Democracy Island

Wired Article Filed From Democracy Island and Mixed-Reality Doug Engelbart Salon Pics

Wired News has a story, Avatars Among Us, that's filed from Democracy Island. That's fun to see it recognized as a place like a real world city :). Cropped pic:

Intellectual stimulation prevailed indeed (and I dare say there was definitely a certain glamor to it as well).

I've posted more pics from the Doug Engelbart event at the Second Life Future Salon blog. Here are a few below showing a real life audience of 100+ being brought together with 30+ on Democracy Island via live video (playing on the center screen) run through Second Life. This was a good experiment in using SL as a videoconferencing hub, and I'm sure we'll be trying it again with island projects.

Doug and his avatar:

Democracy Islanders from all over the world check out the presentation happening live in Palo Alto, CA:

The real life audience talks with Doug, seen from the Second Life point of view:

Doug walked his avatar offstage to chat with the group on Democracy Island for a few minutes before he was swept away by people in real life (now how do we cut down on that? ;)

Doug Engelbart "Collective IQ" On Democracy Island *Tonight* 1/20 from 7:30-9:30 PM PST

Computing pioneer and collective intelligence architect Doug Engelbart (pictured left as a Second Life avatar) will be on Democracy Island tonight (Friday, January 20th) from 7:30-9:30 PM PST. Come on out. [If you need help getting into Second Life, please email me at jerrypaffendorf[at]accelerating[dot]org. SL accounts are free.]

Doug will be streamed in live via video from the Bay Area Future Salon in Palo Alto, CA. Their latest announcement from host Mark Finnern reads:

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Harry Max, Doug Engelbart and I sat together yesterday to talk about how we can create the best Collective IQ Future Salon possible. It is happening this Friday the 20th.

We came up with the following. To get you into the right mindset we will start out the evening in small groups of up to 6 people that tackle the following questions:

•What collective capability need to be improved.
•What things would you like to improve electronically with other people that you can't do currently?
•What can we do to collectively get better at understanding and solving complex problems?
•How do we get smarter as a group?
•What makes a group of people look dumber(smarter) than they are?

This is happening form 6:30 to 7:20 every 20 minutes or so we rearrange the groups. The suggestions are collected and Doug will try to tailor his talk to a couple of these suggestions. (We derived this a bit from the Brain Jams and Christopher Allen's Weave
suggestion)

This is going to be really interesting. It will be broadcast not only to the world, but also into Second Life...

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See Democracy Island initiator and New York Law School Professor Beth Noveck's recent paper, A Democracy of Groups, which has been compared in scope to Doug's classic Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework from 1962. Read on below the fold for side-by-side abstracts of the two papers, with Doug's focus on how individuals might come to better leverage the collective and Beth cutting straight to groups collaborating via the technologies Doug was imagining over 40 years ago.

New Ways To Create and Communicate In Second Life: CC Licenses and Live Video of SL In SL

On Wednesday evening Zarf Vantongerloo unveiled his system for assigning new Creative Commons Licenses to creations from within Second Life (the system is available as part of his notary service on Democracy Island). It's great to see another piece of Second Life integrating with the outside Web and allowing people to create and share with others on their own terms. The transcript outlining the process is below the fold. Here are a few pics of Zarf licensing a demonstration object (click to enlarge):

Following that we tuned into a presentation by Stanford Law Professor and Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig happening elsewhere in Second Life (New World Notes and CNET have write-ups). Yes, we were watching live video of another place in Second Life. I beleve that's the first time live video of SL was streamed into SL, and it's a great way for large groups to communicate across different regions [when I find out who set this up I'll credit them here]. See images of the live feed below (click to enlarge).

It was a good night that saw the beginning of a new way to communicate (the live video) and a new way to create within the community (the CC license).

Creative Commons Machine On Democracy Island *Today* 4:30-5:30 PM PST

Very cool news. Zarf Vantongerloo (who's notary service on Democracy Island we looked at last week) has built a virtual machine that generates official Creative Commons Licenses applicable to the creations of Second Life residents from right within the virtual world.

The CC machine will be publicly demoed for the first time on Democracy Island from 4:30-5:30 PM PST *TODAY*, Wednesday the 18th. Come check it out! (pics of the machine below, click to enlarge)

This will happen immediately before Stanford Law Professor and Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig takes the stage elsewhere in Second Life with Hamlet Linden. That show is already full to capacity, but you'll be able to stick around Democracy Island to listen to Lawrence with others via chat repeaters.

If you'd like background, I recommend checking out this audio and Flash presentation of Lawrence's from the O'Reilly Open Source Convention back in 2002. It's an inspired talk that will clue you into the thinking behind CC.

