January 30, 2007
SOCIAL ANIMAL
Son-of-Copybot
A conversation with Social Autopoiesis, one of the first fully-formed interactive NPC avatars in Second Life. Best viewed as a Windows Media video here; low-res YouTube version here.
I got a clue from Dedric Mauriac, and found Social Autopoiesis sitting there on a park bench on the isle of Discordia. So I joined him, and got to talking, and after a time, he told me he was the son of Copybot. (Then again, he also claimed to be logging in from a leather bar in the Castro district.) Whatever the case, he's perhaps the first avatar-based, conversation-enabled, non-player character to enter Second Life-- a project stemming from libsecondlife, the admired (and occasionally vilified) initiative to create a reverse engineer version of the SL viewer. Making such 'bots as Autopoiesis possible.
Like any conversation with a chatbot powered by a limited database, dialog with Social Autopoiesis is apt to run off the rails, on occasion; watch this video, to see. (View with Windows Media player; intermittently ribald chat possibly not safe for work, unless you work in a steel mill.) Or have a chat with him yourself-- direct teleport here. Continue reading SOCIAL ANIMAL by W. James Au.
Posted by jo at January 30, 2007 05:33 PM
