Second Life: Exercise in Frivolity
Thursday, December 04, 2008 | 
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Ari Blackthorne™
There was a comment M Linden, (Mark Kingdon, C.E.O. of Linden Lab,) mentioned in an interview by Dusan Writer, where the gist of what he was answering to whas the question of whether Linden Lab is more or less a hosting company leasing server space and does does he see it.First, lets take a look at that idea: Linden Lab as a host.
They aren't. They are not hosting anything of yours at all. A web host will host your web files. You create them, upload them and they hold and serve them for you. This is technically true even with those do it yourself web site creation services, though those are far more in-line with what Linden Lab is doing.
Nothing you own is ever transferred to Linden Lab servers, except images, sounds and animation/pose description files. So I guess you could say they are 'hosting' those. But that's not what Second Life is about.
You see, M Linden said
The virtual world needs a tangible metaphor to be real, even when it involves fantasy. Land was a stroke of genius on the part of Linden Lab. Truly.
Why? It gave people something real and tangible that everyone can relate to. Having space and a roof over your head is pretty low on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs so that was a smart place to start.
I have to tell you that no one thinks of it as server space — well, maybe the team responsible for deploying simulators does. But even they think of it as land. A few weeks after joining, I got a notecard that said, “Please help me M! My landlord closed shop and now my house is gone. I’ve lost everything I own. I have nothing and nowhere to go.” That person didn’t say, “I lost my server space and I am having a problem with my account.”
We will never rent server space.
I read this interview back when it was first published. And in everything that was asked and answered, this is the statement that most stuck in my head.
What Mark is saying is not new to me. I've understood it and believed it since my earliest days in Second Life back in '06. The two important points are these:
"The virtual world needs a tangible metaphor to be real, even when it involves fantasy."
This is very true. The operative to me here is 'tangible'. That is the one word that describes to me everything Second Life is: tangible.
Because second Life is 'tangible', you get this often:
“...My landlord closed shop and now my house is gone. I’ve lost everything I own. I have nothing and nowhere to go.”
Then there was a poignant article written by CeNedra Rivera about the kindness of strangers. Though in that story she speaks to frugality and the frivolity of spending money on a particular want, the idea was the want itself.
What it comes down to is attachment. Because 'land' and 'homes' and yes, even a digital chair is tangible, we develop a sentimental attachment to it. Just like the sentiment we feel for photographs. There are memories attached to them. The difference in Second Life is the photograph is a moving, living one.I have a couple sims. Land of Hope was my first and I have owned it for more than a year. It has spent most of its life as a community of land parcels for sale and lease and was highly successful. It easily paid for itself.
But now with the land-glut caused by openspace sims and the clean-up of the mainland — (another story to be posted here later, I promise) — the land sales business is floundering. It's not quite 'bust', but it sure feels like it.
It's any easy solution to simply go to the Second Life support site and submit a ticket:
Region/Estate -> Change -> Abandon.
Then, when tier is next due the sim goes poof and is recycled into the land store for someone else to snatch-up.
I should do this, right? I mean, it's really just a frivolous expense. Why should I go on maintaining a digital pixel island, spending time, money and effort in such a frivolous way?
Because I'm attached. I have actual memories of the place over the last year. Good times and bad.
It's "home".
It's tangible.
(Images are of a Land of Hope long gone.)
Read Cen's interesting story about the kindness of strangers here.
Read Dusan Writer's interview with Mark Kingdon here.
So, what do you hold near and dear inside the digital virtual world of Second Life that is tangible to you?
Categories:
Socially Mundane
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