Connecting First And Second Life

Slide 1: Connecting First and Second Life matt biddulph <matt@hackdiary.com> www.hackdiary.com 1

Slide 2: DOPPLR DOPPLR DOPPLR Where next? 2 Where next? I’m Matt Biddulph, CTO of Dopplr - the social network for frequent travellers. But I’m not here to talk about that today. Where next?

Slide 3: 3 quote: “The computing revolution was about digitising information. The wireless-communications revolution is about making digital information about anything, available anywhere, at almost no cost.” quote: “Huge amounts of data that were once impossible or too expensive to collect will become the backbone of entirely new services.” A disruptive change is occurring in the physical environment thanks to physical computing, pervasive networks and abundant digital storage

Slide 4: 4 Bruce Sterling wrote about The Internet of Things in his book “Making Things”. In it, he invents the work ‘Spime’ to describe the new kinds of active objects that are entering the world.

Slide 5: “A Spime is a location-aware, environment-aware, self-logging, self-documenting, uniquely identified object that flings off data about itself and its environment in great quantities.” Cory Doctorow, reviewing “Shaping Things” by Bruce Sterling 4 Bruce Sterling wrote about The Internet of Things in his book “Making Things”. In it, he invents the work ‘Spime’ to describe the new kinds of active objects that are entering the world.

Slide 6: 5 Spimes have a sense of place: eg, GPS A Spime senses other things too. It records, logs, broadcasts.

Slide 7: 6 Spimes are Identifiable. Spimes are Addressable, either ofline when interrogated, or over the network.

Slide 8: 7 An Internet of Things requires data mining and search \"I have an Internet-of-Things with a search engine of things. So I no longer hunt anxiously for my missing shoes in the morning. I just Google them.”

Slide 9: 8 Mature CAD/CAM tools point to the way to easy personal fabrication of objects. They will enable a Ctrl +P - Print for the real world.

Slide 10: 9 3D printers, enabling production on command. The physical world’s closest thing to the internet concept of ‘free, infinite copies’ Works well with open source - send a cellphone design to Africa and let them modify it for local needs

Slide 11: “A universe of Spimes is an informational universe.” Cory Doctorow, reviewing “Shaping Things” by Bruce Sterling 10

Slide 12: 11 Second Life is entirely UGC - it’s the myspace/youtube of 3D 6 million registered, 1.7million active users. 37,000 at midnight last night. Seocnd Life objects can: move, listen, speak, change appearance, record data As with “View Source” on the web, objects are “right-click to modify” We can use this to prototype the future of physical computing.

Slide 13: “Second Life is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all.” with fond apologies to Samuel Johnson and Linden Lab 11 Second Life is entirely UGC - it’s the myspace/youtube of 3D 6 million registered, 1.7million active users. 37,000 at midnight last night. Seocnd Life objects can: move, listen, speak, change appearance, record data As with “View Source” on the web, objects are “right-click to modify” We can use this to prototype the future of physical computing.

Slide 14: XMLHttpRequest 12 llHTTPRequest is the XHR of Second Life - for bringing in data from the web, and hence from the real world

Slide 15: llHTTPRequest 12 llHTTPRequest is the XHR of Second Life - for bringing in data from the web, and hence from the real world

Slide 16: llHTTPRequest 13 This is a Flickr mashup - pictures on the screen pulled in from the Flickr API

Slide 17: © IBM 14 And this is IBM’s far more ambitious project to integrate sports telemetrics from near-live Wimbledon games

Slide 18: 15 nature.com bring web 2.0 to scientists, in the form of: Blogs Podcasts Connotea Nature Network

Slide 19: 16 This science visualisation was produced with expensive software that is not collaborative. Nature commissioned me to bring the workstation graphics into the Second Life world to open up access to it.

Slide 20: 17 How to make a 3D Printer in Second Life? Start with this carpenter’s helper - like a t-square and spirit level that broadcasts its own location. My first spime.

Slide 21: 18 Moving towards objects that make objects - early prototype with the wrong maths

Slide 22: 19 Using Quake data as prototype objects, because it has such low polygon counts. Early 3d games are good for this.

Slide 23: 19 Using Quake data as prototype objects, because it has such low polygon counts. Early 3d games are good for this.

Slide 24: 20 Movie of the quake character being 3d-printed

Slide 25: 21 An ideal knot surface, supplied by Ben Laurie of Google

Slide 26: 22 The points of the cell tomogram we saw earlier

Slide 27: 23 A video of the cell being printed. People are sitting on it!

Slide 28: 24 Second Life client released as open source. I modified it to say ‘mattb’ whenever I pressed a key, to prove I could easily change its functionality. Coming back to this later.

Slide 29: 25 “IPv6 wants to transform everything in the world, even every part of every thing, into a node.”

Slide 30: 26 Atmel AVR microcontroller Disruptive technology: cheap and scriptable Compared to tiny Linux computers, it’s underpowered and has no OS. This is a good thing! Embed them in anything, fit for purpose, low power. Fingertip-sized Chip costs 3 Euros

Slide 31: 27 Embed them in clothing!

Slide 32: 28 Arduino boards make the microcontroller easy to prototype with

Slide 33: void setup() { pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT); } void loop() { digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH); // sets the LED on delay(1000); // waits for a second digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW); // sets the LED off delay(1000); // waits for a second } 29 Hello World - almost as easy as scripting Documented online Half an hour’s work from unpacking the arduino

Slide 34: 30 Arduino circuit board design is creative commons - make your own, improve the design.

Slide 35: 31 “If You Can’t Open It, You Don’t Own It” We modified a simple toy remote control car...

Slide 36: 32 ... to have bluetooth control. It’s a mess, but so was my first CGI and now look at me. This is software people making things happen in the physical world - “Right-click to modify the world” Now back to Second Life

Slide 37: 33 See http://www.hackdiary.com/archives/000101.html for video on this page

Slide 38: 33 See http://www.hackdiary.com/archives/000101.html for video on this page

Slide 39: “It’s getting to the point where it’s as easy to get involved in this world as it would be for you to go home, open Notepad, and start writing HTML” Matt Webb, http://schulzeandwebb.com/2007/hills/slides/?p=47 34 Matt Webb is wise.

Slide 40: The End http://www.flickr.com/photos/nadya/54670483/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/xurble/244671618/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/kengo/135795085/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevey/169199253/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/holyoutlaw/145168010/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/gavinbell/109491910/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/hammersley/160737149/ 35

Slide 41: Thanks to http://arduino.cc http://tinker.it http://v-2.org http://nature.com Matt Biddulph DOP matt@hackdiary.com DOPPLR 36