Threshold Networks Jon Miller

Curiosity, pioneer spirit drive hypergridders

Simple curiosity and the pioneering spirit are driving the growth in hypergridding, despite technical challenges.

According to data from The Hypergates , the total number of travelers using their teleport gate system has more than tripled from 133 a month in May of 2009 to 471 last month – and these numbers do not include people who hypergrid teleport by using other gate systems, by typing hypergrid addresses directly, or by creating their own gates.

For many OpenSim users, the hypergrid is a new frontier both of exploration, and of technology.

“We are on the threshold of a major change in human civilization,” said Erik Gordon Bainbridge, an educator at Tamalpais Union High School District in Callifornia’s Marin County. “Virtual worlds are leading the way. We’ve barely seen the start.”

Bainbridge – who is also known as “Apollo Manga” – covers Second Life for Examiner.com and is the editor at Avatar Planet .

“I am using Opensim and the hypergrid for reasons similar to why I was a beta tester for the virtual world There in 2003 and why I was creating websites in the early 1990s — excitement about the potential of a new technology that I believe will change how we live, how we interact, and how we think about the world,” he said, during a discussion about hypergridding at the Hypergrid Adventurers Club . “I do it for the same reasons that if I had been alive in 1905 and had the means, I would have owned a car even though a horse and carriage made a lot more sense.”

The Hypergrid Adventurers Club was founded by John Lester, director of community development at ReactionGrid . Lester — also known as “Pathfinder Lester” — was formerly lead evangelist at Second Life. The Club has conducted more than 40 different hypergrid trips since last October, visiting such destinations as a virtual recreation of Pic du Midi de Bigorre astronomical observatory on NewWorldGrid , FrancoGrid ‘s China Town, and the the 1939 New York World’s Fair on ReactionGrid.

The virtual worlds are the new frontier of civilization, but there is one big difference though between being a pioneer today and being a pioneer during the days of the American frontier, said Bainbridge.

“You couldn’t be both settling the frontier and enjoying the salons of Paris and London,” he said. “It was one or the other.”

Today’s pioneers don’t have to make the choice.

Dave's Book Blog: 'Smart Swarm' by Peter Miller

This book analyses animal behaviour and tries to learn lessons for they way humans do things (especially in the business world). He considers ants, bees, termites, birds, fish and locusts. Some of his lessons seem contradictory but I suppose one wouldn't expect behaviours that have evolved would necessarily be the same in species that fill different ecological niches. Thus the haphazard way in which ants pass communicate and therefore manage the nest is very different from the way honeybees do. Foraging ants wander randomly to find food and then scuttle straight back to the nest, laying down a pheromone trail as they do so. Other ants follow the pheromones, laying their own. Soon the best trails are those most strongly marked with pheromones so the ant paths become marked. I have experienced this; if you disrupt an ant trail using an obstacle such as your foot which they have to go around and you leave that long enough then remove it the ants will continue to loop around the now non-existent obstacle, blindly following the pheromones. That might suggest parallels with business! Honey bee scouts search for great places for the swarm to hive and then return home and communicate with the others using dance. Lots of scouts do this, many checking out the places suggested by their rivals and then (maybe) and the hive then decides. They have a sort of distributed democratic decision making procedure. First the scouts possess diversity of knowledge, second the hive only swarms once there are sufficient scouts agreeing on the best place to go (a sort of Tipping Point concept). Miller explains the Wisdom of Crowds idea in terms of the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire 'Ask the Audience' strategy. Imagine you have to choose which person was NOT a member of the Monkees (A, B, C or D) and you asked 100 random people. Suppose only 7% know the right answer but 10% can narrow down the answer to a 50:50 guess and another 15% can eliminate one wrong answer leaving the remaining 68% to make a pure guess. So the right answer gets 7+5(half of 10%)+5(one third of 15%)+17(one quarter of 68%)=34%. The other options will share the remaining 66% giving 22% each. So there will be a clear majority for the right answer even though 93% of the sample guessed (to some extent)! But the key to true wisdom is to ensure a useful diversity of knowledge and that this is expressed.

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