The Imagination Age

Rita J. King and Joshua S. Fouts of Dancing Ink Productions joined Metanomics to discuss the roles virtual worlds can play in global diplomacy and business. Find out about governmental uses of virtual worlds and one of Dancing Ink’s newest projects, “Understanding Islam Through Virtual Worlds.” Beyers Sellers put Jane2 McMahon On The Spot about the Netroots Nation in SL event, and Roland Legrand closed the show with opinions on how virtual worlds dissolve international boundaries.


  Watch the Metanomics Archived Video Now!

Listen or download the audio. (MP3)
Read the transcript.
Read the Chatbridge transcript.
Subscribe to the Metanomics Feed.

Dancing Ink Productions is "exploring the vast business potential of the metaverse." Their mission involves maintaining a stable global economy. Accoring to their Vision Statement, "people are just beginning to understand the implications of creating their own identities and narratives and inhabiting three-dimensional versions of one another’s ideas to collaborate on their development. Dancing Ink Productions is committed to fostering all aspects of the creative evolution of the Imagination Age."

"Active participants in the Imagination Age are becoming cultural ambassadors by introducing virtual strangers to unfamiliar customs, costumes, traditions, rituals and beliefs, which humanizes foreign cultures, contributes to a sense of belonging to one’s own culture and fosters an interdependent perspective on sharing the riches of all systems. Cultural transformation is a constant process, and the challenges of modernization can threaten identity, which leads to unrest and eventually, if left unchecked, to violent conflict. Under such conditions it is tempting to impose homogeneity, which undermines the highly specific systems that encompass the myriad luminosity of the human experience."

A Special Note from Our Guests

Dancing Ink Productions would like to especially invite those residents and groups in Second Life who are particularly interested in expressing religious beliefs and exploring the diversity of human cultures to attend the Metanomics event, and also to join:

• Dancing Ink's Ning Group at: http://dancingink.ning.com/
• and the Second Life group: Understanding Islam

to be informed of progress and to contribute to the process of producing Dancing Ink's upcoming project.

Favorite Places in Second Life

• Al Andalus Alhambra
  The patio de los Leones

• IslamOnline.net Virtual Hajj
  IslamOnline.net Hajj Islam Islamic Muslmi non-Muslim Education Counseling IslamOnline Haram Mecca Mosque Ramadan Religion

• Brooklyn is Watching
  Brooklyn is Watching is a hybrid RL / SL art project. When you are here you can be viewed by visitors to the internationally known Brooklyn, NY art gallery "Jack the Pelican Presents". The gallery is open Thursday - Monday 9AM

• Ummah of Noor
  Al Salam Alikum :) Ummah of Noor is an Island dedicated to showcase the beauties of Islam and act as a haven for all the peace lovers. All are welcomed!

• New Babbage - A Steampunk Community
  New Babbage is a Victorian Steampunk sim based on the works of H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and Philip Pullman. Come experience life, not as it was, but as it should have been in the Age of Steam: The 19th C

Background Reading and Videos

• YouTube channel
• Dancing Ink Productions partners with Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs on "Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds."
• Featured in the New York Times
• From New World Notes: "Muslims and the Metaverse: Can Second Life Improve US-Islamic Relations?"
• "Video Game World Gives Peace a Chance" from the Washington Post
• Carnegie Council Launches "Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds"
• Dancing Ink Productions: Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds
• More on Rita King and Joshua Fouts
• IslamOnline.net
• New World Notes: Muslims and the Metaverse: Can Second Life Improve US-Islamic Relations?
• Dispatches From The Imagination Age
• Dispatches from the Imagination AgeFrom the Fire Pit to the Forbidden City: An Outsider's Inside Look at the Evolution of IBM's Virtual Universe Community
• CorpWatch: Big, Easy Money: Disaster Profiteering on the American Gulf Coast
• Power of collaboration: Manpower's First Anniversary in Second Life
• Information on Grady Booch

Guest Biographies

Rita J. King is CEO and Creative Director of Dancing Ink Productions, a company that fosters the emergence of a new global culture in the Imagination Age through virtual worlds. King is a Carnegie Council Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. For seven years while working as an award-winning investigative reporter, Rita's primary focus was reporting on corporate culture. This work culminated in her report, "Big, Easy Money: Disaster Profiteering on the American Gulf Coast," followed by a civil rights quest with the president of the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development across the Deep South to study the American journey from enslavement toward the possibility of true liberation. Rita recently completed a lengthy report for IBM, "From the Fire Pit to the Forbidden City: An Outsider's Inside Look at the Evolution of IBM's Virtual Universe Community," and her essay "The Emergence of a New Global Culture in the Imagination Age" was published in a book to celebrate the launch of the Transatlantic Network 2020, a youth leadership initiative spearheaded by the British Council to cultivate multimedia connections between young people looking to collaborate on tackling serious global issues. Peruse Rita's books and publications and read her blog for more information.






Joshua S. Fouts is Chief Global Strategist of Dancing Ink Productions, a company that fosters the emergence of a new global culture in the Imagination Age through virtual worlds. He is a Carnegie Council Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs and a Senior Fellow for Digital Media and Public Policy at the Center for the Study of the Presidency. Fouts has over 18 years of expertise in new technology innovation, international relations, journalism, government and strategic non-profit management and development. Since 2003 he has worked to help non-profits and governments worldwide (including the U.S., China and Brazil) understand and create a presence in virtual worlds and the 3-D Immersive Internet. His work has been featured in The New York Times, the Washington Post and NPR. Before joining Dancing Ink Productions, Fouts co-founded and directed the University of Southern California's Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School; previously he was director and co-founder of the USC Annenberg Online Journalism & Communication Center and in which he co-founded and was editor of OJR, the first Internet-based Online Journalism Review. Fouts spent half a decade at the U.S. Department of State (USIA) and the Voice of America launching numerous new technology and public diplomacy projects. He is on the editorial board of Place Branding (Palgrave Macmillan). Fouts is a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, and the Public Diplomacy Council at the George Washington University.