Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Creating our Virtual Future

Through
This post extends a few of my tweets from last week with the #transworlder hashtag.
Someday we'll look back on Second Life as we would a childhood home that once was the center of our universe.  Second Life was the first virtual world most of this blog's readers were born into. As we have grown from digital nubehood into virtual adolescence and beyond it has not evolved correspondingly. So it's not surprising that the environment that once felt so limitless and open now seems constraining and uninspiring. 

That said, although the honeymoon with Second Life is long over, finding a new virtual world to love is just a temporary fix for a passionless digital life.  Although I was one of the first bloggers urging people to take some of their eggs out of the Second Life basket, the intention was to protect virtual assets rather than to find some greener digital pasture. I'm all for exploring different worlds and think that emigration will certainly make sense for many people. But there's no virtual utopia. That's something we need to create together. To that end, I recommend Pathfinder's great post on empowering ourselves to collectively move towards the future we desire.

Obsessing about Linden Lab plays into a One World mentality. Better to take that energy and explore other options. After three years of watching community members post hundreds of blogs, tweets and comments related to boneheaded moves Linden Lab has made, I can only think of a couple of times such communication made an impact on the policies it critiqued. Although I also find it hard to resist the weekly opportunities to weigh in (like yesterday's news of Philip's departure) it would probably be more useful to channel that energy into more creative tasks.

Today, a virtual world can live on a USB key in your back pocket. Tomorrow your avatar may live in a chip implanted in your head. Although there will certainly be technological advances that we can't foresee, I'm convinced there are significant opportunities to enhance virtual worlds that will arise from our creative use of existing tools. So what are we waiting for?

5 comments:

R. said...

Well said.

-ls/cm

sororNishi said...

Yes, I have been guilty of letting out my frustrations on paper too, but I can now announce that I have a shop in InWorldz and many of my assets are, in fact, on a little USB thingy.... so moaning and moving and ready for anything...:)))

Anonymous said...

Nice post, Botgirl. The future can always be bright, and the power to make it so is in our own hands.

JubJub Forder said...

Probably better spending your energy elsewhere? Definitely better. It always makes me smile a little sadly when i look at the people who express the most negativity about LL - are usually also the people complaining how their sales are down. Almost like their negative bubble surrounds them and attracts other negativity.

Mera Kranfel said...

Good post! I have criticised LL because it took them almost 3 months to answer my support ticket !). But i did not just criticise, I gave them something back. Advice. If they listen or not is their problem.

But i seldom criticise if i dont have a better idea what to do. And I am a paying costumer so i have a right to criticise, I think =)

But now I have moved on and I dont hate Second life, no the opposite. Its just that i have found something that suits me better =)