The Obama White House's First Try At Second Life
Since entering the White House in January, the Obama administration has made use of a myriad of social networking and Internet communications tools, such as blogs, the YouTube video service and Twitter, to interact with the public.
Come Saturday, you can add a virtual world appearance to the list.
When President Obama, who is visiting Ghana, speaks to a live audience tomorrow morning, his speech will be streamed on Second Life and Metaplace. These computer-simulated worlds offer 3D avatar-driven environments where participants can use voice or text chat to communicate. In this instance, however, there will be no Obama avatar.
But the Obama speech will be accompanied by a virtual event discussion, which will feature musician and activist, D.N.A.,, Ambassador Kenton Keith, and African historian Professor Tim Burke. The guest speakers will be talking about the speech and its broader implications.
Although Barack Obama is arguably running the most Web-savvy Presidency since the emergence of the commercial Internet, the use of virtual worlds by the U.S. government predates his arrival in the White House. In fact, the United States State Department has been hosting virtual events for the last three years as part of its own public diplomacy push.
People involved in earlier State Department projects with virtual worlds say they were attracted to that kind of online venue because they viewed its attributes as a collaborative medium more favorably than alternatives, such as video conferencing or online chat.
At the same time, cyber historians will be taking notes. With the prospect of a large audience comprised of people from many countries, some watching, some also particpating, during the speech, the event holds the potential for being a ground-breaker-if all goes well, that is. (The White House
"The Obama administration is all about social networking in every way possible," said Tori Horton of the Annenberg School for Communications, one of the people who helped come up with the idea for the event. "It's a new way of reaching out to foreign audiences."
Metaplace founder, Raph Koster, struck a similar chord, suggesting that the virtual world format offers a slightly different way of engagement where outsiders can participate actively rather than by sitting back and watching streams." And the government is doing a lot to bring social media into its public diplomacy efforts," he added.
Still, this is cyberspace. In 2006, a Second Life interview conducted with Chinese businesseswoman, Ailin Graef, was interrupted when the virtual theatre where the conversation was taking place, got interrupted temporarily by an attack of flying penises. Looking forward to the president's speech, Second Life's CEO, Mark Kingdon, said the service has alerted its global support teams in advance of the event to help in case there are problems.
Separately, the White House said that it has been soliciting questions and comments for the president though SMS, Twitter, Facebook and African newspapers in the run up to his Ghana visit. On Monday, it will post video and audio recordings of the president's answers.
Come Saturday, you can add a virtual world appearance to the list.
When President Obama, who is visiting Ghana, speaks to a live audience tomorrow morning, his speech will be streamed on Second Life and Metaplace. These computer-simulated worlds offer 3D avatar-driven environments where participants can use voice or text chat to communicate. In this instance, however, there will be no Obama avatar.
But the Obama speech will be accompanied by a virtual event discussion, which will feature musician and activist, D.N.A.,, Ambassador Kenton Keith, and African historian Professor Tim Burke. The guest speakers will be talking about the speech and its broader implications.
Although Barack Obama is arguably running the most Web-savvy Presidency since the emergence of the commercial Internet, the use of virtual worlds by the U.S. government predates his arrival in the White House. In fact, the United States State Department has been hosting virtual events for the last three years as part of its own public diplomacy push.
People involved in earlier State Department projects with virtual worlds say they were attracted to that kind of online venue because they viewed its attributes as a collaborative medium more favorably than alternatives, such as video conferencing or online chat.
At the same time, cyber historians will be taking notes. With the prospect of a large audience comprised of people from many countries, some watching, some also particpating, during the speech, the event holds the potential for being a ground-breaker-if all goes well, that is. (The White House
"The Obama administration is all about social networking in every way possible," said Tori Horton of the Annenberg School for Communications, one of the people who helped come up with the idea for the event. "It's a new way of reaching out to foreign audiences."
Metaplace founder, Raph Koster, struck a similar chord, suggesting that the virtual world format offers a slightly different way of engagement where outsiders can participate actively rather than by sitting back and watching streams." And the government is doing a lot to bring social media into its public diplomacy efforts," he added.
Still, this is cyberspace. In 2006, a Second Life interview conducted with Chinese businesseswoman, Ailin Graef, was interrupted when the virtual theatre where the conversation was taking place, got interrupted temporarily by an attack of flying penises. Looking forward to the president's speech, Second Life's CEO, Mark Kingdon, said the service has alerted its global support teams in advance of the event to help in case there are problems.
Separately, the White House said that it has been soliciting questions and comments for the president though SMS, Twitter, Facebook and African newspapers in the run up to his Ghana visit. On Monday, it will post video and audio recordings of the president's answers.
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See all 21 Comments"Like President Medvedev and myself, you're not old enough to have witnessed the darkest hours of the Cold War, when hydrogen bombs were tested in the atmosphere, and children drilled in fallout shelters, and we reached the brink of nuclear catastrophe. But you are the last generation born when the world was divided. At that time, the American and Soviet armies were still massed in Europe, trained and ready to fight. The ideological trenches of the last century were roughly in place. Competition in everything from astrophysics to athletics was treated as a zero-sum game. If one person won, then the other person had to lose.
And then, within a few short years, the world as it was ceased to be. Now, make no mistake: This change did not come from any one nation. The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful.
With the end of the Cold War, there were extraordinary expectations -- for peace and for prosperity; for new arrangements among nations, and new opportunities for individuals. Like all periods of great change, it was a time of ambitious plans and endless possibilities. But, of course, things don't always work out exactly as planned. Back in 1993, shortly after this school opened, one NES student summed up the difficulty of change when he told a reporter, and I quote him: "The real world is not so rational as on paper." The real world is not so rational as on paper."
I could have sworn the US and NATO had a significant role in ending the cold war. Guess I was just wrong! Glad President Obama squared us away!!
My good, good neighbors are dropping like flies, losing homes, lost jobs and this administration is paying $600 million into Gaza? My neighbors are too old to start over. These folks have lived in these homes for over 40 years and we?re shipping U.S. Cash to Gaza by the truckload? WTH? How is one dime of this cash going to Gaza helping Americans? It?s not. We're gonna find out where this money went come hell or high water.
Have you noticed? You are carrying on a one man conversation with yourself? Is your life that bad? Or is it your wife locked you in the room again?
Our democrat governor just got some stimulas money and it all stayed in and around the capitol city where most of the votes are, can you imagine only the area where the democrats are the strongest is the area that got any money?
Obama is a failure, and the mass-media has no credibility anymore since the WMD fiasco and yet it continues to dig its own grave by propping up this corporate puppet of the British Empire of Worthless Derivatives and Credit-Default Swaps.
Obama is finished and should be impeached or at least forced to replace his economic advisors Larry Summers and Tim Geitner for not protecting the American taxpayer from looters like Goldman Sucks and JP Morgan.
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