Normality

Why is it that in Second Life, where anything is possible,

we still yearn for mundane real world things?

445

On Partings

So, My Dear Friends, we have arrived at the end of another April. Winter has left and Spring is in! And as winter goes, so go many other things.

Lots of news agencies. Goodbye SLNN and Reuters and all those others who found out too late that Second Life is about a different kind of story. Or perhaps just not interested. To them our bickering were like the mews and howls of Centralia, PA. Interesting and strange to those big guys in New York or LA, but dull after many tellings. Seriously guys, we get it. Your entire town is rotting underground from massive coal fires. Move on already! Did you hear about swine flu and Obama's visit to where ever he was? Now that's news.

Not to mention that grabbing an audience is difficult. Choosing to run a news blog outside of Second Life is an uphill battle. Massive advertising is required to get attention inworld, and heaven help you if you don't keep your hands on the pulse and fail to update often. Or if you miss a big story. Or neglect to report one. Or neglect to go outside of 'looking up LL's blog'.

Running a newspaper inside of SL is as difficult. You get all the burden of collecting and editing stories with the challenge of cramming it into a notecard or prim book. The prim book may or may not rezz. People won't wait the two or three minutes for the pretty pictures to load completely. Large notecards (and large they will become if they are truly reporting Second Life) also are a pain to deal with. Once again, attention has to be earned and getting paid is one of those luxuries up there with my desire to own a house on the shore. Not having income kills everything dead fast.

I mentioned before that looking at a map of the grid is akin to watching the stars at night. Thousands upon thousands of islands dot the scape. If each of those had only one avatar that regularly logged on and used them, that's thousands and thousands of avatars. Each with their own little cliques and circles. Some stories may unify them all (such as banks buckling under or the openspace debacle) but each has their own story to tell and stories that they alone are interested in.

A metro area divides up into towns and cities around the center city. A city divides up into neighborhoods. Neighborhoods divide up into blocks. Each has their own cares and worries. That's why the Inquirer has special sections for Jersey and Delaware and the suburbs. It brings relevant news to its target demographic. Attempting to do the same in Second Life is a time consuming, if nigh impossible, task. Furries and War sims are two that come to mind (and indeed, were often highlighted in the former SL Herald). There's all manner of roleplay communities. There's the sailing sims. The art community. The devotees of Nunchuck. SL Pride. And so on. What a hassle to organize all that and the hottest stories off the Lindens and general community on top of that! And why bother going to a news source for that when you can easily gossip with the neighbors (after all, how big are some of these communities? probably not large enough to not notice what their left hand is doing) and check the Linden's own blog for news. Why bother?

Goodbye, dear news agencies.

Ginsu Linden left, and Robin Linden left just this February. That's the last of the Ancient Elders (the founding Lindens from before 2005 or so) and most of the current cast are the new guys like M. I find it interesting that I've been in Second Life longer than most, if not all, of the current Linden Lab staff. These new Lindens are forging their own path and forging their own new Second Life.

Anytime you shake up the management, the outcome results in changes. Lincoln's election resulted in a civil war and civil rights (at least, right to not be enslaved). Steve Jobs electrified Apple. My own university's late president, upon taking up his position as president, transformed our poor school from 'that ugly orange brick blot north of Market street' into an increasingly awesome college (albeit still ugliest in the universe, alas, some things never change). And with his own passing (ah, yes, my university's president, another victim of April), that ugly orange brick blot is going to take another turn. Hopefully for the better, as I'd prefer my degree to flow from an actual existing institution. Embarrassment would abound to explain how it came from an extinct and dead school.

Ginsu left, Robin left, Philip left. Torley's still around but he hasn't really been in the forefront for some time and is probably quietly churning out tutorials. Didn't he used to be a very public face to LL? I miss those days. Torley, for all his faults, presented a sappy happy image of LL and SL in general. And now? More or less invisible. There's Blue, too. He's around and ... um... doing things. I never really looked too close at what Blue does. He always seems to be around, though. A case of a Jack of all Trades. One of those Liaison style Lindens. Gosh, there were a million of those.

Also, you could argue that Philip is still around, just leveled up. The personal touch is gone. When he was CEO, he was THE guy in CHARGE. He seemed to have a bigger impact and greater direct control over things. And personable to boot. For as often as people would gripe about the direction of SL and blame Philip for everything, no one really hated him. Now... we have M. Like a minted officer out of MI6, M gives me this feeling of being more than he pretends to be. Oh, there's the funny 'diary entries' and 'fireside chats' about the brave new world he has had placed upon his shoulders and his follies with having a box stuck on his avatar's head, but it seems forced to me. I suppose he's a better politician.

And Robin? Hell if I know her direct replacement. Ginsu, too. I think that's another thing that's leaving with them. Recognition. Robin and Phil used to come in and greet us mere mortals, and in doing so grew a special kind of fondness from the populace. The new guys? Well, they do have their office hours, but those are supposed to be official business. Those get derailed, too, and hijacked by someone or other into some inane unrelated topic. And you only get a solid hour with the Linden in question, sometimes only that solid hour for the entire week. That special Aura is gone.

Add in that in our ever growing world, where the vast vast majority will never ever see a Linden ever, and the Lindens have pretty much become 'Those Guys'. You know, the guys at work who are really high above you on the hierarchy. You never ever see them but you do get emails from them and always with that faux kindness to a message laced with urgency or doom or something serious. That's the Lindens these days. Not an integral part of our world, but bigwigs far removed from us.

They are different from us. They are not like us.

Goodbye, dear Ginsu. And the Lindens who left before you.

Adult content is being herded off into a super special awesome Adult Only continent. It's official. You can read it on the main blog. If you have adult rated and adult themed (I like the 'adult' euphemism, by the way, I wonder if other adult things like the military sims or big business headquarters will have to move) then you better have the wagons packed and ready to roll. March off into your ghettos! This is SL, so do it with a smile. Take your sex and drugs off our grid, off this brave new world of ours.

And you'll be blinded out, too. Unless someone is age verified and has adult content enabled on search, the citizens of the main grid won't be able to find you. Given the previous verification fiasco, not too many people will be keen to register and have their hand stamped. In fact, given the only reason to do so will be to access adult content I can imagine it to become a stigma of sorts, similar to someone purchasing Viagra. Sure, it's for your pulmonary hypertension! We all know what kind of tension you're relieving, wink wink.

With this enforcement, we also enforce fraud. Heaven help you if you mismark your parcel, for you will be reported and action will be taken. There's a reason it's called a reservation. I can easily imagine LL stripping the offending content off your parcel if they find it misflagged. It might end up being abused by the vengeful like any other bannable reportable offense that's been implemented since the dawn of time. And what about the home? People tend to place home to have sex in them. If 'Mature' is a code word for 'PG sim with cursing allowed and nothing else', then by definition such homes will have to be 'Adult' rated.

In a way, I can't wait to see the result. Will there be a mass exodus, leaving LL holding the tattered remains of the original mainland continents, the tattered PG/Mature remains of ad farms, mini malls, and Mole roads (remember that Landlords will have to move if their renters are partaking in activities of the night)? The occasional art gallery will thrown in there too somewhere, I suppose. It seems such a case will result in the life of the grid moving off center stage behind the wings.

Imagine the seedy gritty underworld of the adult themed Second Life. A virtual Big Easy where anything goes! No worries about offending some silly age player or RL teen cause we're all over 18 here! People might register as Adult Only just to be free of the Disney-esque restrictions being imposed on the mainland. What would you report them for, labeling their land too high? Are you going to set up some third party regulatory body that will label each parcel without the owner's consent, like the movie ratings in real life? Because the main grid will indeed become like Disney land, full of art galleries and infohubs and fancy builds put up by whoever. Completely vanilla.

Considering the speculation that LL is merging in the teen grid (a useless gesture considering that de facto teens can register on SL merely by lying on a few of the sign-up questions for a freebie account alone), the old mainland will become Teen Grid 2.0. You know, earlier I stated that stigma may accompany those who verify, but perhaps the opposite will be true. Perhaps not verifying will label you as a stupid teen or kid. In any event, I can easily imagine the new adult continent as the most lively of the two partitions of the main grid if only because, and let's be honest with ourselves, a good majority are in Second Life for the mature content. Whether it's empty sex or a desire to find someone, the right one, fancy builds and nifty contests and events are more or less secondary to that. Maybe even integrated with it, a good date might be to a live concert.

Eventually, Linden Lab will crack down on the new continent. Teens will get verification through their parents, they can already get their parents to sign up and pay for game like World of Warcraft, and the Lindens will have to move to prevent the children from accessing adult content again. The true end will occur when OpenSims takes off and allows everyone to build their own grid. This world of ours will shatter into isolated universes that in all likelihood will be forever cut off from each other. There could be a 'wood between the worlds' concept a la Naria, but you'd run into the adult/teen demon again, because Linden Lab would have to monitor the gates to the Adult worlds and frankly why bother? It could end up as nothing more than a phone book, where you can look up which grid is what. That way, LL is not responsible for anything except the server code and their own Disney world, if they can manage to hold onto that. Can you imagine LL publishing a metaversal yellow pages?

Goodbye, dear Adult Content.

The Lindens themselves put up a Memorial garden for everyone who died in RL or just decided to get out of Dodge City. As I said a few days ago, it's kind of tasteful, if a bit bare and focused on a few. This was set up last year in April and now it's back again, as if the Lindens too realize that April is a cruel month. I think there's more to mourn than just those of our friends who have left and never returned.

And yet, onward we march.

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

Let's hope the lilacs of Second Life bred this April are beautiful.

Despair

I wonder if there is anything more crushing than the realization of how close one came to succeeding, to shining, to surviving, and then failing. Forever you stand in the shards of your dreams and accomplishments which, for all of their trouble and toil, are now utterly useless and pointless.

