Happy 5th Birthday, Second Life!

Philip at the opening ceremony of SL's two-week birthday celebration.

"What we're doing here together is outside the bounds of possibility. There is more going on, and there's more meaning, and more of the future, and more imagination here than I think there has ever been in many ways anywhere on earth". Philip Linden, SLB5

And you know, he's not kidding, and he's right. Can you think of any other project in human history that concentrated as much creativity and imagination in one place, and involved so many people? Oh, I know, celebrating anything worldy goes against Khamon's scorn of the W'ua'rld but, hey, it's pretty nifty, you know? A million people, doing something. Most of them, not even thinking about the whole picture or even able to describe a fraction of what's going on now, but still, all pulling together, somehow. Not yet consciously, perhaps some day to be so.

Like the real-life earth, Second Life now is so big and so complex that you cannot describe it or even see it in one go -- perhaps some day teams of people, or more likely bots -- will have some system to monitor facts about it that may escape perception now -- but they would have to be spimes...and you know my feeling about spimes!

Philip once talked somewhere about how people would not come on Second Life, and spend time there, and put in effort, unless it was "intellectually compelling". Those were the words he used, and he meant not just as an engineering or coding project, as I saw it, but all its aspects. And I think I will pay SL the greatest compliment I could today, on its 5th birthday -- it's still intellectually compelling. Perhaps some aspects of it have become less intellectually compelling, even threadbare and utterly predictable (cache politics), but new horizons open up as others close.

The speeches of Philip and M Linden, the new CEO were kind of lame and goofy, but that was OK with me, it felt more comfortable that way. Yes, M sounded meek, and possibly too subdued, but that was OK, because it somehow doesn't distract from Second Life itself when they are not trying to be larger than life.

Somebody on the forums grumbled that these two didn't seem to look their SL best -- Philip especially looks like your overgrown teenager who won't get a haircut and take off that rock t-shirt he's worn without washing for the last five years -- but again, that's OK. I think it's good if some iconic things never change. Philip in a suit is a joke; M had all the right hair and suits and stuff but there was still somebody to bitch about him not having an AO to walk. Sigh. Neither do I. Second Life has to be open to all kinds of people. That same person said he was embarrassed to bring his work colleagues here because of the beach party splash screen and the cartoon-like characters -- dragons and furries and stuff (I actually think they've taken a lot of them off the front page). OK, well, bring them in by the SL Grid portal then, which looks more like office work.

Philip had to allude to all the angst about the birthday, to which I'm not even going to link, except to note that Tao's fussy "sad birthday" post is so typical of "thecommunity" that represents nothing at this point but a small but determined group of limousine liberals of sorts -- complainers who never go to the mat either to defend the Motherland or to risk banning when the Motherland doesn't value her rebels. None of them are permabanned; none of them suffer griefing, none of them ever lose anything, they go on sitting and being fabulous at office hours.

Khamon would say that whether you support or oppose Linden Lab, you are still trapped in some horribly outdated saga that is all going to be overtaken in about five minutes by all these other worlds that will make being for or against the powers of One World be utterly obsolete, as there will be Many. OK, bring it, show me the money and...do they have real estate? LOL

Once again, Philip told a story of loss and destruction. He's like Will Wright, and the real-life fire that made such an impression on him that the Sims have to catch on fire in every game. This time, it was about building SL's first disco, the Alt-Zoom on the sim of Da Boom, and then having to tear it down, because residents demanded that he turn it over to them.

He couldn't remember the name of who demanded the build, ostensibly to "put up houses or something," but in fact it was Eggy Lippmann, and he didn't wish to put up houses (he did that later on another sim with the project Americana); he wanted to put up dancing and other things to make that disco more usable, I guess. (Go to my old interview of Eggy on SL history to hear about his work on the casino.)

