Thursday, March 13, 2008

Dark Discovery: a promising ARG

Just little over an hour I ago Reuben Steiger, Millions of Us CEO announced the release of the worlds first ARG through his twitterstream. As already defined by Wikipedia, an ARG is:


"An alternate reality game is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants’ ideas or actions."

On the Millions of Us blog we find the introduction to the story:



2 weeks before the launch of the new Fox show “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” a website for an unusual company
appeared
. In their first video they claimed to have developed a tachyon camera that sensed faster-than-light particles and could therefore generate images of the future.


Their first blog post generated significant online controversy, with 53 posts suggesting ways of testing the camera’s capabilities. In their second video, the researchers followed the audience’s suggestions, taking photos of mirrors, newspapers, and cityscapes. The images they revealed suggested a dark and apocalyptic future.
Soon the audience became directly involved in the story,
digging up similar camera devices around the United States.


Finally, the researchers found themselves being hunted by a deadly entity seeking to stop their work permanently. The drama built to an explosive conclusion in the Sausalito parking lot of Enitech’s offices. Now that it’s concluded we’d like to show you a bit of it.


If you want to know more, check out Enitechlabs.com.


Introductions may look good, but the screening of the story may be disappointing. The preview though posted at the MoU blog looks very impressive though and may put the MoU back into the drivers seat of the mixed reality metarati:





The ARG is part of the new Fox tv series "The Sarah Connor Chronicles". Does the name ring a bell? Here's a little info on the show:



"At the end of "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," Sarah vanquished the Terminator sent from the future to kill her teenage son, John. Sarah and John now find themselves alone in a very dangerous, complicated world. Fugitives from the law, they are confronted with the reality that still more enemies from the future, and the present, could attack at any moment.


TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES reveals what happens when SARAH (Lena Headey) stops running and goes on the offensive against an ever-evolving technological enemy bent on destroying her life, and perhaps the world. Her son, 15-year-old JOHN CONNOR (Thomas Dekker), knows that he may be the future savior of mankind, but is not yet ready to take on the mantle of leadership that he's told is his destiny. John finds himself inextricably drawn to CAMERON (Summer Glau), an enigmatic and otherworldly student at his high school, who soon proves to be much more than his confidante - she assumes the role of Sarah and John's fearless protector. On their trail are not only threats from the future, but an intelligent and tough FBI agent, JAMES ELLISON (Richard T.Jones), who soon becomes a powerful ally."

The Enitech website and blog is supporting the show, being the official blog for the resistance. Read the blog to find out more about the Terminator machines, the SkyNet company and the show episodes of course. Here's an entry from the blog:

"Brief update in the wake of the Enitech tragedy

March 3rd, 2008

Enitech admin here again. As many of you have now heard, Enitech Research labs was destroyed and several employees were killed last week. I’ve heard a rumor that a media outlet was able to get a hold of video footage, an interview with Anna Kies, before her untimely death during the Enitech Attack. Hopefully this will shed some light on the many questions we still have in the wake of such a senseless tragedy.

Posted in EniTech News 11 Comments »"

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Monday, June 11, 2007

The Metarati and the Metapolitans

Lately I've seen the term metarati being picked up by several people and have seen a number of selfproclaimed metarati arise inside Second Life. On a number of occasions I think the term metarati is used inappropriately, so I'll thrown in another term today.

Metarati

When referring to the metarati I mean the movers and shakers of the web 3D that's coming about. These are the visionairs that are working on the metaverse roadmap, are creating new technology and are able to get investor commitment to explore new paths. The metarati are visionary technology pioneers.

Tish from the fab. Ugotrade blog also names them the mixed-reality metarati, which is an accurate combination as these are the people bridging the space from this world to the virtual one. Inside Second Life we generally consider Jerry Paffendorf, Electric Sheep Company's Futurist in residence, Philip Rosedal from Linden Labs to be members of the metarati.

For a full list of nominees see the Home of the Metarati.

Metapolitans

Metapolitans, (cf. metropolitan, cosmopolitan) are the metaversal citizens of the worlds created and envisioned by the metarati, the virtual worlds like Second Life, There.com and many others.
The metapolitans are not the casual visitors of these worlds, but the ones living a largely immersed life and are often travelling between several of these worlds.

Known examples of metapolitans are mostly bloggers like 57 Miles from Metaversed, Wagner Au, the 'embedded' journalist from New World Notes, or the ones at Prokovy's Feted Inner Core list.

one offs

Off course, there are always those that are impossible to categorise. Mark Wallace of the 3pointD blog has been named as a metarati, and though he has a strong influence in the public opinion on virtual worlds I'm still a bit hesitant to name him a mover, though he has my sympathy. The same goes for his wife, the fab Destroy Television.

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