guest lecture in 800-150 Internet Meets Society
Tonight I took part in a lecture in the new University of Melbourne breadth subject “Internet Meets Society”. Pete Benda is coordinating this subject, it’s running for the first time this year and they’re trying out lots of interesting delivery formats. The lecture was about virtual worlds. We ran it as a panel consisting of Pete, Adam Nash (RMIT) and I, with Pete and Adam in the UM lecture room and me appearing via Second Life. We discussed some pre-defined topics and took questions from students. At one point we went for a walk to one of SL’s rough neighbourhoods, with interesting results. To illustrate identity issues I logged in simultaneously as two avatars and pretended they were two different people for half the lecture. We’ll write up a lectures notes handout soon and I’ll put it here.
It was a big day – in the morning I trained up to the Mission to see the Rock Make Street Festival – several bands and lots of arts and crafts. I put a few snaps on Flickr.