Telling: Like it Is

Some time during the course of most people's lives, they reach a point when they're no longer anticipating getting older (a.k.a. "growing up"), and begin to... well, maybe "deny" is too strong a word, but they dodge the question of how long they've been around. And then, during a casual conversation they'll let something slip -- something like "Oh, I remember that..."

The common phrase to name that moment is "showing your age."

Linden Lab appears, to this observer at least, to have an ambiguous relationship with the age of the virtual world they invented. Each year they create a bunch of temporary regions and invite the users to populate them with constructions, all in an effort to celebrate what they call the birthday of Second Life -- that is, the anniversary of when it declared itself "out of beta": 23 June 2003. Each year, they put on a show of how proud they are of how old Second Life is... which is to say, how long it has managed to survive in the marketplace of virtual worlds and MMOs.

And yet (with very few exceptions), there is no public retrospection, no look back, no acknowledgment of the Beta Oldbies whose accounts are older than the putative "birthday" being celebrated, and who still, after 8 or 9 years, maintain an active participation in the world. It is as if the Lab wants to brag about their age without "showing their age."

From my point of view, this makes little sense. Why not enhance the sense of accomplishment -- well-earned, I might add -- with a look at how far we've come? Why not review the milestones of both technological and cultural achievement? Why not give special mention to the pioneers who started us on the path?

Unfortunately, I can come up with some possible answers to those questions, and the most likely one is: too few people care. There is a truism that goes around the community of bloggers about Second Life: (at least) 90% of the Residents are unconcerned about anything more than the immediacy of the world they log into. They don't care how it works, or how it's run, or how things used to be in the past, so long as they can find their friends, their clubs, their fashions, and their poseballs. "History" to them is what (or who) they did last week.

And I think part of that lies in their conception of the word "virtual", which they take to mean "not real". The realization has not struck them that Second Life continues to exist, grow, and most of all change during their absence from it. They log in, and it runs on their computers just like any other program; they log out, and it goes away.

And so... because "SL (fill-in-the-blank) B" is ostensibly an event by and for the Residents, and too few Resis care about the history -- and the very few of us who do care are either too busy, or too wary of the pitfalls inherent in exhibiting -- no one comes forth to remind the rest of just how remarkable Second Life's continuity is. Meanwhile, the Lab appears not to care enough, either, to take the matter into their own hands.

Perhaps, when the previous administration of Linden Lab -- specifically Kingdon and Hale --  insisted "Second Life has no culture", they meant the Lab has no corporate culture. In other words, it's just a job: go to work, earn your paycheck, log out at the end of the day, and it all goes away. Considering the fact that there are no Lindens (except Philip, who barely counts) remaining from the early years, and that most of the workspaces seem to have been equipped with revolving doors, it shouldn't be expected that anyone there has any more sense of the world's continuity than all but a handful of Residents.

It should also come as no surprise that those very few of us history geeks who do pay attention to continuity have gone outside of the "SL_B" grist mill to collectively display objects of interest we've collected.  The brainchild of Salazar Jack and friends, ArcheoExpo 2011 opened yesterday (25 June) at the Seaside Village in Cowell (SLurl). Icarus Fallen has blogged about the opening - you can find that here.

According to Salazar, the Expo will be open for two weeks (not one, as the website states), after which (with their owners' consent) the artifacts will be moved to a permanent location in the Grignano region of Nova Albion.


Finally... if you do have an inkling to learn about the early years of Second Life, I've gathered a modest list of Resources at the bottom of this page.

One very important resource is missing from that list (owing to my procrastination in updating the page): Pituca FairChang's blog, "Memoirs of an Oldbie".

If only others were recording their personal memories of those times...

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Though I've painted with the broadest of brushes, I can and should vouch for one Linden who does have a proper sense of SL's history: Torley. And -- in addition to their project in western Bay City -- the Linden Department of Public Works, a.k.a. the Moles, quietly replaced the Rizal region two days ago with a combination of historical restoration and new work, which I intend to visit soon, and blog about next week.

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Sunday morning: second mug of coffee at hand, SomaFM's Drone Zone streaming in Winamp, thunder in the distance... time for the weekly blog.

A couple of days ago, I added the second Linden* to the list of people I follow on Twitter: "A small yoz-type object," as his profile says. The decision resulted from someone else I follow retweeting this:

Haters gonna hate. Players gonna play. Resis gonna rez.

Damn straight.

That's what we do. And we keep on doing it, regardless of how any of us might feel from one minute to the next about the conditions in Second Life, or the way a particular aspect of it is being handled, or which viewer we choose, or who's pissed off at whom for whatever reason... Or even -- to get all meta/Transworld/Avatarian about it -- which world we're rezzing into. The point is (paraphrasing my friend Ahuva): There's a certain type of person who gets Virtuality, and cannot resist its call. Resis gonna rez.

While we're on the topic of "Resi", a.k.a. "Resident": I've never objected, semantically or otherwise, to that term. From my inner POV, I reside as much in Second Life and InWorldz as I do in the immediate suburbs of Indianapolis. OK, sure -- many of us are also paying customers, and it sometimes can be a damn shame that some parts of The Lab need to be reminded of that... but (again, from my own viewpoint) I'm not a customer of Linden Lab in the same sort of way I'm a customer of, say, the local grocery. In the latter case: I go there, get what I want, pay for it, and leave; I don't keep a personalized space in the store to hang out in when I'm not actively buying.

On the other hand, I'm a resident of my apartment complex, and the town it's in. I pay rent and taxes in exchange for the privilege, and for services provided -- which also makes me a "customer", if you insist -- but framing my psychological relationship with the place I live by using a word that only describes the monetary transaction rather misses the point.

Nevertheless...

