Peter Ludlow

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Western Philosophy
Contemporary philosophy
PJL
Name
Peter Ludlow
Birth January 16, 1957
School/tradition Analytic philosophy
Main interests Philosophy of language, linguistics, philosophy of mind
Notable ideas implicit comparison class
Influenced by Noam Chomsky, Charles Parsons
Influenced Jason Stanley, Michael Allers

Peter Ludlow (January 16, 1957), who also writes under the name Urizenus Sklar, is a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto. Before moving to Toronto, Ludlow taught for several years at the University of Michigan, State University of New York at Stony Brook and was Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Syracuse University and Cornell University. In the fall of 2008 he will take up a position as professor of philosophy at Northwestern University. His research areas include the conceptual issues in cyberspace, particularly questions about cyber-rights and the emergence of laws and governance structures in and for virtual communities. His popular books include High Noon on the Electronic Frontier and Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias. His professional books include Semantics, Tense and Time: an Essay in the Metaphysics of Natural Language. Ludlow participated as a member of the online community The Well, and also participated in virtual gaming communities such as Second Life and The Sims Online, where he took the character of an online journalist.

MTV.com has described Ludlow as one of the 10 most influential video game players of all time, in part due to his role in showing how video game companies can be challenged as part of the gameplay. In the most famous controversy, reported in the New York Times and elsewhere, Ludlow began a virtual newspaper called The Alphaville Herald and reported on events in the Electronic Arts Corporation online game "The Sims Online" -- including some blistering editorials against Electronic Arts Corporation and their failures at managing and policing the gamespace. Ludlow was subsequently kicked out of the game by Electronic Arts.

Ludlow (with the journalist Mark Wallace) has cowritten a book about his career as a virtual world journalist titled, The Second Life Herald: The Virtual Tabloid that Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse. It is slated to appear in September 2007.

Ludlow has been known to participate in what he calls "game instantiation events" -- in effect, these bring computer games to real life in some mildly subversive form. At South By Southwest 2006 in Austin Texas, Make editor, Phillip Torrone, reprogrammed a Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner to be remotely directed, dressed it in a green frog suit, and played "real frogger" on 6th Street in Austin, Texas. Ludlow has described the events as attempts to subvert the comfortable if flawed distinction between the real world and virtual reality, as well as challenges to suburban conceptions of street decorum in the contemporary United States.

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[edit] Education

Ludlow has studied with Noam Chomsky at MIT, but received his PhD. in philosophy from Columbia University in 1985, under the direction of Charles Parsons. His dissertation was on the Syntax and Semantics of Referential Attitude Reports. He received his B.A. in 1979 from Bethel College in St. Paul Minnesota.

[edit] Partial bibliography

Ludlow's publication list and curriculum vitae can be found here [1], along with a list of his Recent Books. Many of his publications are online

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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