That tragedy envelopes and engulfs the faint glimmer of hope and you stand there, that glimpse of hope seared into your mind of what could have been but ultimately wasn't. For all the pain and trouble, you wonder why.

Down the long hallway I can see hope, but I can never reach it no matter how hard I run. So I am stuck here dreaming of what it would be like over there and wondering why I ever bothered to try.

Empty

As I was walking down the street one day after columns of rowhomes there was a gigantic gap in between a block. The steps leading up to it remained, but the actual building had long been demolished. Gone forever save for a few steps and two small pillars. No one pays any attention to the lonely lot over which these reminders stand guard.

No one even remembers when the street became one house poorer. Have we become so insensitive to the destruction that the memory of it fades so quickly? Perhaps they put it out of memory. It is a grim memory, after all, one which reminds us just how transitory our existence is. One day you are in the here and now, cherished and beloved. The next you are bulldozed into a grassy lot and no one glances where once you shone. Even now, as I sit down and type this, I can recall those who dropped out of high school, those who dropped out of college, those who left for out of state colleges or far flung lands and haven't called back. To me, they are something like this lot. To remember them is to think about this lot.

We all can remember the true landmarks of the land. Roman aqueducts and Greek temples still stand tall through the centuries. New York's gleaming skyscrapers stand tall as they turn seventy, some eighty years old. Even here, a growing skyline is erupting forth whose disappearance would last within memory. But this small house is lost and no one cares. It is just one in a sea of them, up and down the block for almost three miles. It is not glamorous or dignified or tall. It was just a residence, and now it is gone.

Years from now, it will eventually be noticed. And in that time, a more modern structure will replace it. It might be a new house, if the city is in need of housing stock or a private investor takes interest. Or it and its block could be absorbed into a sleek new building for the university, which is slowly encroaching to the south. And then there would be no reminders of this little place at all, nothing to trigger the memories save for this small photograph (and others, hidden elsewhere). It will not be remembered for what it once was, or what might have been, but simply a plot of land now occupied by a new science center. On the land where children might have played on the porch as their mothers spied them from inside and elderly rocked recalling the good times, and the bad times, there would now be only talk of research projects and where all the good beakers had gone and of tenure and science!

When I was a child, there was a tall tree in front of my little rowhome. It was impressively tall to a six year old, taller than any building I could see in Center City. In the summer, it would cast its shadow over the porch where one could sit and enjoy some water ice, and in the fall it served as 'base' when playing tag. Then we moved. Time passes. I went down there once. It was gone. The corner store had closed up. And the neighborhood contained its fair share of lots, of memories long since torn down. I could barely recall what some had once looked like, as a kid running down the street to school, joining the slow trickle at first, escorted by the friendly crossing guards, then the massive throng at the school.

And yet some of it was still there.

The most infuriating thing about such loss is that it is never seen. Or you never wanted to see it. You didn't want to see the haggard look on the clerk's face as he struggled to turn a profit. Or the foreclosure on the poor Chikofskis whose father was laid off. Or the city slowly pulling services out from under. The thunderstorm whose winds were just a little too strong for the weakened heartwood. Crime exciting an exodus from a neighborhood already on edge with reports each day of this shooting, that shooting. And creeping slowly as the years pass, fading in like a Polaroid (remember those??), the empty lots come into focus.

Not just a local phenomenon. Anywhere people get into stride and lose notice of the little things. A small forest where teens snuck in to cut curfew and drink alcohol bulldozed for a housing development. The pastor, sent off to a larger parish as the bishops say his flock is too small to warrant a church, the church itself locked into disuse. Dust gathers upon the head of Christ as the years pass. Dust gathers upon the head of the Virgin Mary as the homes come up and come down and soon the parishioners forget they had ever held vigils in the quaint little building. Everything fades into the background, and developers set their sights upon the holy site, prime real estate in the suburban landscape.

Even the intangible. The smell of the new car fades. The attitude changes. You get a feeling that perhaps you shouldn't be there. Something has changed, either you or it or them, but the fact remains that it has changed. There is just an indescribable sense that something that once was has changed or no longer is. Perhaps the worst, after all, there isn't any there there to pin down why. And yet it evokes the same feelings.

But the greatest loss is human loss. The loss of a fellow human is nothing compared to the material loss. The lot can be put to good use in the indeterminate future. Nothing can replace a dear friend or cherished family member. Nothing. Once that life has flickered onto the next plane of existence (or into nothingness, depending on what you believe), there's no replacing them. Except the pain, I suppose, for what it is worth.

Sometimes they are remembered throughout history. They become the organic equivalent of Greek columns or arching bridges or a small flag planted on a moon. They remain visible and stalwart through the ages long after their meaty sacks have rotten into the earth. Their names resonate through the years, sometimes with reverence and sometimes with disdain. Newton. Elizabeth I. Sun Tzu. Hitler. Just to hear the name and many can recall the lives of such people. While their presence may be gone they are not forgotten. Like the temples who remain even after most of their structure has fallen and their use abandoned, just their memory lives on.

But many, too many, are like the lot. Once gone, they are gone forever, lost to the ages. Unlike the lot, they are still felt by those left behind. But as they, too, die and fade, so does their memory. Until they are forgotten.

Wander a graveyard, and marvel at all the names of those beloved now forgotten. And like the lot, with its history hidden, one can wonder who they were. What they had dreamed, aspired to, loved, hated, regretted. All lost to time. All that is left is a name, perhaps a time span and a small epitaph, on a tombstone (which these days may be nothing more than a plaque embedded in the ground). Nothing more and nothing less. The name 'Jonathan Venti' evokes nothing in you or me. Just a label of someone who was born, lived, and died without making any waves in our universe.

I had to get up early this morning for class. There was nothing on TV except the morning news (checked the weather, then flick! Too depressing) and the History channel. The History special was on the USS Arizona. They showed the sleek white memorial, and the list of those lost inside. And I thought to myself, just who were those people? Who was Lieutenant C. T. Janz? Or Seaman C. W. Miles? Seaman first class D. J. Orr will only be known forever more as just one of a long list of names of those lost in one moment of time. I will bet even those alive today who served with them have forgotten them, either through the faultiness of memory or a wish to suppress a terrible experience. This is true of almost every memorial. Name after name, these people cease to exist and turn into objects, into a singular monument. We tend to think in the macroscopic of these people and forget the individual.

Perhaps in an attempt to unify our existence, that we shall be remembered not for what or who we are but what we contributed to or participated in?

For most of us, we become just a name in an endless list of names. Essentially forgotten. But at that one point in time, at death, it seems as if it will never fade. And yet, time marches on. We become forgotten like the empty lot. Our presence on this planet only noted by a marker. For some, there is not even that distinction. For some, they disappear completely. That is tragedy. That they should be lost with none to even mourn them is tragedy.

On the other hand, it is, perhaps, for the best that our memories fade. The pain also fades with it. Life picks up again. The seasons march on in their ceaseless parade (until the earth gets knocked out of orbit, or the sun explodes, I guess). If we spent forever lamenting what was then nothing would ever get done. We would spend forever reminiscing over what was. The past, rather than the present or future, would dominant.

Still, some remembrance would be nice. Just a little nod and notice that in this sea, this mass, of people are not just names, or an event, or a simple stone but a person. Individuals who had lives outside of their deaths. Some innocent, some guilty, but all humanity none the same. I think too often we reduce them down into an event in time, or an object on display. Just one more thing to gawk at while going about your way.

Second Life is no exception to this rule save for one regard. There is always the hope that the person on the other hand has simply forgotten about Second Life. They've moved on with their lives due to some reason. They are not gone forever. And that is one relief and a welcome difference from a dreary first life fate. The pain is still there of a loss, but there is hope that someday they will return, and then we'll all have a drink.

But there is still a pain there. Sometimes they don't come back. Then you're left out with no way of knowing (unless you've traded real life info) if they will come back. Then it mimics real life. Thousands of accounts log in, make a few friends and perhaps a few lovers, and then leave. Those who knew them grieve and then move on. Only a few remain as famous figures, names who echo across cyberspace.

One devious little trick might be someone dropping their account and making an alt. Those friends left would be sad, while that person left as an alt. Starax did this to a degree. For a while, people wondered where he had gone and mourned him as if he had died. Only he turned up later. Is he excused for pulling such a stunt? I do not know. I don't know him. It is really up to those who did know him. I do know, though, that I would be happy that he did return, in any form, even if some time later.

And what of those who create alts and never tell? That's up to them, I suppose. I met someone once who did just that. Someone found out, there was much drama. I never saw them again. If history repeats, as it does so often, they probably made a new alt account. I can only wonder why they would do so, but I am not them. I am sure their reasons are there.

Sometimes, you learn that the person on the other end is gone. That is harsh. I'm not sure how closure works then. Hold an inworld memorial? The distance between people who play Second Life is enormous in most cases (often between countries). There is no reasonable way to fly thousands of miles for someone who you have only met through a created avatar and their typings. Not unless you have the time and the money which are in short supply these days. They disappear. The most recent I can think of is Kendra, someone I never knew or met, but who must have been quite a person because the day she died every SL blog went into an uproar with an obituary. Quite a testament, and in the world of Second Life probably makes her one of the 'Greek Temples' who you hear about years later in the history books. Such as Second Life history books are, anyway.

And when you think about it, all you see of most of your friends is their typing. Just their words. Nothing more. One does not need to be a particularly good actor and most people are fairly competent writers. There's no face to read or body language to provide a tell. You could befriend, or even fall in love, with some fictitious figure who is the creation of a clever mind. I would like to think that most people would rather not open up rather than lie, but who knows? I think these would be truly unforgivable. Those I could judge. It is simply not right to manipulate and play people like that.

