Entries will be critiqued by a panel of professional architects, architectural theorists and game designers including Harvard's Nathan Glazer, renowned public intellectual and author of The Public Face of Architecture; Anne Beamish, architect and professor, University of Texas; and Yehuda Kalay, architect and professor, University of California at Berkeley and others to be announced. Submissions will be showcased at the State of Play conference on law, video games and virtual worlds in New York, October 7-9, and form the centerpiece of a panel on public architecture in the metaverse. That panel asks: On the one hand this may seem like technical arcanum, but note that we all often pretend this point in our discussions and comments on Terra Nova and elsewhere.

Do you enjoy building things in a virtual world? Ever built a virtual house or terraformed a virtual landscape? How about designing public space for your metaverse? Maybe this public architecture resembles the public spaces of old like town squares, markets, transportation hubs or town halls. Maybe not. This competition invites designers and architects to submit examples of the best public, democratic or civic architecture in a virtual world.

However, the use of SPECT as a diagnostic tool is quite controversial and Dr. Amen has his detractors. To a skeptical observer, aspects of his pitch – his online ADD and Brain System tests or his failure to discuss the mechanisms that link holes in the brain scan to actual medical problems – read like quackery. But this isn’t the point. On the one hand this may seem like technical arcanum, but note that we all often pretend this point in our discussions and comments on Terra Nova and elsewhere. It is how most of us conceptualize a simulation.

(Witness the Justin Timberlake av which is offered along with a Cameron Diaz girlfriend.) But rather than using the celeb avs strictly as offered, WRR users tend to poach elements from them to customize their own avatar creations. Another interesting thing about WRR is that these tailored avs are also meant to be used as identity signifiers outside of the world as well, with tools to help users convert them to email signature files, mobile wallpapers and MSN icons. Forget elves and jedis. Now you know where to go should you ever feel the need to incorporate a little JLo or Paris Hilton into your next avatar look.

...The Sept. 11 post of “The Power of Conversation" leads to a critical point via a comment by David Weinberger: On the one hand this may seem like technical arcanum, but note that we all often pretend this point in our discussions and comments on Terra Nova and elsewhere. It is how most of us conceptualize a simulation. We talk to the illusion of a world with many concurrent activities and a speak least metaphorically, to the agencies that can live in such places (e.g. of Non-Player-Characters and Player-Characters interacting with shared world state).

Sure, there are different kinds of role-playing, and different intensities. Role-playing military roles is likely easier than cross-gender role-playing, for example. And yes we all do a little of it, even when not trying. Or rather we do a little of *something* without trying - we aquire a vocabulary, an accent... Wyatt's theory is that Role-Playing servers are really about acting: In many ways, what is at stake in Richard’s comments is not virtual worlds, but the same deeply traversed terrain that always comes up when in modernity talk about freedom, society and individuality, and our answers to the question of “Why can’t players be more free in virtual worlds” are likely to echo the kinds of things each of us might say about freedom more generally.

Sure, there are different kinds of role-playing, and different intensities. Role-playing military roles is likely easier than cross-gender role-playing, for example. And yes we all do a little of it, even when not trying. Or rather we do a little of *something* without trying - we aquire a vocabulary, an accent... Wyatt's theory is that Role-Playing servers are really about acting: In many ways, what is at stake in Richard’s comments is not virtual worlds, but the same deeply traversed terrain that always comes up when in modernity talk about freedom, society and individuality, and our answers to the question of “Why can’t players be more free in virtual worlds” are likely to echo the kinds of things each of us might say about freedom more generally.

Sure, there are different kinds of role-playing, and different intensities. Role-playing military roles is likely easier than cross-gender role-playing, for example. And yes we all do a little of it, even when not trying. Or rather we do a little of *something* without trying - we aquire a vocabulary, an accent... Wyatt's theory is that Role-Playing servers are really about acting: In many ways, what is at stake in Richard’s comments is not virtual worlds, but the same deeply traversed terrain that always comes up when in modernity talk about freedom, society and individuality, and our answers to the question of “Why can’t players be more free in virtual worlds” are likely to echo the kinds of things each of us might say about freedom more generally.

Sure, there are different kinds of role-playing, and different intensities. Role-playing military roles is likely easier than cross-gender role-playing, for example. And yes we all do a little of it, even when not trying. Or rather we do a little of *something* without trying - we aquire a vocabulary, an accent... Wyatt's theory is that Role-Playing servers are really about acting: In many ways, what is at stake in Richard’s comments is not virtual worlds, but the same deeply traversed terrain that always comes up when in modernity talk about freedom, society and individuality, and our answers to the question of “Why can’t players be more free in virtual worlds” are likely to echo the kinds of things each of us might say about freedom more generally.

Sure, there are different kinds of role-playing, and different intensities. Role-playing military roles is likely easier than cross-gender role-playing, for example. And yes we all do a little of it, even when not trying. Or rather we do a little of *something* without trying - we aquire a vocabulary, an accent... Wyatt's theory is that Role-Playing servers are really about acting: In many ways, what is at stake in Richard’s comments is not virtual worlds, but the same deeply traversed terrain that always comes up when in modernity talk about freedom, society and individuality, and our answers to the question of “Why can’t players be more free in virtual worlds” are likely to echo the kinds of things each of us might say about freedom more generally.