METANOMICS's Second Life Monday: Electric Sheep Company Event

pic: June 23, 2008 Metanomics EventJune 23, taken by rikomatic

Electric Sheep Company CEO Sibley Verbeck will talk about the fortunes of ESC after Second Life, and the future of Webflock, which hosts the new virtual presence of the Showtime series ‘The L Word’ in January, 2009.
The Electric Sheep Company is one of the premier content creators in Second Life. The Electric Sheep Company creates Web-enabled social and virtual world experiences through strategy, design, production, and technology.

Second Life METANOMIS MONDAY EVENT, 24 Nov 2008:
Start: 12:00 [noon] SL time [GMT -8]. Israel local time 22:00. [GMT+2]
End: 13:00 SL time [GMT-8]. Israel local time 23:00. [GMT+2]

Get the Event for your Calendar here

About Metanomics
Metanomics is a weekly event featuring guests who discuss topics related to business and policy in virtual worlds. We have produced more than 50 hour-long programs which may be viewed in our archives.
The term Metanomics was coined in 2007 to describe the study of economics and policy in the "metaverse" of online virtual worlds. Today, Metanomics defines not only our sphere of interest, but also the growing group of people who are interested in Metanomics, and how we communicate these innovative concepts.

היום בסקנד לייף בואי עמדי לידי: הבדלי מגדר בעולמות וירטואליים? כן יש דבר כזה

Today in Second Life: come stand by me with Dr. Nick Yee

Researcher of the Day: Dr. Nick Yee , research scientist at the Palo Alto Research Center & Stanford University, California US, focusing his studying personal space and ethical issues in Second Life.

Dr. Nick Yee together with Jeremy N. Bailenson, Mark Urbanek, Francis Chang, and Dan Merget. collected data from avatars in order to explore whether social norms of gender, interpersonal distance (IPD), and eye gaze transfer into virtual environments even though the modality of movement is entirely different (i.e., via keyboard and mouse as opposed to eyes and legs). The results showed that:
Male-male dyads have larger interpersonal distance than female-female dyads.
Mmale-male dyads maintain less eye contact than female-female dyads
decreases in interpersonal distance are compensated with gaze avoidance as predicted by the Equilibrium Theory.

Nick Yee asked his undergraduate students to use avatars in Second life and to record the physical position of anyone standing nearby. The findings revealed that female avatars protect their personal space less than male ones, a sex difference that reflects behavior in the real world. Yee says he decided against having his students interact with other users, however. "That would have changed things with our institutional [ethical] review board," he told New Scientist. "We would probably have had to get consent from the users involved." Yee also believes that the ethics of experimenting in virtual worlds is open to negotiations.

Second Life event of the Day with Dr. Nick Yee: Watch Metanomics on NMC Campus in Second Life.

Relevant Publications by Dr.Nick Yee:

Yee, N. (2006). The Demographics, Motivations and Derived Experiences of Users of Massively-Multiuser Online Graphical Environments. PRESENCE: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments.

Yee, N. (2001). The Norrathian Scrolls: A Study of Everquest (version 2.5), [website], viewed 17 September 2008 http://www.nickyee.com/eqt/demographics.html


This post is dedicated to Ido Steinberger, the youngest DiGRA ISRAEL Researcher