In Hamlet Au’s ground breaking book on the history and Making of Second Life, he wraps up his summary of gender-bending avatars, tax revolts, mirrored flourishing and beautiful prims with a recap of a conversation he had with Philip Rosedale, the visionary Californian Dreamer who painted a picture for our intrepid reporter of the nearing day when we might, or at least Philip might, achieve immortality through the code.

And we’re not talking “I left behind my mark in the world” kind of immortality, we’re talking “my brain will be loaded into Second Life and will live forever” kind of immortality. (I can’t help wondering whether, with the size of Philip’s massive brain, this won’t cause some lag problems, but by then I guess chips will big enough to carry a whole planet of information and we’ll need SOMETHING to fill up all the RAM).

I thought it was a Californian thing. All this stuff about the Singularity and needing to take enough vitamins to get us there.

Now, Richard Garriott is off on “Operation Immortality” and while he isn’t claiming to be on a flight to living forever, he is off to outer space, Tabula Rasa in hand.

Photo: Wired

Unfortunately, Garriott’s dream of playing his MMO won’t come true – at least not from outer space. Seems like there might be hacker issues, although he claims that just because you’re in outer space doesn’t mean there’d be any lag:

“I’ll have the Tabula Rasa code with me, but the ISS partners won’t let me boot it up,” Garriott said. “As you might understand, they’re particularly worried about hackers reverse-sniffing their way back to the ISS.”

It totally could have happened, though. “The ISS has a pretty good internet connection,” he said. And Garriott believes that Tabula Rasa could tolerate the latency created by the craft’s distance from Earth.

What a geek.

I can’t help wondering whether the disease of believing in a future of unlimited possibilities isn’t somehow connected to staring at pixels for too long, or whether maybe these guys didn’t Snow Crash decades ago.

On the other hand, Richard may be worried that if he isn’t logged into Tabula Rasa from outer space, then who exactly will be in world? Having spent some time in his sci fi wonderland, I can’t help thinking that at least a hacker or two would drive up his user stats.