In a small way, you could say that the small faint hope of SL loss can be compared to spiritual beliefs in real life. There is hope that we shall see our loved ones in the afterlife, whatever it may be. The key difference is that while in SL this is sometimes outright known and occurs with regularity, in real life no one has come from beyond the grave. I think ghost stories are bull. And a belief in such demonstrates a true kind of faith to believe in such hope that has never been confirmed. It is, truth be told, very comforting. For my part, I wish it true even though the more cold and calculating part of me doubts. Perhaps wishing hard enough is the same.

In the end, a loss is a loss is a loss. There are varying kinds, from material to indeterminable to permanent human loss, but in the end it is all the same. Save for few cases, what is gone is gone forever. And while spending one's life musing about it is quite unhealthy, harmful, and a waste, it is fine on occasion to devote some small thoughts to the matter.

After all, in the end, we ourselves become another's loss.

Word Count

I have 130 posts. Assuming that each post is about 500 words long (a generous estimate considering my usual ramblings), that means that overall I have written some 65,000 words. That comes with some colossal error bars, since each post can vary in length, obviously, and none of them are jointed in any way, rendering the entire exercise of word counting (as if it could be complied like a book or magazine) useless.

Wow, I just killed a post before I even wrote it.

Circle the Herd!

Years ago, around the 1880s to 1890s (and perhaps a little bit beyond) Unions such as the Knights of Labour struggled to give the working man a chair in the board of their company.

The logic was that management at the upper levels was not profoundly affected by their own decisions, as evidenced by Enron. When things go bad due to poor CEOs, the Unions reasoned, the people who really get the shaft are the employees and wage slaves. They are the ones who lose the jobs when the company has to cut corners. And because of this fact, don't they deserve at least a chair in the room when these momentous decisions are being laid?

The problem was that this was a pipe dream for numerous reasons. The first was that the layoffs really hit into the portion of the company which was easily replaceable. If I fire ten high school drop outs, I can hire ten more at the drop of a hat. The workers had no real leverage to exercise against the company in question, since if you didn't like it, you were shown the door where you would see a line coming in waiting to take your position.

Then there was the other more emotional level, which was that there was no way those plebes are going to butt into our affairs. Honestly. Do you really think the CEO of GM is going to listen to his factories when he has to cut jobs due to the fact that no one wants his Suburbans? Look out for number one, after all. Plus you then have a conflict of interests, since the Board is trying to hold a business together while the workers want decent pay against inflation and some semblance of job security. It was doomed to fail.

And that's why you see the rise of Unions that abandoned this ideal. It was a compromise between an idealistic long term goal (the chair in the board) versus a realistic short term (pay raise). It also helped that many Unions switched to more skilled and less easily replaced trades, such as police or screen writers. People who have a skill you can't reproduce with any old Joe, Jack, and Jane.

Of course, some may argue this reduces creativity since you're going to see the same old, same old, from the schools and masters who train the apprentices. This isn't entirely the fault of Unions. The counter argument itself is something of an American dream, that to be properly healthy you need to give everyone a chance. Who knows, you might have someone who single handed builds a multi billion dollar Fortune 50 company. That we could have a Bill Gates (a high school drop-out, I believe) on our hands if we only looked beyond the pale.

Of course, you could also point out that such people have came and went and made their mark. We went everyone to be able to do it, though. Everyone including ourselves. And there is nothing wrong with that, because it's perfectly human to want to succeed and to want to see others succeed. I don't think anyone takes delight in lording over the homeless that you can afford to pay rent and have a roof over your head. The human thing is to try to help them out, give them a leg up.

As with the chair on the board, however, this is an unattainable ideal. There will always be not enough for everyone not matter how hard you try to share the wealth. And if you do succeed it's not sustainable because someone will try to take advantage. Someone will try to take more than their fair share, and others will follow his or her example in a desire to get ahead and you end up back where you started.

Unions look out for number one: themselves. Because if they went and tried to cover everyone, as history proved, they get nowhere. And to those who have the talent but just don't have the credentials (since Unions force membership, and of course the company itself likes to have some evidence you really know your stuff), it's an up hill battle. Those who manage, though, truly shine. One could say it's a form of natural selection.

Prokofy is horrified that the tech industry, video games specifically, displays similar solidarity. That they always seem to circle the wagons, especially when someone (in this case a journalist) challenges them and they perceive it as an attack. And that is where we see this trend towards unionism. They will naturally defend any of their own. I am not being paranoid, either. It may not be conscience, but it's similar to meme propagation.

Meme propagation isn't evil. It just is. It's a trait that slowly evolved in humans, because coordination with your mates is key and if you can't see eye to eye with them, you're going to be picked off by some saber toothed cat. And some memes (thoughts) are very good. For instance, I don't think anyone would argue that spreading democracy is a bad thing. I don't think anyone would debate whether compassion should be eradicated. Memes just... are. The idea of memes isn't good or bad, it's just a fact of life that people will ingrain themselves with whatever seems to be popular at the moment. For these people in technology, they are just defending what they think are destructive memes.

The problem is zealotry. It seems that people cannot compromise. Perhaps, like Unions, in the future there will come to be some middle ground. But these people, and those that push back, are seeing this false dichotomy of 'us versus them'. 'We're always the good guys, that other guy is nuts'. I think Dawkins dabbled into this idea that memes themselves follow a kind of evolution, where the information will fight to survive. And I suppose we can see that kind of thinking here. These people have invested time and money into it, and to watch it die is a blow to be sure.

What annoys me is the condescending attitudes of all parties. In the above mentioned case, tech blogs were calling for the journalist to essentially zombify journalism. Their conditions were an apology and a redo (like the past can be reset, heh) with a set of questions predetermined and set boundaries for ad libbing. In essence, they want to deny the very nature of journalism.

At its heart, journalism is investigating the stories behind the news. It is NOT what you usually see on ABC or NBC or CNN. That is called reporting the news, in fact, it used to be called reading the news. That isn't really journalism to me. True journalism isn't satisfied with the press release, whereas news reading would. Journalists are public and civilian detectives. These days, they have drifted into sensationalism, but the heart is in the right place. Some of the best journalism have found stories that have informed and helped the public effect change that otherwise would never have happened. This is not to say it's always good and pure, sometimes it has been detrimental and even harmed society. But nothing is ever black and white, and on the whole journalism is a good thing. It's even a vital rating in the United Nations as an indication of a healthy, good, and free nation by measuring the amount of freedom the press has.

Because of its nature as a meme intruder, those under fire naturally fire back. This is what we are witnessing here. The industry and its followers are fighting back at an attack. And their return fire is to make demands, OR ELSE. The question that follows is what exactly they are threatening. They are fighting back by passing word around and smearing and skewing the incident. The actual original cause of this incident was rather stupid in hindsight, but it was an intruder, it must be destroyed. This person, and what she represents, is a danger that must be stopped according to them.

And that makes me sad, that they cannot discuss the actual question, but instead attack the messenger. You would think if it was a stupid and easy question, it could be easily answered. I can think of a few instances where a very probing question could be easily answered by those under the gun. Why assault when you can defuse? It's ridiculous on so many levels. If the question warranted the level of disdain as they would have you believe, then what exactly is the big fuss? Wouldn't the person's acts speak for themselves as a reporter and earn them a reputation that isn't so nice? One can debate up and down the pros and cons of Michael Moore, but you cannot deny his films have sparked debates and new views on issues that previously were more or less swept under the rug and forced the 'other side' to reexamine and reinforce their arguments, if they had any.

Nothing is black and white. And as I have said, the initial question was fairly lame. But the response was worse. And the response will probably provoke more examination. Such is journalism, that when one of their own is attacked the rest circle like sharks.

Or nothing may happen at all. This kind of antagonism between older and newer media isn't exactly new. But what the internet has provided is a voice for everyone to weigh in on it. When television supplemented the radio, consumers really didn't have a say except in purchasing (in buying either a radio or a tv, which would reinforce the media of whichever). Now, on the internet, we are encountering something of a true democracy where everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, can voice their opinion and force memes and propagate them.

The problem in democracy is noise ratios. Take the United States. Look at the electoral college. In order to really force a change, one has to convince the entire district to follow whatever it is you're pushing. You cut out all kinds of fringe groups such as complete fascists or communists or anarchists, because those groups would really destroy the system, and what you get is a compromise between many things. You really have to campaign and think through a bill or a candidate, to determine the best for the most amount of people. There is a call to abolish the electoral college and have direct democracy. This would never work that well, for the noise ratio would be too great. It would cause division and less thought, since you now are just considering the base majority. And people can be insanely stupid. Direct Democracy, like Socialism, is a great idea in theory. Too bad people just can't keep it.

The internet is kind of proving the point. Ron Paul is an internet super star. If I turned and trashed Ron Paul on this blog, I would get nine million angry people wishing me hot fiery death. Yet, despite this passion and seeming majority, Ron Paul gets at most seven to five percent of the vote, which is about typical for a third party candidate of sorts. Ron Paul and his somewhat extreme ideals just do not resonate with the interests of districts and states overall. Ron Paul garners on the internet a greater share of supporters than McCain, Hillary, or Obama combined. According to the internet, he should be president.

But that is not what every district wants. Some of his ideas would cause some serious hurt to the economy. Bringing back the gold standard unleashes a hilarious can of worms. You either will instantly render lots of dollars worthless or cause high inflation as prices adjust for too much money being backed by too little gold. Gold itself is traded on the market just like the dollar, so I don't understand the argument that it would stabilize the dollar. There are reasons, you see, why things happen, and the abandonment of the gold standard is one of them. People do not want the consequences. Each district overall does not vote for Ron Paul. He may have the majority of supporters but in each district they sound off that they do NOT want his revolution. And so we come to today. By the way, I'm assuming he has a majority as that is what some folks on the internet would have you believe. The fact that he isn't getting back large returns is due to conspiracies, I am told.

