NMC Campus Observer

Mr Pixel Goes to Washington

CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine) : Mar 31, 2008 11:03pm

Larry Pixel’s real live avatar, Dr. Larry Johnson, CEO of the New Media Consortium (NMC), is trekking to Washington DC April 1 (no fooling!) to present testimony on the nature and state of virtual worlds before the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. Also presenting at the same hearing is Phillip Rosedale, founder of Linden Lab and the inventor of Second Life®. Also speaking are Susan Tenby, Senior Manager, Community Development at TechSoup and Colin J. Parris, Vice President, IBM Digital Convergence.

Witnesses will testify on the evolution, culture and future of online virtual worlds. These increasingly popular websites, such as Second Life, Zwinky and There, allow people to interact with each other over the Internet through virtual selves, or avatars. The hearing will explore safety issues and the use of real currency in virtual online worlds, as well as the growing presence of educational institutions, non-profits and other real-world organizations in online virtual worlds.

After learning of this invitation a few weeks ago, Mr Pixel solicited ideas and feedback from among NMC Members and NMC Board (and Emeritus Board members)– all of which informed his prepared remarks — which we have placed online in CommentPress form that allows visitors to attach comments to each paragraph- continue this conversation at http://wp.nmc.org/mrpixel.

You can catch the testimony live at 6:30 AM PST / 9:30 AM EST at http://tinyurl.com/2tzfup (note- the live video stream requires Windows Media Player- perhaps another hearing will enlighten our government on modern video streaming technology!).

Show your support by commenting today on “Online Virtual Worlds: Applications and Avatars in a User-Generated Medium”.