Kotaku
Stanford has put together a conference that is going to be running the weekend before GDC. Being held on the 16th and 17th of February, the aim is to bring together a pack of interesting and varied speakers to talk about (what a shock!) the 'metaverse' and virtual worlds. The list of speakers is solid and it looks to be an interesting event - registration is now open and you can find out more at the Metaverse U site. Full details after the jump:
WHERE: Annenberg Auditorium, Stanford University
WHEN: Saturday the 16th and Sunday the 17th of February 2008
WEBSITE: http://metaverseu.stanford.edu
Stanford Humanities Lab (SHL) is thrilled to announce the Metaverse U conference at Stanford University. This two day conference will be held on February 16th and 17th 2008 and feature speakers from a range of disciplines spanning industry and academia. Our lab has worked in virtual worlds for some years now and have seen interest in the space grow exponentially in recent years. We believe that the time has come for an event to tell the interesting stories from the evolving metaverse. The current generation of spaces is part of a larger historical picture and many lessons have been learned over the years. Our ultimate goal with Metaverse U is to create a broad conversation about the pressing question of what the metaverse should be.
Metaverse U's list of speakers includes Raph Koster (Metaplace), Brewster Kahle (The Internet Archive), Jeremy Bailenson (Stanford University), TL Taylor (The IT University of Copenhagen), Cory Ondrejka, Tony Parisi (Media Machines & Web3D), Jon Brouchoud (Wikitecture), Wm. LeRoy Heinrichs (Stanford Medical Center), Rebecca Moore (Google Earth), Parvati Dev (Innovation in Learning), Byron Reeves (Stanford University & Seriosity), Kari Kraus (University of Maryland), Christain Renaud (Cisco), Mike Liebhold (Institute for the future), Daniel Huebner (Doppelganger), Vladlen Koltun (Stanford Virtual Worlds Group), Howard Rheingold, Henry Lowood (Stanford University)
For more information please visit: http://metaverseu.stanford.edu
Registration is open at: http://metaverse.stanford.edu/registration/register-now
Comments
"Virtual Worlds" is like a new buzzword, and it seems awfully pretentious to me. Are all these intellectual types just talking about Second Life? As if it was something actually important? Because I can tell you that Second Life is pretty much a microcosm of the internet itself: give people freedom to do things and immediately get overrun by desperate corporations who don't know the first thing about it salivating to make a quick buck.
Remember the dot com bubble thing? Yeah, any day now Second Life is gonna cave in on itself as soon as it realizes it's nothing at all but companies selling things to each other and the occasional horny teenager looking for weird virtual S&M.
I know it makes me an illiterate moron, but every time I read Stanford, Metaverse and Conference I immediately fall asleep.
I guess I'm just not one of the great minds of our time.
Where is my Neal Stephenson? He kinda coined the term metaverse. I think it would've been nice to have him present.
Snow Crash!
If I remember correctly, either Juanita, Da5id, or Hiro even went to Stanford. Let Neal in!
I worked with some of those guys when I went there (not to mention, writing a thesis on virtual worlds). It should be a really interesting conference, although they usually get into a lot of non-video game stuff (i.e. MySpace instead of Second Life).
Fascinating. If a book comes out of conferences like these, I'd buy it.
It reminds me of a great book I came across called "we the media".
Neal Stephenson should be speaking at this conference..
and it shouldn't be held at Stanford.. it should be at The Black Sun..
Start a discussion:
Login with your username and password below. Or comment on this post via email.
Forgot your username or password? New User?