There is no filter on the internet to help you determine who and who isn't credible. And the internet itself isn't exactly verifiable. I could make ninety blogs which all agree with me and to an outside observer it would seem I really do have ninety supporters. Hell, you can see this with campbots. Stores boost traffic, and people trawling for stores cannot see if it's due to camping or not. Some bots are clever and not easy to find which makes it much more difficult.

And this leads to a culture of suspicion among those who don't hold the mainstream internet values and try to cut the bullshit, and even to some degree those in the internet culture. Everything is suspect. You see conspiracies everywhere and you can never be sure if the person on the other end is really keeping his word or not. I used to get this all the time, where someone would believe that I had scripted my saxophone to spy on this, or that I would steal it back somehow. People, especially on the Herald, trash trust based business such as the (admittedly stupid) meta card idea and banks.

We have this culture of suspicion. And that is where we then encounter this unionism style attitude and the defensive attitude that follows. When you do hit someone who agrees with you, you defend them unto death. Or if you hit someone who disagrees, who's to know it's not a troll trying to incite an argument? The very freedom of which the internet is so proud is a double edged sword. There are reasons why some limits to freedom are imposed. They are a necessary evil, which in real life serve to protect the greater good (like the fire in a movie theater clause in the first amendment). SL, and virtual worlds and games in general, is experiencing the growing pains as people bringing this common sense idea into a formerly lawless and anarchic meme land.

If only there could be compromise.

Urban Mayhem

We think of cities today as high population densities, places where work and needs can be easily found. We think of limitless opportunity and success and concrete and glass canyons of downtown coupled with high crime and poverty in slums. Lots of people, lots of cars, lots of smog and haze. The best and the worst of humanity in six square miles.

The city today is a state unto itself. I believe there are more people living in New York City than Wyoming and a few other states combined. A city can be the majority of a state itself. Pennsylvania is described as solely Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Illinois is Chicago.

Is it sheer size that confers such authority and notoriety? Not likely. There are three cities in Texas with populations over one million. People can readily tell Dallas and Houston. What is the third? San Antonio, but you don't hear as much about it. Indianapolis has 700,000 people but most people think of it as nothing more than a football club. Clearly size, while an important part of a city, is not the sole determining factor.

An important question which may go into solving this question is what a city is supposed to do. Why is the city there in the first place? And this is really what makes a city. The most obvious answer is that above all else, a city provides a concentrated job market. People gather into a city because that is where the money is. As an example, examine Detroit. Not only is it positioned conveniently on the Great Lakes which are easily accessible through the St. Lawrence Seaway and other ports on the Lakes themselves, but for some time it was an industrial hub. People came to Detroit because the factories needed labor, and the people needed wages. Manufacturing plants converged on Detroit as a port for exports and as a rail hub for domestic business. Even before this, Detroit served as an importance crossroads on the Great Lakes. It was were the jobs were.

Compare that to Okely Township, Ohio. Have you heard of Okely? Not many have. Why is that? Because there's nothing in Okely. The only jobs in Okely are a small police station (fire station is managed by the county), the local school, and a shop that sells seven bladed razors and other assorted oddities. The people drive to other towns because there is nothing in Okely. Why do people live in Okely? Because it is peaceful and quiet. They can afford to live in a place they otherwise wouldn't be able to manage.

But some people can't afford that either financially or for other reasons. Perhaps for convenience. A fifteen minute commute by subway is much faster than an hour drive down an interstate. And that is where the city again comes into play. I'm looking for a job, perhaps I can't afford a car. A car is necessary to live in Okely. I can't live in Okely, or anyplace similar. So I find an apartment in a city. And the city grows.

There aren't any farms in a city. How will I eat? Well, grocery stores obviously. There you go, more jobs, more people, and the cycle goes on and on. It seems the job market makes or breaks a city. In these days, anyway. Cities today are radically different than in the past. We've seen that cities of today are hubs for employment.

But long ago, in the past, cities weren't seen as such. They were protection. A city would shore up behind a wall (which became today's concept of city limits and boundaries) and have some guarantee of safety from vandals, goths, and emos. Cities usually were the entire nation. Think of Rome. Or Athens. Jerusalem. All fortresses. Cities were the center of government and military power. In those days, they usually sprung around water sources (no aqueducts in those days, although the Romans pioneered the innovation) and so oasis, rivers, and lakes became the sites for most of these early cities. Sometimes this also doubled as a port which only boosted its importance.

Over time, it was realized that cities made terrible fortresses. Sanitation was poor. In the event of a siege it was worse, and food and drink could not be brought in. Some cities were starved to death by invasions, as Sparta did to Athens. With the advent of cannons, city walls were nothing more than symbols of defense, they became too easily breached. It was realized that cities were just too large a target and too hard to defend. Keeping the populace calm under a siege was all but impossible. And so we had the rise of separate forts and such, but that is tangential to our discussion.

These days, cities are jobs. Modern warfare dictates that you avoid the city. If you have to defend a city, you do so inside instead of trying to stave off the enemy at the border. Drag it out like the Battle of Berlin or Stalingrad. Terrible but effective.

As much as we'd like to think SL is oh-so-different, sometimes it follows real life, because what's good for the goose is good for the gander. In Second Life, sometimes things are different and sometimes they almost exactly mimic real life trends.

People wonder why SL has no large cities. And there are multiple reasons for this. The first is the limitations of the software itself. The most I have ever seen a sim hold is 80 avatars at once. If we adjoin four together into a box (with four corners), that means we can cram 320 avatars with varying results. There will be lots of lag and clients will crash. People will not want to stay. Look at all rentals. They are usually in quiet and smooth-running sims where a person can sit and do whatever they want in peace, far from the laggy clubs and griefers (which are becoming exceedingly rare).

And the other half of the equation is that there is no incentive for people to congregate into cities. There are no location specific jobs in SL. I can work on whatever I want where ever I want. If I have to build, say, a home, I don't have to travel and get lumber and hire workers and assemble it all into one spot. I can rezz the prims in a sandbox or on my land and slap it together right there. If someone hires me to script, I don't have to come to their shop and write it there. I don't have to ever meet them in person! I can shuttle it by giving inventory. And because of this you don't see people get together in cities.

There is a Linden sponsored city that follows the four corners idea and that city is almost perpetually deserted. Someone made something similar in Kissling with similar results. Cities in SL are doomed to fail until the software can handle greater amounts of people and there develops an incentive for people to gather as such. There is just no reason. And people don't want to be crammed, they want their privacy and peace.

Which is why I find it silly when people want to create a city in Second Life despite the examples mentioned above. I was at a Linden office hour where someone advocated using the new Department of Public Works to erect a new city for SL. It's doomed to failure. People will come to gawk at it and then it will be forgotten. Lost to the mists of time to be remembered only by historians and the occasional lost newbie. It's a waste of time and energy that could have been better spent elsewhere.

What would a city in Second Life accomplish? Nothing that would serve the residents. The Lindens want a city because as stated above a city is a landmark. It holds lots of people, and the build up it generates is a symbol of economic growth. The Lindens want a city for a trophy piece. Why do these residents want a city? Maybe they want to explore that style of building. Maybe they are urbanphiles and really want some street. The Department of Public Works is a salaried position, and the longer it would take to build something the more one would earn, and building a city with all the trappings of civilization could be a ceaseless task.

The Department of Public Works itself is something of a mystery as to how it will work. The Lindens have been taking suggestions on how it should be directed, but it has started arguments over whether to build infrastructure or content. One group advocates roads and park, and the other toys and such. What is public content? Building roads and parks and community areas would only take so much time and I'm sure it would not take long to pave the grid. On that same level, how can we make sure that the Linden approved content does not devalue the fruits of our labors?

Let's say someone in the DPW decides to make hair, so the newbies don't have to endure the default Linden hair. And it comes out beautiful. If the builder made a whole series of such as freebie content, you'd destroy the hair market in SL. Why am I going to pay for something that's coming for free? Anything these people make will destroy some small aspect of the SL economy. It would generate a mad rush as people try to get into the DPW just to maintain a living since it would be going around destabilizing markets. It wouldn't be some innocent newbie selling freebies. Newbies like that are chump change to the bigger stores. No, this would be like Anshe releasing tons of content for L$ 10 big (which you don't hear much about today, guess it wasn't that big a deal).

How would DPW go about making a city? They can't. They can make a build that looks like one and make objects that you might find in a city, but a fully functioning town is beyond their grasp. YOu just can't social engineer people into a city. It has to be a willing movement, because once you start forcing people into it, they'll leave. It won't be worth their time to be aggravated by the crappy fps they'd get in a city.

The DPW itself is something of an odd beast. As I said, no one has an idea of what kind of content to create. The Lindens ask the residents, and the answers are mixed. I think in the end, what is going to happen is that we're going to get whatever the whim of the DPW employee feels like at that moment. Heaven help us if one of them decides we need some more HUDs to make SL easier to learn. There's already enough of those to trip newbies up for the next century.

Taking polls from office hours is going to generate a limited view of SL in any case. The people at office hours are usually few, and usually the same crowd over and over and over again. Would you want me to dictate what content you'll see on your land? Because that is what's happening at these office hours. The Lindens are taking suggestions from these fifty or sixty people, and this is going to affect the entire grid of a hundred thousand or so people. I think a much better solution would be to do what they did for voice and have a poll when you log into Second Life. Put a box, and ask "What kind of Linden Lab sponsored content would you like to see?". That would represent the community much better than asking those few.

Linden Lab usually suffers from this lack of communication. They are working on it and it is much better than it used to be (when these kinds of updates would always seem to nail us on a Friday), but it's still a long way to go. I think the most important thing is we need to wean LL off this stupid 'community' idea. There are lots and lots and lots of communities. And don't hand me that "but all of SL unites into one community!!!1!" crap. That is like saying the Earth is a community.