3D Wiki for Landing Lights Park

One of the projects on Democracy Island is the construction of a "3D wiki" (in progress) that will anyone to help prototype a public park (Landing Lights Park) that will be built for real in Queens, NY. This works by allowing people to arrange and save the location of 3D park elements (benches, walkways, gazebos, trees, etc.) on a scaled-down map of the park (see this Park Planner Flash game as a simpler 2D precedent). Tom Lowenhaupt (Tom Ramona in Second Life), a NYC Public Official guiding the project, was onhand along with lead builder Hiro Pendragon to lay out what's happening. Below are some excerpts. Continue reading below the fold for the full chat transcript. A detailed outline of the project can be seen on the Democracy Island wiki.

Tom Ramona: "The city recently signed a new lease withthe Port Authority for the Airports. As part of the agreement a $100,000,000 fund was established to asssit the communities surrounding the airports (Kennedy and LaGuardia). This space has been essentailly a grassland for 50 years. There are few if any real park facilities. Although it is officially owned by the city's Parks Department. It has a first (at least should have) a first call on those funds. So how to get the neighbors involved in the project became a big question. Obviously SL offered a modeling opportunity like no other. And the democracy island offers a possibility for asssiting the decision making process - which park. And we - the community board - want to get youth involved in thegovernance process. So here we are."

Hiro Pendragon: "What we're standing on is a 5:1 scale model of land nearr LaGuardia Airport, in Queens, NY... The problem, which Beth stated, is that most public meetings are the suck. As evidenced by SL's own chaotic town halls which are becoming way too crowded to handle. Add to that busy schedules and meeting times that may or may not meet community needs. The concept here - however - is that community members can, on their own time, do sort of a "build your own park." They can do it alone, or with their friends. And they will be able to save the design, photograph it for internet posting, and different plans can be compared. In addition, it's a much cheaper way to visualize how the park will look, than going to an architect and having the architect build several models out of balsa wood."

Various views of people on the 3D wiki park model, with Tom Lowenhaupt's avatar in the bottom right (click to enlarge):

Beth Noveck/Lawlita Fassbinder On Democracy Island

Beth Noveck of the New York Law School and initiator of the Democracy Island project opened up the day on Saturday with a presentation and group Q&A on DI's mission and background. Here's a piece from that edited into paragraph form. Read on for the full transcript provided by Lyre Calliope.

(Note: Beth Noveck is Lawlita Fassbinder in Second Life)
Lawlita Fassbinder: "At State of Play I, the first conference on law and virtual worlds, we held a workshop for game designers and administrative lawyers—two groups that are very unlikely to meet ever. The purpose was to discuss how new virtual world technology (and SL was new then) could be used as a medium and venue for citizen participation. In other words, by law, under the Administrative Procedure Act, everyone has a right to participate in federal agency decision-making..."

Jesrad Seraph [attendee]: even an italian citizen ?

Lawlita Fassbinder: "...180 federal agencies that pass 8000 rules a year about everything from air to water to seatbelts and anyone (regardless of nationality) has a right to comment. Agencies are required to llisten to those comments."

Jesrad Seraph: neat, here we don't even get to know what the hell they are regulating today

Lawlita Fassbinder: "But this process of citizen participation, which could be the greatest and most meaningful form of democracy, is broken. No one knows they have this right. When they do comment, they send in useless postcards or emails. Agencies don't have time, interest or energy to listen so government doesn't get the benefit of informed, thoughtful relevant comments that they need to write rules "in the public interest." Okay—that's how this idea was born."

Elizabetha Pirandello: they have interest if there is enough money

Lawlita Fassbinder: "Right, money talks, but that's not how it should work. We thought it might be useful and interesting and worthwhile to try to develop places for citizen participation and consultation for the next generation inside the virtual world. The Department of Transportation agreed. And we launched D.I. in order to experiment with the creation of spaces for deliberation and participation. Finally, we wanted to understand how we might do deliberation—the public exchange of reason - differently in the virtual world than in the real world
...
Lawlita Fassbinder: We REALLY want tour input and ideas and, more important, imvolvement in building this space."

Click continue reading below for the full transcript.

Left to right, Beth/Lawlita flys in and has a seat (click to enlarge)

"The Notary and Infrastructures for Agreement and Trust"

I'll be posting notes from all the sessions at this Saturday's series of opening events on Democracy Island. We'll start with Zarf Vantongerloo's session on his Nota Bene notary and mediation services in Second Life which have a presence on DI. The prepared text for his presentation, "The Notary and Infrastructures for Agreement and Trust," can be found here, or click continue reading at the bottom. I'm also looking for a full transcript of attendee comments and questions to post below that.

