NASA Ames (in Silicon Valley) has hired someone specifically to work in the virtual world Second Life (SL) for the summer, on a project called NASA CoLab . He’s one of the first people I know of to be hired by a government agency specifically to work in SL, so I thought it would be neat to interview him. Here is my interview:

(More text follows the break…)

(This interview took place on July 10, 2007, via Instant Message in SL. I’m Troy McLuhan and he’s Cozmo Yoshikawa in SL. The interview text is lightly edited.)

[12:39] Troy McLuhan: Okay, so you don’t have to answer any of my questions
[12:39] Troy McLuhan: May I publish your responses?
[12:39] Cozmo Yoshikawa: Sure, unless I prefix a line with OTR

[OTR means Off The Record.]

[12:39] Troy McLuhan: ok
[12:40] Troy McLuhan: Are you a student?
[12:40] Cozmo Yoshikawa: Yes. University of Arizona, astrophysics and mathematics major

Old Main – University of Arizona

[12:41] Troy McLuhan: So you’re working on your Bachelor’s degree?
[12:41] Cozmo Yoshikawa: Yup, almost finished :)
[12:41] Troy McLuhan: One more year?
[12:41] Cozmo Yoshikawa: One more semester
[12:41] Troy McLuhan: What is the title of your summer position?
[12:42] Cozmo Yoshikawa: Colab Intern I believe
[12:42] Troy McLuhan: How did you hear about it?
[12:42] Cozmo Yoshikawa: An email came through on the astronomy department listserv
[12:42] Troy McLuhan: When was that?
[12:43] Cozmo Yoshikawa: Late March if I recall
[12:43] Troy McLuhan: Do you remember the application deadline?
[12:43] Cozmo Yoshikawa: Nope
[12:43] Troy McLuhan: When did you start?
[12:44] Cozmo Yoshikawa: Last Monday

[That would have been July 2, 2007.]

[12:44] Troy McLuhan: Where are you working?
[12:44] Cozmo Yoshikawa: Ames Research Center
[12:45] Troy McLuhan: So you have a desk there? Or do you work from home?
[12:45] Cozmo Yoshikawa: Desk for the time being, but I’m about to be moved, along with the rest of the team. Not sure where
[12:46] Cozmo Yoshikawa: It’s mostly a “mobile” development environment, I code almost everywhere and anywhere
[12:46] Troy McLuhan: But you come in for regular office hours?
[12:47] Cozmo Yoshikawa: I try to, but I work almost every hour of every day on many projects. SL work inevitable factors in
[12:47] Troy McLuhan: Who is the team you work with at Ames?
[12:47] Cozmo Yoshikawa: the “COLAB” group
[12:47] Troy McLuhan: How many folks are in that group?
[12:48] Cozmo Yoshikawa: Right now, about 5ish, I’d say. Most do other projects on the side. One member is full time Colab
[12:49] Troy McLuhan: What projects are you specifically working on?
[12:49] Cozmo Yoshikawa: Right now, building a 1:10th replica of Mars’ Victoria crater, a mockup of the ISS, and maybe a mission tracking center for space-based probes

[ISS stands for International Space Station.]

[12:50] Troy McLuhan: When will the internship end?
[12:50] Cozmo Yoshikawa: I leave for home august 17th
[12:51] Troy McLuhan: Why Mars’ Victoria crater? Is there something special about it?

Victoria Crater on Mars. NASA photo.

/>[12:53] Troy McLuhan: Can I say that you hope to build a replica of Victoria Crater?
[12:54] Cozmo Yoshikawa: Sure
[12:54] Troy McLuhan: ok
[12:54] Cozmo Yoshikawa: I think that would be fine
[12:54] Troy McLuhan: You can build the crater without data from the rover, right?
[12:55] Cozmo Yoshikawa: I could, wouldn’t be so interesting I guess. Its going on JPL’s land, so they have ultimate say-so

[JPL, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has a sim named “Explorer Island” in SL.]

/>[13:03] Cozmo Yoshikawa: but…. there is a scale model drawing package on the NASA site that the public can access, ON the record
[13:04] Troy McLuhan: Now a few questions about SL:
[13:04] Troy McLuhan: When did you first hear about SL?
[13:05] Cozmo Yoshikawa: years back, but never created an account until about 2 months ago, when Google released a “TechTalk” called “Glimpse inside the metaverse”. Look for it on Google video. So I am a relative newcomer
[13:06] Troy McLuhan: When someone asks you “What is SL?”, how do you respond?
[13:08] Cozmo Yoshikawa: “A virtual environment where users can simultaneously explore and build the world around them”
[OTR stuff]
[13:11] Troy McLuhan: Do you see a currently-existing viable alternative to SL?
[13:13] Cozmo Yoshikawa: The W3C has been working on virtual 3D standards, however, they do not allow the physics simulations on server, nor a collaborative real-time editing structure. (VRML and X3D)
[13:13] Cozmo Yoshikawa: The only think that has come close to SL is ActiveWorlds, but SL has far exceeded AW in functionality
[13:14] Cozmo Yoshikawa: So for the time being, SL is the best choice for what we are trying to accomplish
[13:14] Troy McLuhan: Okay is there anything else you’d like to add to this interview?
[13:14] Cozmo Yoshikawa: Not that I can think of
[13:14] Troy McLuhan: Okay thanks Cozmo
[13:15] Cozmo Yoshikawa: No problem

Note: The code he’s developing will all be released with open source licenses, probably NOSA, the NASA Open Source Agreement (not GPL).

Copyright© 2007 by T. Troy McConaghy.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License