I hear this crap from the Lindens all the time. "The community has spoken", they will reverently say, when in fact, no one gave a flying pig which way or the other. The only ones who cared were the seven dopes around the Linden office hour, so removed from the actual SL residents themselves that once, I think it was on the SLInsider, they honestly tried to say that only 5% or so of SL was about sex. The logic was that only the poseballs really were involved in sex. The bed, sheets, skybox, L$ exchanged for the 'escort', avatars, and clothes weren't made with sex in mind per se. And while that may be true (I highly doubt it), it doesn't disguise the fact that de facto they're being used in such a manner.

Once again, we see this fundamental disconnect from reality in Second Life. About the only thing the Lindens have nailed is ad farms. Ad farms were right to be banned. There is no freedom being stifled, because the definition is, I think, fairly clear and the only ones speaking up and protesting about this ban are mostly the ones who erected the stupid things for cash anyway. It's like complaining that the US government is taking away my right to yell fire in a crowded room, or my right to end someone's life.

The epitome of this disconnect with reality is manifest in their desire, or hope, or encouragement of a city in Second Life. They hold out hope against all the facts against it. Granted, they've laid off of the concept for a while now, because those sims are about as traveled as the oceans. I think that one four corner city they sponsored is pretty dead, and LL owns most of that land or subsidized it, so it cannot be making as much as land selling and tier on a normal parcel or island.

I wonder, honestly, how this Department of Public Works is going to play out. If the past record of Linden blessed things is any indication, it has a slim hope of any success.

Little Red X

Second Life, above all else, is a place I come to in order to escape real life and relax at the end of the day. If I cannot have fun in Second Life, then what is the point in logging in, anyway?

Sometimes my idea of fun contrasts with others. Case in point: I enjoy flying, driving, and boating across the grid even though I frequently hit and crash into sim seams, ban lines, and full parcels. To me, that's all part of the fun and excitement, wondering if the next seam will boot me out, or if that parcel is closed off. Rocketing across at 140 knots and trying to predict (or if it's your neighborhood, avoid) where the bad spots are really helps me calm down, it provides an outlet when I can't afford to go to the movies or out in general and television is boring and I get tired of reading websites.

I like to build things I want to build. Rarely does the thought "Can I make loads of money off of this" enter into the equation. I want a lighthouse, and by Nunchuck I will build one. Sometimes I give it away for free. Someone walks by, says to I "Hey, that's pretty cool" and I give'em a freebie. If I do sell something, it's usually because I'm strapped for cash or I sincerely believe the time and effort invested deserves compensation. The saxophone I built took me a month. It was a hoot to build, script, and create an animation (shoddy though it was) but with that kind of time investment, if you wanted one then you had to give me something in return. Unless you helped fund or build it, in which case I DID give it away for free (which rarely did they accept, I usually got paid anyway).

And nothing beats teasing people. The look and silence from a certain someone when you tell them you orbited seven people in their newbie community is priceless. Invert all the furniture so it's on the ceiling. Shoot prim babies into their house. Ah, good times. Nothing too serious, just enough to stir the pot and break up the day. I haven't done anything grid shattering in a long long time. I wonder if attempting to push a Linden into a river counts. I was well behaved at two out of three office hours in general, so maybe not. Plus, it was hard to push or shoot Blue Linden when he's sitting in a chair during the meeting.

I try to keep the serious business to a minimum. That's just not why I come into Second Life. It's an entertainment/socialization platform above all else. Almost all things in SL can be traced to this. 'Owning' land allows you to do fun things and host people without have the public intrude. The 'land' itself, while some say the representation is unnecessary, allows you to have some familiarity to stand one. Just imagine how disoriented you'd be and how steep the learning curve would be if we all just drifted out in some void like space rocks. Banning of ad farms and banks prevents the people from scams and ugliness (or at least the Linden definition) which in theory allows for more useful enterprises.

The problem in Second Life is how everyone defines fun. I've given my definition. Others have theirs. Griefers find enjoyment in crashing the grid and annoying people. Someone might see it as 'how high can I build myself? Can I become a Linden?' Like the game of Life, or Monopoly, in a virtual space. Some sit and chat and chat and dance and dance in clubs, never utilizing any kind of content or programming creation. It gives life to the phrase 'to each their own'. 'Your world, your imagination'. All that and a sack of beans.

Therein lies the problem. When one person's idea of fun is another's idea of not-fun, Second Life drama erupts. The most obvious example would be with griefers, but let's take a different route. Let's say I buy some land and use it as a factory floor, with prim parts and objects scattered about in the process of being completed into something coherent. Next door to me is a couple trying to recreate a real life Cabot Cove style home by the sea shore. I'm ruining their enjoyment of SL, I'm making a mess next door to their serene sunsets. And they ruin my use of Second Life, they complain and nag me where I cannot get any work done. IMs are exchanged and drama starts rolling.

I say this because there was an article on the SL Herald concerning why griefers are so abhorrent on the grid, and this journalist's theory was that they break immersion and snap people back into reality when sometimes they want to escape reality. They're just keepin' it real. But I have to disagree, because I think immersion isn't as deep as the writer would like to believe. Even the most addicted soul in SL acknowledges the two dimensional aspect of it and doesn't get hooked in like the matrix. No, I think it comes from clashing attitudes towards what SL is and the way it is used. Using the above example, I'm using it like AutoCAD or a factory while my neighbors are using it to chat, cyber, and enjoy scenery you can't easily get to in Alberta, Canada or Omaha, Nebraska.

This is really at the root of the problem. On one hand, you do not want a world of Forbidden Cities and red ban lines. In that case, you might as well opensource the grid and allow everyone to just make their own server away from the world. But you don't want complete freedom to go and do anything anywhere, that's just plain anarchy and everyone has a right to privacy. SL's growing pains and griefer troubles are the result of the Lindens and the several SL communities attempting to direct it into their ideal. They are struggling to find a virtual world where they can do whatever it is they are hoping to accomplish.

Sometimes unity is achieved by a shared loathing. Most people hate ad farms and most people were a tad disgusted by age-players. Most people were losing savings to inworld banks. This rallied people against these things. But you have things like camping chairs. Some people benefit from camping, the people who sit in the chair earn cash and the owner earns traffic. But to competitors, traffic draws away attention from their business and to sim owners it draws resources from their home or sandbox. Or look at the brew with the Department of Public Works. Should we build roads and parks or freebies and objects? And where should we put these? There is no clear rally point. Maybe, in the future, a strong position will form in one way or the other. People will rally about it.

Continuing from the original point, it seems most things are agreed due to a mutual hatred, as seen with banks, ad farms, and griefers. While this can be warranted, it is a true shame that we cannot seem to come to positive agreements more often. There is obviously always going to be conflict, but in Second Life we seem to allow debates to develop into skirmishes and wars with some parties being banned completely and drastic measures being taken. Must everything be extremist? I think if Second Life had to hold a Constitutional Convention on a Philadelphia island in a Independence Hall build (there is a Congressional Hall build out there, that would do too), we would never be able to draft a constitution. We would never compromise on any point. For everyone in Second Life, it's all or none. My way, or the highway directly out of here.

Some would agree that drafting a constitution would be dragging reality into what should be a radical new virtuality. Isn't that true of everything? When we create aliens, they're always two arms, two legs, a head with two eyes, a mouth, a nose, and two ears with some make-up to seem 'not human'. When we look for alien species, we look for water. We are always bounded by our limited perceptions in real life, and to be so aloof as to suggest that everyone would be as enthused as to challenge this familiarity is foolish. Such ambition will be better served when the server code is released. If such an idea were implemented, it better be some gimmick because I am not sure people would buy it. Maybe they will prove me wrong. That would be heartening.

And some cannot escape the confines of real life debates. Banks stand as one of the more glaring examples. You need to show LL an actual license and otherwise you cannot charge interest. Casinos and the ban on gambling. Age-play and child pornography. You have people striving to entice real life corporations into Second Life (although I would say the majority are opposed to this). You have arguments over capitalism and socialism. Weren't we supposed to leave all this behind us? Or is it like the visual? We require familiarity not only in the senses but in thought?

Sometimes real life intrudes for reasons beyond our control. Someone tiers down to afford paying the mortgage. A computer dies. They get too busy with work or school or romance and just do not have the time to visit their Second Life friends. Situations change as rapidly as they do in Second Life. There is nothing we can do about this. We can't support or force anyone to stay in Second Life, and those who want or need to leave should be allowed. If someone sits down and decides to leave, they're an adult and I expect that is their rational decision. They shouldn't be cajoled or coerced into coming back. That is a kind of selfishness. It doesn't mean we can't be sad or disappointed, but to campaign and scheme to draw them back is wasted time and effort. And in the event of its success, you have someone resentful, only logging in 'because they HAVE to'.

And sometimes people draw in real life for reasons known but to Nunchuck and themselves. Perhaps that is their hobby, to see which real life institutions can be drawn in. Ben Duranske applies real life law into Second Life, I believe he was one of the more vocal in noting most SL banks as glorified Ponzi schemes. Prokofy is constantly in a waltz with regards to resident government or Linden action or many many other Second Life things. Other people bring in various other realities. As I recall, there have been many attempts at socialism in SL. Governments and market systems, it's all been advocated in SL at one time or another. Politicians set up small campaigns or drop griefer cubes on their opponents' islands and builds. Somehow in someway, real life gets dragged in.

