A posting a few days ahead of layoffs at Electric Sheep had one of their bloggers commenting, wistfully, I’d say, about the impermanence of builds in Second Life.

They write:

There will likely be other experiments, projects, and buildings of ours that will no longer grace the terrain of SL; I know others have gone through this same experience — there are people who have more buildings/objects hiding in their inventory that they’ve created but which are no longer out on the grid than I’ve created in my entire time in SL — so it’s no surprise that others might find this feeling common, but it is with a certain sadness that we pulled AOL Pointe from the world, knowing it would likely not return. However, it could, as it’s simply digital information, and could be re-rezzed at any time.

The great grace of a virtual world which is only limited by its (occassionally limited) technology is its ability to remind us of deeper meanings. I’ve written at length about the strange loop, and how virtuality circles back to reality.

There is a rich vein of therapeutic, spiritual, artistic and personal benefit to virtual spaces that’s slowly being tapped, and I suspect if you gathered a group of SL users and asked them to describe their experiences in spaces limited almost entirely by imagination, you’d hear a range of responses ranging from the astonishing to the frightening.

These experiences would range from discussions of the fluidity of identity and gender, sexuality, the value and peril of role-playing, fantasy, immersion, addiction, despair, hope, faith, and imagination. You’d hear a lot of talk about balance, and you’d hear a lot of discussion about the membrane between the real and the virtual – how strong the magic circle can seem at times, and how real the virtual can become.

You’d hear from people who have chosen to live in Second Life, and those who simply work there. Concepts of objects and self, identity and verification, age and permissiveness would come into the picture, and perhaps new forms of acceptance and community.

For myself, virtual worlds are partly therapeutic, partly fascinating intellectually, and partly work related. Therapeutically, virtual worlds offer wonderful tools for dreamplay, or lucid dreaming. They also offer different tools for expressing and experiencing notions of spirituality. I believe that creativity is a spiritual gift, and SL opens doors to different ways of expressing and experiencing that gift.

Builds in SL and their impermanence can be seen to represent either the product of rampant consumerism and fads – the sense that in a fast-paced, disposable world nothing is permanent. Everything comes and goes. And there is a lack of ‘rootedness’ and community. The public library or museum of yesterday was built from marble with sturdy columns and walls that would last the ages. The public library of today is a click away, and the Web site may or may not remain.

The librarians and museums of today are grappling with a new reality – that the wealth of knowledge is becoming digital, and its preservation as historic documents is as important as the preservation of books and yellowed manuscripts. Until the Library of Congress and the universities catch up, today’s digital artists have, I believe, a responsibility to safeguard today’s art so that we can examine it, explore it, and remember it when the time comes to take stock of how far we’ve travelled into these new worlds.

But this impermanence is also part of the strange loop – like a Buddhist mandala, blown away on completion:

Mandalas are seen as sacred places which, by their very presence in the world, remind a viewer of the immanence of sanctity in the Universe and its potential in his or her self. In the context of the Buddhist path the purpose of a mandala is to put an end to human suffering, to attain enlightenment and to attain a correct view of Reality. It is a means to discover divinity by the realization that it resides within one’s own self.

To symbolize impermanence (a central teaching of Buddhism), after days or weeks of creating the intricate pattern, the sand is brushed together and is usually placed in a body of running water to spread the blessings of the mandala.

Or, as PrimDig wrote:

It’s possible that the history of virtual worlds will echo that of the real world, although sped up a hundred, a thousand fold. There will likely always be new projects and buildings on the horizon, to look forward to with drooling anticipation, and the sunrise of other virtual worlds already seems full of promise. But sunrise over a new project is always tinged with that ephemeral feeling of what will be, and how long will it last, and will anyone remember when?

Well, PrimDig…we can remember the past by preserving it. But in the end, the answer is no. They will not remember when. But in the act of creation we make whatever gift we can to the world, and to ourselves, the strange loop and recursion, though in the end the sands are the great river’s alone.