I've finally succumbed to the use of Display Names in SL, because the constant repetition of "Resident" as a name was setting my teeth on edge. Say what you will about the 1.x naming method... we who came into SL under that protocol are now quietly lamenting its demise. Some of us even pay enough attention to recognize the relative age of an avatar by their last name, and when it was available [Example - I saw an Ingersoll the other day, first one I'd seen besides Ingrid, and sure enough, she'd joined in early 2004].

But, in the same way that we older Resis have literally "made a name for ourselves", it's only fair to allow the newer Residents the courtesy of seeing their tags they way they've chosen to display them. So I'm doing that.

Speaking of succumbing... count me also among the hundreds (thousands?) who are trying out the early TPV2s -- specifically, Firestorm Beta, because Kokua hasn't released anything beyond their rudimentary first iteration yet. The simple fact is: no matter how many of us drag our heels, 1.x viewers will eventually no longer function properly, if at all, and it's time to quit resisting and evolve -- that is, evolve within the constraints of the environment which, as with other organisms, are beyond our ability to control.

Inara Pey (recently become one of my favorite bloggers, for the even-handedness of her approach to issues) blogged yesterday on what would be her "Ideal Viewer". I agree, right across the board (or, the screen). The one aspect she didn't cover, surprisingly, was building... and I am pleased to report that both Kokua Preview and Firestorm 2.5.whatever include one of my favorite "extra" build tools: Align. It's the builders' dream answer to the problem of texture flicker due to overlapping prims. Kokua also brings (from Imprudence, natch) the feature with which one can copy/paste coordinates from one prim to another, but I suspect Firestorm will include that eventually (wasn't it originally an Emerald thing?).

I have two frustrations about Firestorm, for now:

[1] Teleports are surprisingly unstable. More often than not, it freezes while the new region loads, and the screen goes black momentarily at least once, but usually twice, until I can resume activity. Occasionally, the region hand-off doesn't complete, and I still get the parcel name and stream from where I just was... as if SL can't quite figure out where I am and is trying to satisfy both system calls at once.

[2] I can't go to InWorldz with Firestorm yet. My Ideal Viewer will be the only one I use, no matter where, rather than having to switch from one UI to another (not to omit having to switch between V1 and V2 capabilities). I don't know whether it's because Firestorm doesn't have permission to work in InWorldz, or they just haven't gotten around to arranging for it. They need to.

And Kokua needs to quickly catch up to the level of Firestorm's beta (but I think they know that).

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* The first was BK Linden... who, I guess, is too busy counting beans to Tweet much, though in his favor I must say that he filled in admirably during the time SL was without a functioning CEO. I've tried a few times to follow Rodvik, but the request doesn't complete -- I don't want to conclude that I've been blocked, because I haven't said anything to deserve it. But, as I've said before, I'd rather he read this blog, anyway, especially the SLHistory entries.

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My friend Ahuva recently ranted about something she read in another blog on the subject of "conformity" in Second Life avatar appearance. The OP (forumspeak for "original poster") opined that the majority of people in SL lack sufficient imagination. She apparently based this conclusion on the premise "You can look like anything at all, so why remain so recognizably human -- unless you're too thick to think of anything more."

When I read that blog, I wrote it off with a single "Pfft!" Granted, there are thousands of avvies logged in at any time of day whose choice of appearance tend toward "sides of beef on legs" for the males and "hyperinflated balloons on legs" for the females...

BUT:

The Defense offers in evidence the following, taken in one place (Marx Dudek's The Listening Room) during a single 3-hour session of Marxie herself spinning tunes from her vast (and vastly enviable) collection:

Further evidence can be found here... and that doesn't include the photos of furry avatars I collected when I, too, was one. (Maybe I should put some of those back up...)

Careless use of a broad brush is more likely to splash back on the user.

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If you're of "a certain age", and live in the US, you may recall an advertising campaign from the 1960s with a particularly insidious earworm jingle:

Lately, as various start-ups (and upstarts) vie for recognition and market share, there's been a lot of "My grid's better than your grid..." There's nothing wrong in my book with bragging about the virtual home you've chosen -- anyone who reads this blog knows how enthused I am about InWorldz -- but there's an important difference between boosting your own and tearing down someone else's.

And yes, I know... I'm as guilty as the next guy or girl about criticizing Second Life. But, as more than one guy and girl have pointed out -- to the extent that, by now, it really shouldn't need repeating -- we do that because we want SL to continue, to improve rather than stagnate, to lead the virtual worlds of its type rather than to merely endure by being the 800-pound gorilla.

Today's blog entry was inspired (if you can call it that) by an exchange or two on Twitter yesterday to which I was exposed second-hand. I don't know all of the details -- in fact, I deliberately avoided tracking them down -- and I'm not going to name names or repeat what was said. Best as I can tell, someone who I follow made mention of Aurora, which is a new-ish fork of the OpenSimulator server code (and was associated briefly with Imprudence/Kokua). Well... someone took the role of Troll upon themselves, and proceeded in multiple tweets to denigrate not only the Aurora project, but the person who mentioned it.

In my time in Second Life, when commenting about other avatar's choices in appearance, activities, and lifestyle, I've often used the phrase "It takes all kinds to make a virtual world." Well, guess what, Mr. and Ms. Troll: It takes all kinds of virtual worlds to make an Omniverse, too. The choices other people make about which ones they go to, or how many, or which software they use to start up their own, are not intrinsically wrong for the sole reason that they differ from yours. Interoperability is a worthwhile goal, but it does not mean "One code to rule them all."

There is a point at which evangelism becomes fanaticism. Virtuality needs the former; it should have no use for the latter.

Be proud of your own world(s) without demonizing the others.