I don't think many people appreciate this. The Lindens are silent. Often, I think the Lindens are not really Overlords, or governance, or friends, or internet admins as much as they're just trying to make everyone happy. I don't think they want much to do with maintaining SL, they want to play around with their creation and goof around with their residents. Let's face it: governing the world is a drag. It sounds great on paper but it's been four long years for the Lindens, and the complaints are getting to them. If you've noticed, most of the recent policies have occurred in the seven months and I believe one of the earliest rulings was against copybot.

Ah, Copybot. Here you can pinpoint the slow descent into tyranny, as Intlibber dubbed it. Copybot is complex. It stole content but was coded somewhat legitimately. Linden Lab had to take a stand, to not act would erode the concept of intellectual property rights that LL so often touts as one of the main selling points of SL. So they found everyone who created one and banned them. Was this necessary? I do not think so. Why take the time to ban each and every incident of Copybot when it would be just as easy to change the code so as to render Copybot unusable? No bannings needed when the problem itself no longer exists. No, instead they decided to nail each on a case-by-case basis, and that only if anyone complained.

Age play was a kind of split. Some were using it for child porn and others simply as something different, as natural as Torley being a watermelon or some newbie being a dinosaur. I like to think many cases were innocent. But the allegations into it were too much and Linden Lab laid down the law. The joke is that the age players, like the Gors and Furries, tend to stay within themselves and so hardly any were reported. They went underground. Probably a moot point in the end as Linden lab forgot its own policy and everything is pretty much as it was. On a side note, one of the lame answers given by the Lab was that it was to protect the children (this was given for age registration as well). Doesn't anyone stop to think why kids are on the grid? Isn't that, I dunno, against the ToS? But I digress.

And that began the descent. But they are really caving to what the populace wants, and the populace wants immediate and visible action, with blog posts and reports on the police blotter! People were frustrated when it seemed like the grid was the Wild West and vigilante justice. Perhaps that is where a lot of the Linden jokes, and Linden cracks, and just a general tone of derision towards them. People got fed up. They felt abandoned.

So they turn and bring in real life to ease it. Admittedly, no one can escape real life law. As long as the servers are in the United States, they will obey US law. If we moved them to Canada, then we'd have to deal with Canadian laws. And someone, I suppose, has to bring some reality into Second Life and remind us of these laws, lest it be shut down while under investigation. A shut down would cripple Second Life and I do not know if it could recover. The economy is already nailed with rolling restarts and those do not even shut down the entire grid! It wouldn't be pleasant for all involved.

People, being people, will never escape their quirks and issues and faults. That is an obvious statement. If you're a self centered jerk, you'll remain one in Second Life. These are the kinds of things that transcend real life and second life. Can this be changed? Most certainly, but it takes a lot of effort that most people do not want to expend and time they do not want to waste. So we have to operate on the assumption they will not change. And where does that leave us? It leaves us with another real life method dragged into SL. It's called burning the bridge. We can only destroy the bridge. This doesn't mean we can't communicate, heaven forbid! But you shouldn't have to deal with them ALL THE TIME if you can't stand the person.

You are probably thinking about situations where you just drift apart, and that is fundamentally different. Interests converge and diverge and cross and separate, these things happen. The key difference between drifting and burning is that when two old friends meet after drifting, it feels like you've never separated at all. Just like old times. Burning is a definite stance, and you're polite but firm. You and the other person will just never work it out, and in the interest of both parties the lie should be dragged behind the barn and shot.

And sometimes this can happen when one person begins to have a different definition of fun. Fun changes. Two friends can have fun building their brains out, and then one decides to start going commercial with their work. Perhaps (all hypothetical) he goes overboard, and suddenly he gets angry when the other wastes time making pineapple launchers and candy cane houses, when the enterprise is in prim furniture. For weeks it will be strained and then they will come to a head. A bridge will be burned. It happens far too often to loads of people in this grid of ours. It happens in real life, but something about Second Life, with its lack of more human gestures and intonations (even voice can mess up what a person is trying to convey) it makes the situation worse as we cannot tell things that come second nature in real life. Is this person being cold and callous or attempting to do you a favor? You cannot tell. You can only hope they give you some clue to their intentions.

I think such things should be made clear from the start. Am I a means to your end, or someone you pal around with when everyone else is away? Tell me straight so I don't built misconceptions around our 'friendship'. Don't lead me along a string. I'm not stupid, and you're not a genius. I am going to catch on.

Perhaps, if the person wanted to make amends, it would help to try to self-examine.
What am I doing wrong? And pay attention to exactly what the other person is saying. Just what are they trying to tell me? I haven't listened before, let's open up now. Or maybe not.

People get too wrapped up into SL business. They need to sit back and meditate for a while. A friend of mine built a pool. She regularly just floats in it. Logs in, and floats. Tried it once. It is kind of mesmerizing, she did pick particularly life like floating poseballs. If only everyone had something similar. Just one day, go out on some Linden Sea in a boat, and just watch the sunset/sunrise in Windlight. It doesn't have to conform to my idea of relaxation, but just something away from the hustle and bustle. Running an event? Stay on schedule but allocate some time off. A half-hour at least.

They say that after four hours of instruction, your brain shuts down and you might as well go and get some rest after that. I am not sure if that applies to working as well, but an average work day is eight hours plus lunch unless you're doctor on call or something along those lines. But is there anything so pressing in SL that requires you to be on call 24-7? I don't think so. There is some truth to the saying "All work and no play makes Ruth a dull girl". Some time should be set aside for goofing around and taking it easy. If you have to, log off and go make some dinner. Prepare something extravagant. It's easy to do.

Just click that little red 'X'.

Political Power Playing

Politics in Second Life?

Uh, yea? There are politics everywhere. There are politics in your workplace, in your home, with your friends, with the meter maid who just slapped a parking ticket on your car because you were seven seconds too late even though they saw you running for your car.

The definition of politics is the interactions and processes by which people make decisions upon actions with other people.

According to this, by the strict definition, we've had politics in Second Life for a long time. You could start with Linden Lab opening up Second Life to the first beta tester (some would argue we're all still beta testing, but that is a story for another day) and started receiving feedback concerning the game. You had politics when residents began to bicker and coalesce and agree upon what to do with the land they were buying and renting. You could compile volume upon volume of books listing the political power plays between Joe Shone and Jack Black and their clubs/casinos/stores.

But that's me being semantic. They're really talking about real life politics as we tend to know them. Presidential candidates and political lobbies using Second Life as a staging area and center ring for their campaigns. And on this, I agree with them. Second Life has a shaky record with this.

Senator Edwards attempted (or was it his following?) to build a campaign in Second Life. It wasn't the main lane of attack for him, and in fact it was rather small and isolated. Hardly anyone noticed when it came and when it folded. It was halfway sabotaged when a group of griefers set up a similar build advocating a psychic with a similar last name (Edward as opposed to Edwards). I haven't seen or heard much of any other potential candidate (save for Ron Paul, but does he really count?) starting anything in Second Life. I've seen a few lobbies for upholding the Second Amendment or urging action against global warming, but again nothing with too much momentum.

I think hoping for this kind of thing in Second Life is fatally flawed in two ways. To think that anyone could consider Second Life for a penetrating campaign is hopeless. The grid is too suburban and sprawling, and news in Second Life itself is sketchy, that the message does not get very far. Even in the extremely unlikely event you reached every single Second Life resident, you would only reach anywhere between 200,000 to 300,000 residents (I believe the 500,000 is far too optimistic. I think the actual number, accounting for alts and one month wonders, is actually somewhere between 275,000 to 312,500 residents but I'm low balling here). 300,000 is only about the size of Cincinnati. Consider also that this is spread across the world. Only half of the recipients of your message may be Americans and able to vote for you and possibly your lobby. If I'm French, I might care who becomes President but I'm not going to be able to do much about it. I might even hurt the campaign if I try to help it (since Americans are notorious for often deliberately voting against world opinion). You're just not going to reach many people and many are just not going to care.

The other problem is that people really will not care. Most come into Second Life to relax, socialize, build, and hang out with friends. They want to escape these kinds of pressing world issues and political maneuverings of real life. We already have enough problems with ad farms, right? When the people of Second Life can barely motivate themselves for forcing Linden Lab to reexamine its policies in Second Life or organizing to strike a blow against a resident grabbing power, why should they be expected to take interest in actual politics? Are you really going to garner the support of Dave Triskaidekaphobia, who is only really interested in finding a house and some gorean slaves? I do not hold much hope that it would. The corporate builds ran into this some times ago. Why go to Pontiac or AOL island, when the average resident is going to buy neither of these products? The average resident isn't interested in either. They're running on a cable connection and using Skype rather than AIM, and vehicles in Second Life can be found for free and are useless considering teleportation and poor sim crossings. The interest is just not there.

These are ingrained into Second Life itself and will not be easily changed. Personally, I would not like to see it changed. I'd much rather see Second Life take its own course than to have it become little more than a giant political ad paid for by some presidential or congressional hopeful.

But that's not up to me, is it?

Shutters Open

The Lindens decide to rip an idea I started on this blog but haven't really ever utilized. That is, they're taking down stories of residents. Okay, maybe not my original idea, as the Second Life Insider was doing blurbs long before I even registered an account. But nonetheless, the Lindens realize today that they'd like to hear from the residents themselves what kind of Second Life they've lived.

Only...

They don't, really. They want to hear about people who have done great things. The movers and shakers. They want the big names. Oh, I know they say that they'll keep an eye out for the little guy, but in the casting call in the first paragraph, they list off professions of what they're looking to publish. Builders. Architects. Fashionistas. Guess what they are going to focus upon. Yeah, those who have made an impact. They don't want to hear about John Doe who made a bandanna or Janet Smith who streams her own concerts every so often. They are looking for Masterful Escapes or Bill&Pams.

