Announcing online discussions in Second Life each Thursday during April.

Correction: the times have previously been incorrectly listed as GMT, all times are BST (GMT+1). Apologies for any inconvenience caused.


Pre-conference taster events exploring the conference theme Social Futures: Online, Mobile and Unplugged Social Networking. Open to anyone to take part.

Digital culture burns bright with a vision of being not in isolation but in groups, placing the relations between people first. Beyond the hype lies ever greater isolation and conformity. Join us as we go in search of the social.

A chance to meet other conference participants and explore the conference themes online before social networking goes 'unplugged'. Futuresonic 2008 will 'unplug' social networking in order to take the new social spaces apart, see how they work, and put them together in new ways.

Futuresonic Online Meets
SYLGRUT Centre, Second Life
Thurs 3rd April, 6pm BST (GMT+1)
Thurs 10th April, 6pm BST (GMT+1)
Thurs 17th April, 10am BST (GMT+1)
Thurs 24th April, 6pm BST (GMT+1)

Worried about your carbon footprint? Why not take part in the Futuresonic Conference online instead?

Can all visitors to the discussion please use open chat rather than voice or instant messaging in order for us log the discussions and debates for our archive.

For those of you who already have an avatar and some experience in Second Life you can find the Futuresonic discussion by teleporting to the SYLGRUT Centre (Capel: 40, 6, 21) or taking the following SLurl link...

SLurl link

If you are new to Second Life there a re a number of simple steps that need to be taken in order to set yourselves up and enter the Futuresonic discussion at the SYLGRUT Centre...

1. Firstly you will need to download and install the latest version of Second Life from http://secondlife.com/support/downloads.php

2. Then you will need to register an avatar at https://secure-web10.secondlife.com/join/

3. You can now open Second Life, enter your avatar name and password and make your first visit. Second Life will automatically provide first time users with a tutorial dialogue which is very useful, but if you prefer to go directly to the SYLGRUT Centre and find the Futuresonic exhibition and discussion you can open the following SLurl web page and click on the "teleport now" link.

SLurl web page

If you require any further information there are clear instructions and support pages on the Second Life web site...

http://secondlife.com/

Outtakes from week 1

"what led to the focus on this theme,is it because websites like facebook, myspace etc have become so mainstream?"
"no the original inspiration was that i gave up on trying to keep up with email, it felt like web 1.0 was crashing."



"can you explain to us a little bit about the UNPLUGGED concept?"
"firstly its about creating offline (unplugged) metaphors for online social networking, so we can understand them better"



"its about unplugging the social spaces so we can play with putting them back together in new ways"
"then its also a way to get people just to pause and reflect on what they mean about the 'social' - as they word is thrown around, and is a real buzz word, but what do we mean by it"