Second Lifers Find God
Imagine this: It’s Sunday and Anglican Mark Brown of Auckland, New Zealand is getting ready to preach the “Good Word” to his faithful flock but rather than stepping up behind a podium, Mr. Brown is sitting down at his desk and turning on his computer.
Yes, it’s true, Brown’s church, with its medieval style edifice, exists solely in the massive virtual reality world Second Life.
Now, if you’re about to suggest that this is taking things a bit far, consider this: word of the pixilated place of worship has spread and the pews are filling up.
His congregation has 150 official members and in order to accommodate them and any others that stop by for mass, Brown (or Arkin Ariantho as he’s known in SL) has begun to offer Sunday services in three different time zones.
Considering all the crazy stuff that goes on in Second Life, maybe a little quiet contemplation and prayer couldn’t hurt.
Thoughts?
“Starry Night” Recreated In 3D In Second Life
This beautiful video shows construction of a 3D re-creation of the famous painting by Vincent Van Gogh. The soundtrack is “Starry, Starry Night,” by Don McLean.
I think a lot of people will enjoy this video, however you can appreciate it a little more if you’ve actually done some building in Second Life.
The Cleaning-Up Of Second Life
Once upon a time, virtual environments weren’t just places where you went in order to meet people in a more interesting environment than that of a chatroom or an online whiteboard.
They were places where you could reinvent yourself: slay dragons, look like James Bond, be rude to your elders.
Now, things are different — at least, in Second Life.
The ethics, laws and social mores of the real world are beginning to intrude on that popular and heavily hyped virtual universe.
From what I can see, Second Life is now being touted not as a place to escape, but as a place to do business — and as a result, the less market-minded denizens of this social world may have to bear the consequences.
For example, Linden Lab, the owner of Second Life, has now instituted a “no gambling” policy that takes in any type of wager involving real-life sporting events, be it in real-world currency or the world’s virtual “Linden dollars.”
IBM has told its employees that when they’re wandering around Second Life’s online hallways, they’d better behave, because their standards of etiquette will reflect on the company.
Now, admittedly, Second Life hasn’t been that much of an alternate universe for quite some time now.
There has been a lot of commerce conducted there; for example, one of the users who are angry about the new policy said he’d invested about $3,800 in a Second Life-based casino and added that spends about 12-14 hours per day there — which is actually not an unusual amount of time for somebody founding a serious small business.
In fact, Second Life has — at least until now — apparently encouraged all kinds of commerce within its borders, including not only gambling, but a lively trade in sexual favors as well.
One has to wonder if IBM’s rules of conduct will eventually include something like, “Don’t do anything virtually that you wouldn’t do in reality.”
If companies like IBM and the many others that are staking a claim in Linden Lab’s environs will influence the same sort of cleanup in Second Life that Disney initiated in Times Square.
Many years ago, when the Web had just hit the Internet, some of those who had been happily trading messages and code via text-based systems worried whether, once the ‘Net became business-friendly, it would lose some or all of its sense of freedom and fun.
I’m not a Second Life resident, but I do wonder whether some of them are wondering the same thing today.
Second Life Apple Store
Fifth Avenue Apple Store meets Second Life:
From what I can tell, Second Life is a whole lot like the SIMs. Would this be a good description?
How many of my readers are into the whole “Second Life” addiction?