And there is nothing wrong with that. But it's just a little lop-sided. Because the overwhelming majority in Second Life is the humble consumer. They are the people who shape what we make and produce in SL. If they don't like it, it ain't moving. The average consumer themselves might build or do whatever on the side to earn a few L$ without dumping some dollars into SL to buy their prim penis or fancy new dress. It's not weird and wacky, but it's not supposed to be. This is what Second Life is made out of, and to feed the press these stories of the few who made a giant rideable praying mantis as if it were the norm is a tad dishonest.

They also require you to write the entire piece on your own. And give your real life name. How many people would do so? At least a quarter of those in SL are rather shy and protective of their RL info and are reluctant to give a RL name at all. For them, SL is a separate entity that isn't supposed to infringe on real life. They don't want to go do their nine-to-five real life job and have someone come down and say, "Hey, you're RainyDay Boxby! I love that de-Ruther you made!" For them, it's an escape and their stories are one of that escape from real life and into this medium such as it is. I should clarify: they also want real life contact info. So not only would your real life name get out there but your address, email, and phone numbers would all be out there at the mercy of the Lindens just for some recognition of the fact that you made a unique new way to build a canoe.

Their questions are rather generic and blah too. "How did you find out about Second Life?" Okay, why does this matter? They came here, didn't they? This is something more for research into where to place more advertising budgets for better investments, not for taking down the stories of a resident. " What were your original goals when you became a part of Second Life?" It's almost always 'I wanted to check it out'. No one comes into Second Life with a determined goal unless they had a friend drag them into it. No one knows what to expect of it and they just pop in to see exactly what is going down in it. " How many Residents frequent your island/business? Daily? Monthly?" The first part of this question is reasonable enough, just look at the traffic rating on your land. But daily and monthly statistics? Who keeps track of that? It's possible but pointless unless you plan on running a hard business. Just like it's possible to calculate the acceleration of a speeding car, but to a cop that's pointless when all he has to know is that you were over the speed limit.

"How do you measure your success in-world? Is it by money or another means?" " What do you hope to achieve in-world?" These are the same thing. They could have eliminated one or the other. They both ask what kind of goals you set for yourself. Hey, let's put this set of questions into it: "What do you think makes Second Life interesting?" "What keeps you coming back into Second Life?" Same thing. Asking for what people see as success will yield very generic answers, by the way. It will invariably fall into "Yes, I make lots of money and/or support myself entirely from inworld", "I have lots of friends and have learned a lot from them", or "I made lots of kool stuff". You're not going to get very in depth answers here. It's like the questions and answers in a Miss America pageant.

Speaking of which, why did they need to include a giant list of questions, anyway? They say you don't have to answer everything, but in reality, people will feel they have to and so fill it with quick sentences or anything that sounds good on paper. It says the more info you give the more likely you'll 'win' and get mentioned as the story of the week, so people will fill out the questionnaire instead of using it as the general guideline it was probably intended to be.

In the end, this will turn out something like the Herald's Post Sixx articles. The person featured will get pilloried by the audience for being too bland or too obnoxious or being a jerk or out of jealously and half a million other reasons. I sincerely hope it doesn't turn out this way, I hope I am dead wrong. But only time will tell.

Personally, I think (and this is only my opinion) that if they wanted to really get some stories down, they should get a few of the PR Lindens alts and have them walk around night clubs and through the landscape with a notepad. You can't take a person's picture by handing them some film. You have to have it in the camera, have the shutters open. That's how you get a portrait. News in SL travels primarily through word of mouth. If you hang out in a club for even three days you will hear some of the lesser known but trusted individuals, the guys who make good and cheap prim furniture or renowned for DJing birthday parties for tips only. Then, you take a snapshot (embedded in the client itself!) and you interview them and get them to loosen their lips. Chat them up. If you have to, follow them around for a day or two and get a real feel for what they are instead of having them answer some silly questions in two lines each.

Why do businesses interview people instead of just having them fill out a questionnaire? So they can get a feel for the person behind the resume and find out if they really are enthused about this position, if they will be an annoying jerk to work with, and much more. That's how it gets down in real life. If I do a biography on Clinton, I'm going to interview the man in person rather than email him a list of generic questions. Their method is going to flood them with an extremely large load of mail, which may or may not be useful as a jumping board to find more interesting subjects. They could avoided this problem by just being with the residents, numerous though they may be.

And then, with your shutters open and pen in hand, then you'll get some stories.

An Essay On The Feasibility Of Comprehension

Many arguments have been proposed on this topic, and many more will still to come. I will explore this subject with utter indifference and complete disregard for any possible scientific basis and evidence to the contrary of my findings which themselves are not supported by any evidence either real or imagined. I invite the reader to accept everything I say, in whole, in the merits of what I have and have not said.

First, I must present the reader with arguments against my thesis, for without dismissing these challenges out of hand I cannot possibly proceed, and it is best to eliminate these nay sayers now while the time is ripe, indeed, first impressions are the best and so we must come upon this unfortunate subject. We cannot ignore, also, the effects of the modern cable modem upon the cathode ray tube, superficially those effects which proceed unnoticed.

The first challenge oft presented is that, being creatures of speech and ignoring the nuances of text and sounds one cannot and will not in this day and age bother to read an entire block of text and thus render any and all attempts at hearing the argument moot. This is absurd in its entirety. One easily seen example is the one between a clock and an alarm. Without the actual text of the clock 'chatting' as it were with the alarm, one would fail it hear and thus oversleep. There are many other counterpoints which I will not bother going over unless time permits.

The second challenge is often devious, and its argument seems completely logical at first glance, such that responding to it requires a complete understanding of the field and logic behind it. Most upon hearing the response to this challenge cannot believe how simple the answer is, yet many still might find it perplexing and so I list it here. One must realize that we must junk all previous notions of any given capacity for research and all forms of Keyes and his theories, for we have no use (if we had any) for them here. Instead, it is better perhaps if we approach the answer to this challenge from the standpoint of a crossing guard might approach the problem of a passing train. That is, perhaps we should consider the possibility of it existing to be implausibly small such that we can place this argument out of mind and out of sight. It is best for one to ignore it. It is a deep and fundamental challenge that we should address but it is simpler for all involved to ignore it until such time that we can formulate an appropriate response, or perhaps forget about it.

Having properly defeating these challenges to our basics, we can now proceed to my basic premise and the heart of my theory. It is, in abstract form, an idea that is not easily presentable but I think it can best be stated as such: That avatars in their present form can sometimes be a representation of their masters, and sometimes they cannot. It is a complex idea, one that many will surely find obscene and perhaps capitalistic. Such a bold hypothesis requires bold evidence, and so I will bold the following paragraphs such that you will understand the importance and solidness of my arguments, and possibly be able to formulate your own and perhaps donate sizable sums of funds and donations to my non profit organization listed below. Such evidence shall be organized in order of least comprehensible to most least specific for your convenience.

Cathode ray tubes also point in the general direction of this trend although this pattern is easily misunderstood as the migration of the members of the therapoda genus. It is important that we define ray tubes as the tubes of ray rather than as is commonly misinterpreted in physics textbooks. It is this that we must work around and this that we ultimately find increasing support for the original thesis, of which one can be sure is diffused to the point that further elaboration is excessive and indeed unneeded. Unnecessary things are often the first things to go, for they are the least efficient, a byproduct of their inherent uselessness. Perhaps they are only useless in our minds, but that is a paper for another day.

At this point, the final piece of the puzzle drops into place. I am confident the reader can see the validity of the previous shards of evidence. If the reader does indeed understand my destruction of the counter-points, evidence, and all logic then I will have successfully proven my hypothesis. Since they are reading to this point in this post then that is direct evidence of the trends of global warming on a universal scale as opposed to a galactic scale. Since this is most definitely the case as provided here, then it can only be assumed to be true.

Little error has creeped into my observations and experiments. Occasionally the lab mice would run in circles and foam at the mouth, but this coincided with their exposure to day time television. Much like a normal human being, the mice predictably fell asleep by the time they read this far down, a point of error being that the underpinning assumption of the fact that mice can read. Until this is proven to be false, I am fairly sure it is true. There were a multitude of other error propagation but I safely and unwisely ignored them in light of the fact that they smashed my original dissertation. In summary, I have proved that someone can type many many many words and still say nothing at all of value, interest, or coherence.

At A Crossroads

I can see very clearly three paths laid out before me. I can see the lay of the road, the obstacles, the impending weather conditions, and the Emerald City at each terminal. I am at a crossroads, I think.





There's always a crossroads, even a straight path has a branch or a concrete tunnel a maintenance hatch. But some are minor, and don't affect any outcome. Do I get rocky road or vanilla ice cream? It doesn't matter in the long run, a detail lost to the winds in murky memories. But these three, these three are definitely choices that will have consequences. Take one route, and there will be a major impact. And likely, there will be no going back and this is it.





I honestly believe this will make or break my Second Life.





I am in a unique situation, or perhaps not so unique. You see, I have vectored into this very crossroads that offers three unique possibilities.





Actually, there is a fourth choice. But it is an unacceptable one, a route of failure before failing. I think you might have an inkling as to what I am referring.





So I have these three choices. And I can see each in detail. I think I understand how a chess player feels when they postulate seven moves ahead. I see the risk, investment required, and outcome of each and to be honest all three sound good on grey matter. The key is that once I choose one, I can't even attempt the other two. Why? Because each requires time and concentration that I simply don't have available unless I cut into real life responsibilities and I have a solemn oath that above all things Second Life, real life takes precedence. And each one would hog all of my attention. And therein lies the game.





Which one do I pick? Take too much time and I fall into the fourth and most unacceptable choice. Be hasty and I might regret not considering the other two. What do I want? What would make me happy? What would wear me down? What will I do? Could I keep this up?