Philip even scripted a Fairy Land slot machine for this build -- it was a kind of Disney-like sand castle slot machine, and I'm told it had a fatal flaw in the script that somehow enabled winners to keep taking your money or something...I've seen it in world a few times...

Philip said it was "bittersweet" to have to destroy his build and hand it over to the residents who were supposed to make good on the idea of "your world/your imagination," but that slogan seems so quaint and archaic now that the game gods are wresting some of their world back...

Even Philip had to allude to the protests and angst around the birthday-- angst I didn't share. The Linden blog "If you don't look good, we don't look good" about sums it up -- it has to look good...for somebody. Who the guests who are to be invited to this new party of SL, I can't quite fathom.

Somedays, I see a kind of forlorn Message of the Day booming that SL can be used for training, simulations, and product prototyping! The message feels to me about the same as Firesign Theater's SHOES FOR INDUSTRY! SHOES FOR DEFENSE! or THE FUTURE IS NOWWWW! because...I can't even *see* to try to prototype my little rental stuff, let alone having SL be something that some RL company could be using. Transactions stale, nothing rezzing, no teleports, chatter in the Concierge group.

Business is taking a beating now and it's hard to keep having faith in SL. You're lucky right now if you don't have a business in SL and you can enjoy it for all the other things it offers. Yet that's not enough and never will be. Without a world, without an economy, without some effort to simulate the marketplace of goods and ideas that real life offers, SL is no more than, as Spin Martin calls it, Massively Multiplayer Photoshop, or as I call it, "Massively for Shut-ins" or sometimes more savagely, "GIMP for Gimps".

But...If you can only make the case for SL based on teary-eyed human-interest stories about disabled people, or emotionally abused and broken people, or people with no real lives for various awful reasons, being able to obtain a real-life simulation and compensation through this platform, I'm sorry, you have not made the case for Second Life. Everyone can understand the value of enhancing the real lives of disabled people with Second Life. It makes a compelling story, whether a story for recovery of stroke victims or even a platform for someone paralyzed to be able to think to an avatar and have him walk! But that cannot be the only case for Second Life. The case for Second Life really has to be like Philip's vision of being "for everybody" and "making a Better World" -- or there isn't a case. If you can only make business, or health, or education your case for SL, you have no case. It has to be better than all that, or how is it that different from a motivational tape?

The Victorians used to have this hobby of making little room boxes, elaborate still-life scenes with miniature furniture and plants and accessories. Sometimes I think we are merely the modern-day equivalent of Victorian roomboxers, or perhaps the Left-Handed Craftsman, shoeing a fly.

Not everybody needs or wants a Second Life. But those who casually or cruelly dismiss this desire for a different capacity in another are closing off the possibilities of humanity to go behind itself.

Per aspera ad Astra.

Ars longa, Secunda Vita brevis...

"Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience misleading, judgment difficult. The physician must not only be prepared to do what is right himself, but also to make the patient, the attendants, and externals cooperate.”

Hippocrates

Comments

[IYan Writer]

Great post! And spot-on re business in SL - still a looong way to go on platform reliability before LL's promises (including the loading notice) come true.

[Khamon]

"that is all going to be overtaken in about five minutes by all these other worlds that will make being for or against the powers of One World be utterly obsolete" - Prokofy

No, I expect that all these other worlds will have no effect on Second Life's wora'uld whatsoever. The people building and using these other worlds will simply be utilizing the virtual world software for their own purposes rather than participating in Linden Lab's social experiment.

They may have economies or not, real estate or not, allow furry avatars or not, grant everyone building rights or not; they certainly will be more focused than trying to be everything to everybody all the time. One has to admire Linden Lab for supporting such an effort; but it's not practical for most of the groups that will be operating grids to offer practical solutions to viable organizations.

Birthday celebrations are nice and it really is okay that Philip and M said nothing; that's to be expected at a festive occasion. I fully expect the ending keynote speaker to say nothing as well, at least nothing notable or newsworthy.

