SciLands Virtual Continent

Next Tuesday, Dr. Richard Leach from the UK’s National Physical Laboratory will give a talk titled “Metrology: a tool to enable micro- to nanotechnology”.

Date:  Tuesday, 15 January
Time:  9am PST (SL Time) = 1700 GMT
Location:  The outdoor theatre on the sim named ‘Nanotechnology’.  Here’s a SLURL:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Nanotechnology/219/145/22

Here’s the abstract of the talk:

It is now fully appreciated that metrology will play an integral role in the successful development and commercialisation of micro- and nanotechnology. To this end the UK Government, through the National Measurement System, funded several groundbreaking projects in its 2005 - 2008 Programme for Engineering Measurement. This review will briefly describe the background of the research, concentrating on the technical details of the projects. Projects include the development of traceable instrumentation to measure thin films, areal surface texture, very low forces and micro-scale geometry.

Information about how to attend this event (if you’re new to SL) can be found at the NanoShow website.

Screenshot from the NanoShow on December 18, 2007.

Cory Ondrejka (formerly Cory Linden), a co-founder of Second Life who recently left Linden Lab, wrote about his predictions for 2007, grading his prognosticating record. In item 6 of his blog entry, he mentioned the science-based discussions held by the SciLands (although he misspelled it “SciIslands”) and Science Friday as an unexpected alternative mixed reality to presidential candidates using SL.

Thanks to Dr. Piet Hut (Pema Pera in SL) for pointing out this bit of buzz about the SciLands.

REVOLUTIONIZING THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEW MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS
Tech Museum of Innovation Calls Upon Curators and Artists to Embrace New Open Source
Creative Process to Develop Virtual Exhibits within Second Life

The Tech Museum of Innovation (The Tech), one of the nation’s premier science and technology museums, today announced the convergence of technology and art in the virtual world with the launch of The Tech in Second Life®. This
integration of The Tech in Linden Lab’s® Second Life has the potential to revolutionize the development of new museum exhibitions.

The Tech has built a replica of its San Jose facility in Second Life. The virtual Tech has been left empty to provide space for the development of new, virtual exhibits and educational programming through an exhibit design competition hosted by The Tech Museum. The virtual exhibits, contributed by talented individuals around the world, will be shared under a Creative Commons license and displayed in the virtual Tech.

Figure 1: The Virtual Tech Building

The Tech is especially interested in reaching out to exhibition builders, craftspeople, museum curators and artists who seek to extend their creativity in new ways and formats. As exhibit contributors, designers have the opportunity to team up with other experts who share similar interests and complementary skills via an online collaboration platform created by The Tech, www.thetechvirtual.org. This online collaboration platform will enable participants to find and work with others, access tools, participate in forums and view guidelines and tutorials.

Figure 2: A “ridable” virtual guitar.

“This is a unique and exciting use of Second Life and we are excited to lead this new initiative to revolutionize the way museums create exhibits,” said Peter Friess, President of The Tech Museum. “The Tech is using Second Life as an open source platform for content development, tapping into creative talent worldwide. I am looking forward to seeing the ideas and contributions that exhibition builders, craftspeople, and museum curators create during the course of this challenge.”

The virtual Tech, which can be found by searching for “The Tech” island from within Second Life (http://secondlife.com), will begin accepting exhibits immediately as part of an exhibition design competition around the theme of “Art, Film, and Music.” The Tech plans to replicate a number of the winning exhibits in its real-world museum in San Jose. A world-class panel of experts will review the virtual exhibits in Second Life, awarding prizes to winning projects for the physical museum. Winners will be announced in connection with the 01SJ Global Festival of Art on the Edge, produced by ZER01: The Art and Technology Network, in June 2008.

