Bruce Damer's presentation for Larry Lessig's Cyberlaw class at Stanford (Mar 2003), title: Virtual worlds as a public commons and the code of this commons.

1. Virtual worlds as a public commons and the code of this commons Lessig/Dibbell Class @ Stanford University (Mar 11, 2003) I. Origins of the visual interface II. Early uses of virtual worlds III. Evolution of dimensional and community cyberspaces IV. Key Question: Where do you want to live? V. What happens in a creative public commons? VI. Code of a public virtual world commons VII. Prospects for the public commons of virtual worlds VIII. Acknowledgements and Resources IX. Demo of environments X. Code and the virtual worlds commons - discussion

3. Visual Interfaces – Xerox PARC and elsewhere, 1970s-80s

15. What characterizes these spaces? They are all commercial and centrally managed Turnstiles to “theme parks” or “shopping malls”. The same struggle over the public commons is occuring in cyberspace What about worlds that are “community”, a public commons? Where in our society (US) is there an IRL (physically manifested) creative commons that is not behind a turnstile? IV. Key Question: Where would you want to live?

16. How about Burning Man?

17. Radical self expression

18. Group expression

19. Sense of total immersion through set and setting

20. Invented shared rituals

21. Right next door the “turnstiles” of Reno Casinos

22. A citizen-built virtual world commons Alphaworld (pioneering “accident”, 1995)

23. Worlds Inc,  user buy-out, IPO Neighborhoods of construction Succeed as a business?

24. User-created emergent social structures & activities - wedding

26. Building and Community experiments in Alphaworld and Active Worlds Sherwood Forest Towne

27. Learning Spaces Virtual walk on the moon with Apollo IX astronaut Russell Schweickart

28. Learning Spaces Virtual walk on the moon with Apollo IX astronaut Russell Schweickart

29. Collaboration Spaces – Datafusion “war room”

30. Collaboration Spaces – Datafusion “war room”

31. AVATARS Cyber-conferences Annual festival of the avatar commons “the Burning Man of Bits”

32. Avatars2001 a cyberspace odyssey

33. Avatars2001 a cyberspace odyssey

34. Avatars2002 a merry cyber party

35. Avatars2002 a merry cyber party

36. “ Serious” virtual worlds NASA Mars Mission Simulation – Life aboard the FMARS habitat

37. NASA Mars Mission Simulation – Life aboard the FMARS habitat

38. NASA Mars Mission Simulation – Volunteers modeled Mars from orbit

40. NASA Mars Mission Simulation – Drive on Mars – MER rovers

46. Example of code for communication at work in the Palace The Palace is not the first graphic multi-user domain ever created, but it is probably the least strict. Many powers possessed by the average Palace memberópainting, spoofing, nickname-changing, etc. would be reserved for wizards and gods. The way we decide to handle these powers determines to a great degree what kind of community we are. These powers have been given to all of us as a design decision on the part of The Palace Inc., but it is important to remember that it's all software; should certain powers prove unmanageable or harmful, they may be curtailed or removed entirely from subsequent versions. In a way, The Palace can be seen as a massive, progressive social experiment in which we are all participating. For this reason, I invite you to participate in the Community Standards Discussion Group at http://www.thepalace.com/discussion-groups.html .

47. Example of code at play in the Palace IptScrae 101: Use the Palace Script Language to Automate Yourself ; spoof somebody by positioning the mouse on their mouth ; and then typing "msay blah blah" { "$1" GREPSUB chatter = chatter MOUSEPOS SAYAT "" CHATSTR = } CHATSTR "^msay (.*)$" GREPSTR IF If you're into spoofing people (putting words in their mouths), this atomlist makes it a lot easier than using the @X,Y function. It waits for you to say anything that starts with the word "msay." When you do, everything after the word "msay" is sent to a cartoon balloon which appears at your mouse pointer's position. It then sets the CHAT string to (nothing) so that no one sees your original utterance. This is such a useful routine that you should probably keep it just the way it is.

52. The inevitable drift of cybersociety?

55. IX. Demo of Environments

57. XI. Bonus! (This has been a vision of cyberspace for a long time)

58. “ Escape” in Finite State Fantasies (1976) by Rich Didday

66. “ Moral of the story”