Second Life

I only gave a few seconds thought to the name of this blog. I've been blogging in my Zen Blog since 2001, but I'm really tired of that closed community. I can't get any feedback unless people join. No one wants to join these sites unless they blog there. I thought of setting up my own blog software, but that's just too much work. Which brings me to today's topic. Living in cyberspace.

Blogosphere, a term coined in 1999 as a joke, is becoming common slang now. When I first created a web site in 1994, I called it the Metaverse after the virtual reality existence envisioned by Neal Stephenson in his landmark cyberpunk, sci-fi novel "Snow Crash." Ten years before that, William Gibson (another idol) wrote "neuromancer" and created the original concept of cyberspace as a consensual hallucination for the alternate reality of console cowboys. Gibson was an early adopter of AI, neuro and bio-genetics, and helped fashion virtual reality. Both Gibson and Stephenson envisioned a dystopian society where multi-national corporations, pollution and over-population make living in cyberspace preferable to "meatspace" (Gibson called the "real" world.) SnowCrash had us designing our own avatars for virtual life. If you were a skinny nerd, you might take on a bulked-up super hero appearance in the Metaverse.

Now that the 21st Century is established, maybe they weren't too far off. Global warming and multi-national corporations are making life miserable enough that some people are actually living SL. What's that? Check it out. Second Life. Remember the Sims and Sim City? Well, SL is Sims gone amok. "Residents" are so addicted to this second life, that I understand the KOS blogger convention actually ran a second convention in SL. that's pretty weird. But, who am I to judge? I can sometimes get immersed in my own web/blog/poker virtual reality, and I know some folks that spend a little too much time in online multi-player games. And, for sure 13 years ago I wanted to live in the Metaverse myself. Heck, maybe that's where I'll be living soon anyway. I'm anxious to leave behind the work-day world. And since I'm too young to retire, I like to think of it as Phase Two. Pretty similar to Second Life, eh?