Creepy-Scary

I don't know anything more about this than Tateru Nino has posted, but it goes in the folder marked "Creepy-scary Things About Second Life". The Lindens have hired a former government official -- the White House operations chief to be precise -- to run their government liaison office.

Some people might find something counterintuitive about this. Why would these hippie Californians hire a Republican? Well, that shows how you don't understand hippie Californians. Hippie Californians, for one, can change to a Republican ticket in a heartbeat when they feel their interests warrant it (look at their Republican governor who was obviously elected by a majority).

But more to the point, the Lindens are all about a new version of the California Ideology which has a number of features in common with some forms of what are associated with Republic ideology. These would include Social Darwinism, promotion of state-like big business and strategic corporations and discouragement of small business, heavy ideological control of education (Democrats can be guilty of that, too). The Lindens want to build a platform that will change the world. They don't care what they might have to do to get there, and with whom they might have to ally, temporarily or permanently. They don't like abitrage, for example, which is a socialist or socially conservative aversion, but they have temporarily partnered with greedy land barons, as we are known, to accomplish their goals (I just happen to be reading now about German-funded Lenin in his sealed train returning to Petrograd lol).

If you are Operations chief of the White House, you know every major purchasing agent in town. You know who signs checks, which doors take the deliveries, who gets the vans moving and who is responsible for wheels up and wheels down. You know the people who *get things done* to make the machinery of government work, regardless of who is in power. You have to juggle an amazing amount of tasks, involving traffic, logistics, media, personalities, payroll, administration. Most likely the website and email tasks fell into your job description, too. I have no special knowledge of this, I'm just reasoning logically.

While presidents and vice presidents come and go, foreign and civil service people stay. Oh, sure, droves of political appointees fall out of the government offices into soft landings in corporations, law offices and NGOs, but they merely mark time there and keep in touch with all their buddies until they are back in power again. The Beltway is a belt, circulating the same things and people.

Thus, the fact that this guy worked for Dole, who is fabulously famous and popular especially due to his Viagra ads, and is Repubilcan, doesn't mean anything to the Lindens, because they understand what the word "Operations" and "White House" mean.

If you've ever gotten a government contract, you know that it is a daunting process, with many acronyms, pages, procedures, and people in various offices who must be contacted repeatedly. If you are lucky enough to get one, you need to hire an army of accountants just to monitor and report and handle the thing for all those offices, chewing up the budget considerably. Navigating your way through that welter of paper is tough, and if you want to go that route for funding, you have to staff up. That's what the Lindens have done. They are not going to be expecting Heather and Tiffany to keep buying islands in the 100 pack version forever, because they can't make a better world with Heather and Tiffany, but they can with Scott.

RightasRain is silly as usual, jammed in that entitlement-happy cynic mode that all the Slarterati assume as a pose, saying that just as the Bush administration "ruined real life" so this guy will help ruin virtual worlds as a Bush administration employee. That's retarded. It shows he doesn't understand a thing about how government works and what the Lindens are up to.

The Lindens are indeed at a certain disadvantage, being in California, being hippie goofs, and being techs and VC string-tie or Hawaiian shirt-wearers. They don't have any instinctive chops on DC. They pulled off one hearing with a very, very friendly Congressman Markey who threw them marshmallow questions, but that's not going to be the norm, and with Obama, we're likely to see a more critical Congress, not a less critical one.

I think LL has had a small office there for awhile, but with Obama coming to power, and the ability to shoulder up with Lawrence Lessig and Dave Winer and all these other people will will be trying to grab power requires proper management. (Watch how quickly Lessig will switch from demanding "transparency in government" now that his friend Obama is in power, and watch how quickly he either gets appointed as technology czar or takes up some other completely different cause, like, oh, global warming).

So why creepy-scary? Well, Californians have always had a propensity for getting in bed with government when it comes to scientific experimentation and technology. They do what they have to do to fund and promote their projects.

I think of some of the other creepy-scary things about LL. Like the "neural networks" on Philip Linden's profile as his main interest. Like Pathfinder Linden telling me how he's interested in brain science and computer and brains hooking up online and doing stuff. Oh, like the hand-eye icon that is ancient, ominous, and well, creepy. They even have a medallion with it they gave out at the first SLCC (I have one! I'm creepy, too!)

People watching Linden Lab love to dump on it, say they are inept, say they are circling the drain, say that they are badly mishandling customers and making terrible decisions and "losing the community" blah blah blah.

Yet none of that is true if you look at the larger picture, which is about gaining influence. The Lindens keep their eyes on the prize. Good press, bad press, it's still press. The concurrency steadily climbs up. The sales climb up. The press coverage dips and climbs again. Slowly, the bleed into the public mass unconscious. They aren't making terrible decisions from their perspective, which is to sustain their project and make it harder to turn their platform into Blingtard Life.