Democracy Islanders demo Zarf's notary process

Democracy Island Public Opening Day Schedule

Edited Friday, January 6th...this is now the final schedule. Hope to see you there!

Here's a schedule of who will be on Democracy Island and when for this Saturday's opening (January 7th).

Exact discussion themes and lengths will be left open-ended. They will be group conversations where you can meet people currently involved in island projects, find out what they're up to, give feedback, and find out how to get involved if you're interested.

Here's the schedule of events. Come ready to give input and shape island projects!:

•9 AM PST - NYLS E-Democracy students doing an open house exploring how Second Life might be used to provide general island functions of *Forming groups/subgroups, *Information sharing, *Group discussion, *Caucusing/proposals/amendments, *Voting/decision making, *Dispute resolution

•10 AM PST - Beth Noveck" - Democracy Island initiator, State of Play founder, Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Institute for Information Law & Policy at the New York Law School - on the Democracy Island project and her ideas from her recent paper, A Democracy of Groups

•11 AM PST - Peter Muhlberger - Visiting Scholar, University Center for Social and Urban Research, University of Pittsburgh - with Hiro Pendragon, Max Case, and Hank Hoodoo on bringing a Deliberative E-Rulemaking project to Second Life

•12 PM PST - Tom Lowenhaupt AKA Tom Ramona - New York City Public Official - with Hiro Pendragon on the 3D Wiki prototyping Landing Lights Park

•1 PM PST - Robert Van Der Velde AKA Justice Soothsayer - Professor of Administrative Law, Eastern Michigan University - with Ichiro Tokugawa on topics of law, education, and SL, and plans for Ichiro's virtual recreation of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS)

•2 PM PST - Randal Moss AKA RC Mars - Manager of Futuring and Innovation Based Strategies, American Cancer Society - and Jade Lily on the American Cancer Society's open call for the community shape their Second Life presence - ACS held a Second Life Relay For Life last year

•3 PM PST - David Rejeski AKA Nano Hauptman (Director of the Foresight and Governance Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center) on hooking his Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies into a Second Life interface

•4 PM PST Zarf Vantongerloo on his Second Life notary and mediation tools which have a presence on the island

•5 PM PST - FlipperPA Peregrine, Gwyneth Llewelyn, and Hiro Pendragon leading on a discussion on SL + the Web - A discussion about Second Life becoming a fully integrated 3D interface for the Web and how progress in that direction will affect the world and projects like Democracy Island in the short-, medium-, and long-term

Virtual SCOTUS and The Great Debate

Just visited Ichiro Tokugawa's recreation-in-progress of the Supreme Court of the United States on Democracy Island. Wow! Check out the pics below (click to enlarge). The virtual SCOTUS is a pretty intense symbolic environment. We'll use that energy as an engine for island activies in part by exploring The Great Debate questions from State of Play:

Is thinking about virtual worlds as distinct legal realms a misguided form of utopianism? Or do we need a transnational approach to make sense of the distinctive legal problems that cyberspace seems to produce? If the net is a separate legal sphere, where should its laws come from? What form of governance should it have? Will rules established and enforced within virtual worlds be entitled to deference from local governments and when? To what kinds of virtual worlds or cyberspaces should which rules about jurisdiction apply? Does anything about the medium of virtual worlds change the debate or what have we learned in the last decade?

Justice Soothsayer (SL name) AKA Robert Van Der Velde, a professor who teaches Administrative Law at Eastern Michigan University, is instrumental in the SCOTUS project and will be a point of contact for its uses on the island. Ichiro and Justice will both be on-hand for the January 7th opening (that's Ichiro, Justice, and myself, from left to right in the group picture below).

I wonder what pre-Internet judges like Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935—pictured with my avatar below in a portrait that hangs in both the real and virtual SCOTUS) would have made of things like the great debate and a virtual SCOTUS...

Save the Date: Saturday, January 7th, Democracy Island Opening

This is it: Saturday, January 7th (the first weekend of 2006) will see the public opening of Democracy Island. A full set of projects will be in place and in progress, and experiments outlined. Please set aside time to log into Second Life and join us for the kick-off. I'll post an itinerary here within the week outlining a full day of events, speakers, meetings, and demonstrations.

This is a prime opportunity to meet, learn, and identify issues with everyone together at once as all the prep that's been happening behind the scenes hops in front of the scenes and the island takes on life. I hope you can join us (and stick around) as we dive into the exploration of 3D worlds as civic interfaces and meeting places.