“The Second Life virtual world is an innovative forum for users to interact online and we applaud The Tech for utilizing Second Life’s platform to enhance the museum experience,” said Philip Rosedale, Founder and CEO of Linden Lab, creators of Second Life. “The Tech has captured the essence of Second Life with this initiative: leveraging the ideas of an entire community to build and create an experience for others to enjoy. I am confident that it will bring curators and developers together in an exciting blend of creativity, talent and interactive, online collaboration.”

Tours, general meetings, Q&A sessions, “Learn to Build” and “Learn to Script” sessions will be offered by The Tech in Second Life on a regular basis starting today at 11:00 a.m. PST. The complete schedule of events can be found on the collaboration web site at www.thetechvirtual.org, and everyone interested is welcome to attend.

The Tech’s use of Second Life’s platform to build, test and launch new exhibition content serves as a model and a hands-on opportunity for other museums interested in experimenting with new methods for creating content. The Tech’s experience with Second Life will be shared and open to all to participate in and learn from. To join thetechvirtual.org community or to find out more about this initiative, please visit http://www.thetech.org/.

The Tech worked with Involve, Inc. of Woburn, Mass., a leading developer of virtual worlds and interactive experience design, to build its island and create a replica of the physical museum in Second Life.

The Tech’s virtual exhibition creation initiative in Second Life is funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

About The Tech Museum of Innovation

The Tech Museum of Innovation is a hands-on technology and science museum for people of all ages and backgrounds. Located in San Jose, California - the Capital of Silicon Valley - its mission, as a public-benefit corporation, is to inspire the innovator in everyone. Through hands-on exhibits, educational programs, the annual Tech Challenge team competition for youth, and the internationally recognized Tech Museum Awards, presented by Applied Materials, Inc., The Tech Museum of Innovation honors the past, celebrates the present, and encourages the development of innovative ideas for a more promising future. For more information about The Tech Museum of Innovation, visit www.thetech.org.

We invite you to try out the National Oceanic and Atmospheric (NOAA) second island in Second Life called Okeanos. There you can hop aboard a survey vessel and map the ocean floor, assist in the clean up efforts of an oil spill, observe the effects of harmful algal blooms known as red tides, and explore a multitude of coral sanctuaries. These and other adventures await you at the SLURL below! Make sure to pick up a heads up display (HUD) before you begin your journey.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Okeanos/64/217/30/

Figure 1: Staring down a seal

Figure 2: Cleaning up an oil spill

Figure 3: Charting the sea floor

On Tuesday, December 11, December 18 (rescheduled), Dr. Kamal Hossain will give a talk titled “Nanotechnologies: Opportunities and Threats” at the SciLands sim named ‘Nanotechnology’. Visit the NanoLands website for full details.

Joel Garreau wrote an interesting article about the future of museums, titled “Is There a Future for Old-Fashioned Museums?” over at washingtonpost.com. He specifically mentions the Newseum, which is being built both in Washington, DC and in Second Life.

Welcome to the new home of the SciLands Blog. The old SciLands blog was at http://scilands.wordpress.com/ but now we’ve moved to an installed version of WordPress. Don’t miss the links to the blogs of our member organizations over on the right sidebar. Please let us know what you think of the new look.

Library - 1246 by Shifting Creations on Flickr Creative Commons

There’s a good article about government agencies getting into Second Life over at GovernmentExecutive.com.

Education World columnist Doug Johnson also wrote a nice “One-Afternoon Second Life Tour” on the TechProof blog, where he points to NOAA’s Meteora, the International Spaceflight Museum and Genome sim.

James Dearnley, who moderated the SciLands panel discussion at SLCC 2007, recently posted a link to this blog on Facebook. I’m taking the liberty of reposting it here:

Second Health and the SciLands is a comprehensive look at both the Second Health project and NOAA’s new Second Earth installation. Tara5 Oh (SL name) has written a very thoughtful and informative piece that covers the SLCC panel in Chicago as well as these two builds. Check it out!

zazen Manbi has posted an audiovisual recording of the SciLands panel, which occurred at 4:30 PM Chicago time on Saturday, August 25, 2007. Check it out.