All valid questions, yes? But we can't ask too many questions. Then we fall into information paralysis. This strikes many people in math and science, where the sheer volume of information overwhelms a person to the point where they just freeze, and nothing gets done. The volume of information is the high beam, and we're deer. The trick of the game is to be able to sort the relevant from the irrelevant and the necessary from the trash. Deer wearing sunglasses. And part of it is a learned skill, and part is luck, and part is talent. Like all things in life, really.





So what is relevant and what is extraneous? Identify the wheat and the chafe. And at this point, you might think I have succumbed to info paralysis, and that I should just get to the point. But that is the problem with decisions like this. At what point do we divide relevant and irrelevant? What separates the trivial from the important?



I keep coming back to this, you see? It seems to be the crux of the matter. My parents used to call it 'cutting through the crap'. And I have just served a hefty plate of crap just now. Perhaps I should just straighten my thoughts into a singularity. Arrange it out in the simplest possible terms. And there is no rush. But it is a decision that should really be resolved sooner rather than later. That's always for the best.



I guess I have a fear. A fear of choosing wrong. Or perhaps a fear of moving on. The now is fine, but it won't stay that way.



That's about it.


Also, I really need to have a talk with Blogger, and the way it triple (and sometimes quadruple) spaces my posts. It is getting just slightly annoying.

Viva La Evolution!

Imagine, if you will, that SL has biological taints on it. That we could draw comparisons between the Meat World (as Prokofy among others have called it) and the Silicon World.

We don't have DNA, but we do have the code. We're all coded the same way to the same parameters. It forms the basis for our entire world. Unlike Meat world, we have a choice in it, but here is where the Silicon equivalent of evolution pops in. While in Meat world physical external stimuli affect how species develop, in SL it's memes. If you take a moment, you can see it's true. There is a meme that one generally does not create especially hideous avatars. There is a meme against extremely overweight avatars as well. A meme that dictates prim hair is preferable to the standard. These are mental stimuli that naturally select what survives. Someone insistent upon having huge feet is not likely to get far as the pressure of the crowd will ridicule him and likely insist he choose a more 'normal' avatar.

This is not to say that everyone consciously picks and weeds out the weirdos. It's a subtle psychological deal, and much of it depends upon the group you are trying to fit into. Fur sims probably will not take kindly to people who appear to be griefers, natural selection there will favour either other furs or 'normal' people. Baku will naturally select those willing to toe the line in both appearance and in the Lindens' patience. The group and its memes and attitudes will determine how you look, and to break this takes a very very strong will, and the percentage of the population able to do this and then willing to is very very tiny. The coding is our DNA. Memes are our natural selection.

As I stated above, we do have a kind of avatar evolution going on constantly around us. When I started in November, prim hair was practically standard, but flexi hair was for but the very rich and was almost brand new. Skin was very vague looking and nowhere as detailed as today. No one cared about eyes. Attachments were limited to jewelry and shoes, anything else was considered rude (believed to lag the sim, which I don't have evidence for or against, as I've never bothered to study it).

Fast forward to today. All but short hair is flexi. Skin looks eerily similar at times to real life skin. AOs are standard and attachments for anything and everything are commonplace. As griefing is still in public memory, shields have gotten surprisingly complex and so effective that a person can exclude even avatars within a five meter radius. What happened? Memes happened. In this case, the general meme was "go towards realism and safety". And so it did. It drove people to create better looking hair and skin, and more protective shields. The natural selection imposed by memes fueled the evolution of the avatar.

It should be noted that there is one subtle difference between Meat and Silicon. Evolution in RL is fueled by the desire of genes and DNA to survive and pass on to the next generation. Evolution in SL is fueled not by the code/DNA of the avatar but of the 'soul' of the avatar (namely, YOU) who desires to continue on. I suppose if we refine our model to say the controller is the compilation of memes, and whether her or his memes survive depends upon whether they survive 'natural selection'. This then would be similar to RL where we are compilation of genes and whether our genes survive depends upon natural selection.
We are coming to a natural pressure far greater than any SL has encountered before. It is called voice. Already, we can see the memes split into "uses it" and "doesn't use it", and both are in a competition, and it's exciting to wonder which will win out and pressure the other into extinction. My bet is that as the old hands quit or fade away, the "uses it" meme will prosper.

It's perfectly logical. The old hands are ingrained into chat, it's all they've had to communicate for months and sometimes years. But the new people are introducing new memes into the pool, some of which won't survive ("HEY LETS CRASH THE GRID LOL") and others which will . In this case, the overwhelming majority seems to be conforming to voice, and introducing the meme that SL is little more than a three dimensional myspace.com page.

Let's try to draw out other similarities with Meat world. We've just covered 'genetics'. I suppose we try societal development.

SL started with rather close and connected communities. There wasn't that many people around, so everyone knew the Joneses, so to speak. This is similar to some cultures like Babylon or Catal Hyuk, where relatively small to medium groups banded together into larger and larger communities, often very close knit. I'd go as far as to say early SL was more like the Roman Empire, everything united and hardly any conflict or disaster that affected the majority of the citizens.

Then we get some world changing developments. Free accounts (you still had to provide a credit card) came in and swarmed the place, dramatically changing the way people viewed their communities. Groups leaked in that neither knew nor cared about the previous establishment. It was an all out invasion, and the original SL civilization couldn't really handle it. To be fair, it was really a combination of factors: The originals' sheer number eroded as some quit or joined the Lindens, the fact that SL had been getting some attention and thus had quite a few ready to burst through the gate, the fact that the Lindens themselves misinterpreted exactly how the world would be affected by this influx, and probably more. Each of these on its own would have been survivable, but they all kinda came at once.

And that brings us to today. Today, I think there is more than sufficient evidence for the development of feudal societies in SL. Private islands fueled this fire, but they didn't start it, it was the aforementioned destabilization that really sparked it. With the shattering and scattering of the old society, people began clinging to what they had left, which usually involved a favoured or a local group. What we've ended up with, in other words, is a bunch of scattered kingdoms with the SL version of the Catholic Church attempting to exert control over the entire land with little success (church equaling the Ls).

Can we identify some examples of this inworld? Sure! We have Furnation, a large group of islands, almost a continent in itself really. We can't also forget Anshe Chung, and her Nunchuck-only-knows number of sims and islands. These two are really self contained governments in themselves, and exhibit a lot of characteristics of a feudal kingdom. They have a central ruler who allows others to enter their domain on their terms, dictates the rules, and rely mostly upon their own power in their kingdoms that the Lindens are only called when absolutely needed. They run almost entirely closed societies, so much so that one person I conversed with was surprised anyone set up homes and lived on the mainland! All adfarms and griefers, he thought.

It's not that bad yet, because we're still in the stages where the majority floats around, but it won't be long before SL is carved up like a map of Europe. If and when privately hosted servers come about, it will just about cement into place the feuding kingdoms model of government. From there, it's anyone's guess when (and again, if ever) we realise the dream of Prok and others to have a truly Second World, with a democratic and fair government. If we're lucky, it'll be accelerated (as all things are in SL, it seems) and we'll see it within a few years. If we're not, then it could take more than a decade, assuming SL survives that long. I don't see anything I or any other singular person can do about it, even a rather large group would be marginalised and ignored. These kingdoms will simply ban you from their land, and then it's "No man, No problem".

But one of the better things about SL feudalization is that you, me, and Joe down the street can form our own society and put our ideas into action. Unlike RL, there's no fear of invasion if the group is properly watched over and maintained. It wouldn't encompass all of SL, but at this point I think that is a hopeless pipe dream, and that it could never work. At best, we would only garner probably 5% of the population to our democratic server. But in a feudal world, that's probably the best we can hope for. It's fracturing too fast and in too many places for us to patch it together now, and the Lindens are out of Gorilla Glue.

It's a depressing outlook, but it's the truth as far as I know it. I don't have hope for much of the grid, it'll probably spiral further out of control. The best hope for the future will lie in a group of islands with a liberal minded owner or an open source server run by the same. Of course, we could also hope for SL's King Arthur, who would unite the land and turn it around to good and peace. Provided we can find him. Or find a sword in a stone to prove it's him. And that he's the real deal and not some fantasy role player. Ah, those would be the days.

Okay, so we covered biology, government... Let's finish up with an easy one: SL's interpretation of art.

There's so many levels and categories. There's paintings and drawings, which are usually downloaded textures plastered on a prim so it's more like importing real life art. But it's still art.

The main route of art people follow in SL is the sculpture. This wasn't really an area that was too thought out, generally you produced a sculpture as part of a build or in your spare time as a doodle. And sculptures were fairly generic and bland, in an imitation of classical sculptures I suppose. Some did make unusual, interesting, and imaginative things but these were few and far between, and they never really caught on. Then we got Starax.

Starax made art for the sake of art. He sold his creations, but each was like a drug trip on steroids with a side of butter; you never knew if you were going to get Picasso Starax or Kindergarten-finger-paints Starax. Some things he made floored me for their complexity, design, and they way they tore your mind in a new direction. Others just have me scratching my head, and wondering if perhaps Starax the account is operated by more than one person.

Whatever his faults or virtues, it can be said that Starax brought Art in SL to a whole new level, namely that of a separate beast all its own. Name me four sculptors before Starax. Now name me four after him. I'll wager the latter is easier to answer than the former.

I will bring one issue with Starax to the forefront, in that by being as famous as he became he stifled the originality he brought to life. People simply copied his style, or in some extreme cases his actual works. Television has a similar effect in real life, where one creative program will kill anyone else's ideas for an original series. Just look at the unholy amount of sitcoms and survivor shows on the tube today. You can't tell me with a straight face you find them good or interesting, can you?

As always, there is light at the end of the tunnel. The massive influx of free accounts is quietly drowning out Starax and his 'style'. With this, we're seeing much more in the way of art, from traditional statues to abstracts and others. I'm holding out for a SL Pollock.

If there isn't I'll mimic one.