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