I feel queasy when I think about the creepy-scary things of Second Life/Linden Lab because I think they have a powerful machine, something like the splitting of the atom, that can be used for ill and good.

Comments

[Jane2 McMahon]

It's a very odd pick...someone political to deal with the bureaucratic side of government. And someone no one has to be nice to any more after Tuesday, to boot.

The ad itself was odd...for a company looking for a government liaison, why would they want someone hq'd in DC specifically? Kind of leaves the local/state/foreign governments out in the cold, as anyone federal is very much in a particular mold.

[Prokofy Neva]

No, Jane2, are you kidding? If Scott were Press Secretary, nobody will have to be nice to him after Tuesday. But if he was Operations Chief they will have to be nice to him forever. It's like the General Department in the Kremlin which rules the country.

Of course a government liaison has to be in Washington! The contracts they'll get will be federal in nature, from various agencies on science, education, health and welfare, diplomacy etc. etc. You don't set up office in Columbus, OH and go for the contracts in Ohio -- that's not practical.

Washington is where people go to their Congressmen to get the pork for their state anyway.

There's another thing to understand about LL hires. We often go "Huh?". But we're forgetting that at that level, the people going to LL are not the ordinary sort. They hire who they get to apply. It's like us. We could take this money and put it in a CD and make more out of it, doing nothing, instead of long hours of ingratitude. If we are creative, we could make real life art for real life galleries or magazines and get more real publicity. So, like us, at one level they are "people with no lives" lol.

[melponeme_k]

Interesting.

And this coming in after all that news about US spy agencies concerned that Terrorists/Criminals are using Warcraft as a base of communications.

I'm getting a psy-ops feel to this. And I thought LL just wanted to make it big and sell out like Blizzard Entertainment.

No, instead they want our brains. LOL

[Ann Otoole]

lmao... if the NSA wants in they will be in. Disney actually has a department named NSA rofl. NSA doesn't even need to have a presence in LL. SL is 100% internet based comms so they can monitor at will. I'm sure the NSA is interested in reading furry sexcapades. *rolls eyes*.

This is about having some contacts in the Beltway game to protect Linden Lab from being run over by the likes of Google and Microsoft as well as grabbing up some taxpayer dollars for various things. I.e.; if LL wants to compete with Forterra for government simulation money they need some influence people period.

[Sioban]

A lot of Republicans, particularly Hill staffers and political appointees are applying for jobs and floating their CV/resumes in anticipation of election day.

[real]

yeah, anns right..
prok went conspiracy nut on us right before our eyes...lol

LL and the runners couldnt get "strategic" even if it was tattooed on the smalls of their hippie backs...

and this washington insider is as much a AD man as M...lol

real

[Khamon Fate]

I don't see the article as being all that conspiratorial, but simply saying that we all, including the bulk of LL employees, may've been duped into building a virtual world for the express purpose of positioning a few people into fat cat government funded think tank positions.

The theory is heavily supported by making every single one of those "wtf were they thinking" moments we've experienced over the years make perfect sense.

Still, that's all just business for them. We just have to hope The Grid All Hail The Central Grid continues to be useful to their quest for the gold; and that they don't kick us off for being in the way.

[Prokofy Neva]

Khamon,

We are in the way, in a very real sense, but for now, they need us. And it might be that they can pick their way through the thicket of conflicting interests and not piss off any one segment of their diverse clients in 6 economies, as I've noted. That will be no mean feat. The economy thing is probably what they'll have to drop at some point, I realize. It's so much work balancing and is fraught with so many problems of policing and fraud prevention.

Maybe the government can help them with that.

[Tammy Nowotny]

The party affiliation is probably explained by the fact that a Republican President is leaving office and (I am writing on Monday nite and hopefully I won't sound like an idiot on Wednesday morning) a Democratic President is on his way in (along with several Democratic Senators and Congresspersons.) The best Democrats are biding their time waiting to see what the Obama Adminstration does. They are less likely to be interested in a job with Linden Lab right now.

Even if McCain wins, there will be a big shakeup, because McCain (even though his actual policies are McSame) is a very different type of Republican from Bush II.

[Gigs Taggart]

Heh, this post is causing your blog to get McCain-Palin ads from the ad network.

[Ann Otoole]

Guess she should have used different words for the title then Gigs.

[rightasrain]

His resume on linked-in says white house operations manager http://rezzable.com/blog/rightasrain-rimbaud/republicans-selling-virtual-land-democrats not sure if that is like being a bank vice president, he was definitely not the chief. I guess this might mean you could cut him some slack? or not cause where is dem WMDs anyway? maybe we make some for him in the virtual world?

[Ruprecht Fein]

Did Ann actually post twice without mentioning a law suit?

How extraordinary.