As written before: I was up to something new in Second Life. Since the last entry in my journal I logged in regularly (twice a week), but I almost never found what IÂ was looking for. So I took some snapshots and left. The only thing that gave me some pleasure was the gnome I bought
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Where? I’m not sure, but it was in a little shop in the neigbourhood of the Black Sun. This gnome tracks all my avators that show up in a circle of 50 square meters of my house. Interesting? Not at all, but the daily list of names in my mailbox is a reminder of my Second Life. Everything changes; The Black Sun is changing rapidly into a sort of conference centre
and two weeks ago I spoke to Giulio Perhaps about his plans with Uvvy Island. He told me that in a few weeks I wouldn’t recognize the place at all.
And he was right: tonight I visited the Island, but no traces of the centre of Transhumanism were left. What next? A notification about pi day (3/14; also Albert Einstein’s birthday) popped up in my screen when I logged in. So I visited the science museum at Spoland. It was dedicated to the number Pi. What is Pi? It is that strange number, represented by the Greek character:
You learned in school that Pi was 3,14? Wrong!
Why bother about Pi? I don’t know, it has something to do with circles:
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Finally I took a ride in the dome.
That was cool!
This week Los Angeles Times had a story about Second Life, written by Dan Neil, who lived in the Metaverse for one week.
Of course he visited the wrong places:
I can’t even begin to hint at the polymorphous perversity available in Second Life, but the most popular place, at the moment I check, is Naughty Neva’s Free Sex Orgy Room, where virtual sex workers pole-dance and lure customers into back rooms.
If that is what you’re looking for, I agree it is better in First Life. And I doubt it will ever be better in the Metaverse – I think we don’t need sex in the metaverse.
If you had the drive and the imagination—not to mention the absurd amount of free time—to create a business or design a product, why wouldn’t you do it in real space? If you could find friends and brainstorm good ideas and fuel a love affair, why wouldn’t you do it in the here and now? Come back from Second Life, people. First Life needs you.
Hm. I admit I have my doubts about Second Life. It is not as exciting yet as I thought it would be. But I still think (or hope) it can be great, someday. Just a matter of time.
[…] year I wrote about a virtual celebration of Pi-Day in the Metaverse of Second Life, and now there is again an opportunity to meditate a little on the […]