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October 17, 2006

Sign of the Times - View from the Top of World of Warcraft

This critical article by an ex-World of Warcraft player is a real sign of the times -- the kind of article that people will read in a few hundred years as a window into our particular moment in history. The author reached the highest levels of the game and found that it was ruining his life as well as the lives of other players. Eventually he left the game for good. His article details how the game ate up more and more of his time, ruined relationships, and created a false sense of accomplishment in players. Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for online gaming, but it is interesting and not necessarily healthy when people start spending more of their time, and investing more of their identity, in an imaginary world rather than the real one. Generally people who spend most of their time living out fantasies in imaginary worlds are called "crazy" -- unless they are online gamers.

Posted on October 17, 2006 at 11:55 AM in Games, Society, Software, Technology, Virtual Reality |

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Nova's Trip to Edge of Space

  • Stepsedgestratosphere
    In 1999 I flew to the edge of space with the Russian air force, with Space Adventures. I made it to an altitude of just under 100,000 feet and flew at Mach 3 in a Mig-25 piloted by one of Russia's best test-pilots. These pics were taken by Space Adventures from similar flights to mine. I didn't take digital stills -- I got the whole flight on digital video, which was featured on the Discovery Channel.

Nova & Friends, Training For Space...

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    In 1999 I was invited to Russia as a guest of the Russian Space Agency to participate in zero-gravity training on an Ilyushin-76 parabolic flight training aircraft. It was really fun!!!! Among other people on that adventure were Peter Diamandis (founder of the X-Prize and Zero-G Corporation), Bijal Trivedi (a good friend of mine, science journalist), and "Lord British" (creator of the Ultima games). Here are some pictures from that trip...

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