any other company that enters this unfamiliar world, though, to beware: "Second Life is a place of extreme reactions. Many feel there should be no commercialism there at all."

Coldwell's properties will appeal to those who want to live in a virtual world that looks like the most banal regions of the real one - suburban tracts filled with uninspired architecture. The one exception, in the Gorbash region, offers modern hillside homes with a view of a dirigible dock, a pirate ship docked in a nearby cove, and the "for sale" signs put up by real estate speculators that endlessly dot Second Life's landscape. And even the suburban tracts lie next to a casino. (Gambling is a hot Second Life activity.)

The service remains a juggernaut. Linden Lab, which operates it, shows higher numbers than ever. Almost 5 million individuals have registered for Second Life since the service began, more than double the number at the turn of the year. And when I went online Wednesday night, almost 29,000 people were in the service at the same time. That figure seldom exceeded 20,000 before January. This growth continued during the last few months even as Linden wrestled with balky software, overloaded servers and extensive system downtime - troubles it seems, at least for now, to have come to grips with.

Coldwell Banker executives were eager to be the first real estate firm in Second Life. They failed when a small Italian firm got there last week. But for better or worse, they will hardly be the last.

http://money(dot)cnn(dot)com/2007/03/22/technology/fastforward_secondlife.fortune/index.htm

 

[Bo]

Agni posted the following back on March 26, 2007:

Here are some stats from Second Life:

Total Residents: 5,003,300
Logged In Last 60 Days: 1,713,214
Online Now: 37,248
US$ Spent Last 24h: $1,546,169

These are the current Second Life stats:

Total Residents: 6,588,455
Logged In Last 60 Days: 1,734,041
Online Now: 43,222
US$ Spent Last 24h: $1,390,055
LindeX Activity Last 24h: $204,145

6 million residents...good god combine that with the amount of player in world of warcraft:

US quick server stats:
Overall: 4,050,754 characters http://www.warcraftrealms.com/realmstats.php
EU quick server stats:
Overall: 2,989,080 characters http://www.warcraftrealms.com/eu_realmstats.php

March 1 2006

World of Warcraft Reaches 6 Million Subscriber Total

World of Warcraft Reaches 6 Million Subscriber Total According to data released by Blizzard Entertainment, developers of the World of Warcraft MMORPG, the game's subscriber based has reached 6 million players worldwide. To date, the game has launched in the U.S., China, Korea, Japan, Germany, the UK, Germany, France, and other regions including Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.

The game is also set to expand into Spain, in a localized Spanish version that will represent the fourth language for the game in Europe. Both the game itself as well as the accompanying website will be in full Spanish, and Blizzard will maintain a Spanish-speaking support and community staff working at all hours in Blizzard's Europe offices. The European staff currently numbers 450 employees, from 22 countries.

"We look forward to offering Spanish-speaking players in Europe a version of World of Warcraft tailored specifically for them," said Blizzard president and cofounder Mike Morhaime. "The enthusiasm for the game here has been overwhelming, and we're pleased that this new localised version will make World of Warcraft accessible to an even wider audience."

The most recent stats from Blizzard before this milestone showed that the immensely popular MMO had surpassed one million customers in Europe, for a total of 5.5 million customers worldwide, as of early January.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=8352


So we basically have almost 20 million people playing in a virtual world...if we count second life with it, and these numbers are growing fast..I wonder why so many MMORPG's(massive multi player online role playing game) suddenly come out especially in these times, perfect way to keep people asleep for sure :/

 

[vinny]

I wonder why so many MMORPG's(massive multi player online role playing game) suddenly come out especially in these times, perfect way to keep people asleep for sure hmm

yeah, I think that as cognitive dissonance increases, people are more and more looking for ways to hide from that internal tension/discomfort, finding more effective ways to stick their head in the sand. and so it goes on, they live more and more deeply into the illusion, becoming ever more distanced from reality, and so increasing the source of that cognitive dissonance - an ever decreasing spiral.

 

[Rich]

an interesting effect of these virtual worlds is factory's employing people to do 'gold farming':

Boring game? Hire a player
By David Barboza The New York Times FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2005
FUZHOU, China One of China's newest factories operates here in the basement of an old warehouse. Posters of World of Warcraft and Magic Land hang above a corps of young people with drowsy eyes glued to their computer screens, pounding away at their keyboards in the latest hustle for money.

The people working at this clandestine locale are called "gold farmers." Every day, in 12-hour shifts, they kill monsters and harvest "gold coins" and other virtual goods that they can sell to other online gamers. From Seoul to San Francisco, gamers who lack the hours or the patience to work their way up to the higher levels of gamedom, are hiring young Chinese to play the early rounds for them.

more:>http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/12/08/business/gaming.php