BTW, I logged in just now to drop you a Fairytale Slot Machine but couldn't get your profile loaded. Perhaps it'll work tomorrow if I bother trying to logging in to try again. ha ha ha I just said "try" twice in the same sentence ha ha ha

[Ann Otoole]

M said something. He alluded to having to deal with laws of other countries. Homosexuality is illegal in Iran and carries the death penalty there. Will LL be banning gays from SL to adhere to all laws? Will females be required to wear muslim bags over their heads? It is just stupid to even consider enforcing laws outside the country your company is in unless you are going to physically go to those countries. LL still needs a real business management team and a new CEO.

[Dirk Talamasca]

+50 points for the Firesign Theater reference.

[Cocoanut Koala]

NO000000000 to those people complaining about how Philip looked!

When I saw your piece, and the picture of Philip, my first response was of comfort: "Well, at least he's still wearing his codpiece."

That is just so sort of soothing, ya know? I really wouldn't want to see Philip all suited up, or even in much of anything different.

Seems to me his original look was the perfect choice for this shindig.

coco

[Tammy Nowotny]

Ann speculated: "M said something. He alluded to having to deal with laws of other countries. Homosexuality is illegal in Iran and carries the death penalty there. Will LL be banning gays from SL to adhere to all laws?"

What he probably means is having to deal with the laws of those countries which are significant sources of SL players. That means the USA, Canada, Western & Central Europe, Japan, Australia/New Zealand and (perhaps) Korea, Israel and Brazil and a few other random countries. That is actually a relatively homogenous set of societies with similar values and laws (and that set actually covers just about all of the world's major economic powers with the obvious exceptions of China, Russia, India and Pakistan) but there are some differences from country to country.

I think the rest of the world will have to just go ahead and ban SL if they don't like what we are doing.

If Iran blocks us because we are un-islamic, that only eliminates a few dozen players. If Germany blocked us for (hypotethetically) banning Nazi paraphernalia (which is in fact banned from the grid and is rarely seen), then a German ban would eliminate hundreds of thousands of players.

[Prokofy Neva]

Tammy, I think you're right that he obviously didn't mean Iran and Afghanistan. What he does also mean though, as we've heard before from Philip and Ginsu, is that their goal is to have SL play on local servers in countries that are under those country's laws. That might mean there are sections of the grid -- that SL Grid that nobody is quite sure how it is defined -- that will be behind a government firewall.

That there will be a Russian grid subject to SSORM, a Chinese grid subject to the "Great Firewall of China" or whatever.

Then the Russians can remove a Chechen group or the Chinese can erased dissident writings -- or whatever they need to do. They might not even have to bother, as the more privileged people who access a thing like SL on DSL anyway may tend to self-censor and be the sort that know how to hang on to privileges instinctively -- or else have the relatives with clout who can bail them out.

[Yumi Murakami]

I don't know, Prok. The horizons feel kinda empty to me.

I have just been teleporting around places looking for people and as usual, the only places available with people in are generic clubs, sex builds, camps, and role-play that is either sex or White Wolf or both. And that includes SL5B - the only events with major attendance are, surprise surprise, the dance parties - ie clubs.

I even managed to build something that I'd wanted for a while tonight but then felt that I'd wasted my time because, since I couldn't use it in a club, I'd probably never use it.

Second Life is drowning in beer like many real towns are, too. The perils of capitalising social behaviour..

[Prokofy Neva]

Um, Yumi, it's not about "capitalizing social behaviour," that's simply silly. Have you ever been to a communist country? I can think of a lot of villages in communist and trying-to-transit-out-of-communism villages that are drowning in beer or vodka too in real life. You seem to think there is something inherently evil in capitalism and social media that makes a profit that causes the human being to degenerate.

The human being was degenerate before entering the technology or the social system; he can be made to degenerate more or less, but to imagine that social systems make better or worse people isn't proven by any real examination of anything real.