The first postcard

Here's my first postcard from Second Life. It's from a new place called the Diversionarium. You can find out all about it here. Unfortunately, it runs on Silicon Valley time, which is eight hours behind us, so when I visited, and took this picture, it was early morning for the management and punters. Sure, Second Life and the Blogosphere are bringing the cybercitizens of the world closer together, but you can never get away from the inconvenience of different time zones. The Internet just shoves it in your face.
Anyway, consider the picture above as an experiment. I did it just to see how to do it. I'll delve back into SL and bring you some more exciting pictures in future posts.
It's the big day tomorrow. Check back in about twenty four hours for a doozy of a post.

My first event in Second Life

Strangest party I've ever been at.
Second Scotland in Second Life were having an open day. Our country is well represented in this brave new cyberworld. There are two Scotland sims, and number two was throwing a shindig. It's run by the University of Paisley, and looks to me to be an arts project. There were three avatars there in kilts (four if you include myself), and an interactive map of Scotland with ear trumpets bearing the names of eminent scots such as Burns, Carnegie and Billy Connolly. Not forgetting the capercaillies that wander about the sim. It's all very surreal and dreamlike.
Conversation can be a bit random. You hear the people within earshot, but if they're talking to someone a bit further away, you end up with half a conversation. And when that is interweaved with another half-dialogue, and you factor in the delay between typing and display, the script starts to resemble an Ionescu play.
Still, with all its limitations, it's science fiction become science fact. It's the cyberworld predicted all those tears ago where you can interact with others in a virtual reality. And it's only coming up for its fourth birthday! Imagine what another four years will bring!

Dancing in the datastream

Second Life is an interesting place to visit. It's a virtual world where you exist as an avatar, and you can interact with other human-controlled avatars. It's only been in existence for three years, and it recently signed up its six-millionth inhabitant.
It's still a work in progress. It has teething troubles. But it has potential. And it is science fiction become fact.
Remember Tron? Disney's venture into computer animation? A world existing inside a computer system? It's here.
But a better description of what Second Life is like from an SF perspective is Michael Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time trilogy. In it, the world is a playground for its population of aesthetes, who throw parties and create marvels out of the world's energy field. The most eminent citizens if that world are the ones who produce the most fantastic creations, just as they are in Second Life.