“(He) believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.”
‘Flower Tower’ and Spider Sack Meeting Space by Eshi Otawara
I didn’t arrive at these shores expecting a world but that’s what I found. I didn’t arrive expecting that the lack of rules or goals or direction would be the source of dreams.
I remember asking someone: “so what do you DO here” and the response was – “well, what do you WANT to do” as if all of life was possible, and maybe they knew not to mention the impossibilities, it was too much to handle, I was still worried about prim hair and why my avatar didn’t stand the right way, and kept clicking on gestures hoping they held some kind of clue.
Those first trips to some mall somewhere exposed me to the idea of prims – boxes you can click and open and they held stuff inside, but I can’t quite remember when it first occurred to me that the buildings THEMSELVES were made of those boxes, what I do remember is that I was terrified to build anything in public, so I rented some little plot of land somewhere and built a little dock and a gazebo and it took me days to do – I didn’t know there was such a thing as camera controls, so aligning prims was an exercise in walking and flying around trying to see if things were lined up the right way.
I’m not entirely sure how that experience drew me in – or if I was even aware of how intense the focus could become or how deeply satisfying.
I could swear that I felt unused parts of my brain light up. And some day I’m sure it will be proven to be true: those places we go when we’re rezzing prims and being in these spaces reshape our neural patterns somehow…I could feel it not just in that stunned but satisfying fatigue, but in some sort of new emotional response to the world around me. I felt less real in reality, more ethereal, lighter, and, strangely, more at peace.
Something would happen when I’d set out to make a table, say, and there would be this kind of zone, some sort of warp in space and time which would find me deep in the night perfecting a texture face or figuring out some new way to create a chair leg. One thing led to another and I stumbled across clothing templates, which meant I stumbled across Photoshop, and I probably made 100 outfits before moving on to creating my own textures from photos I’d take and then, of course, creating the houses on which the textures could be placed, or the pathway through a sim. Somewhere along the line I decided I wanted to figure out sculpted prims and I took a detour through Maya and ZBrush and 3DS. I did a few animations on a whim.
Those aren’t the things I thought I’d learn. I didn’t learn them for practical reasons, although there was something satisfying when I figured out the whole commerce thing and started selling houses. It was this little reward system, I suppose, and for some time I was making the equivalent of some people’s rent, and it struck me that this combination of creativity and commerce wasn’t like a lot of stuff out there with their vague economies and clunky ways to buy and sell, when they had ways to buy and sell at all.
None of these things were particularly practical. And neither was the world itself.
The Atomic World
Philip Rosedale recently said that “the upper end of how creative as humans we want to be is apparently not found yet. We seem to be almost infinitely creative in our desire to use these virtual systems…to make content.”
Now, I came late to Second Life. I wasn’t there when people would regularly see Philip on the Grid or attend office hours with him or whatever. I didn’t even know who he was until later: I had heard his name, but never really connected the idea that someone, well, MADE this whole thing, that it was scrounged together in a garage almost and that somehow people gravitated to it, and that the ability to actually make and sell stuff was unique.
Instead, I was fascinated by this intersection of people, creativity and, to a far lesser degree, commerce.
And my answer to that fascination was to buy every book I could find on virtual worlds and devour them. The streetcar ride to the office found me lugging around Bartle’s book or going wide-eyed reading Castranova’s first book, which was a revelation, although I ended up spending more nights thinking about State of Play maybe than any of them….it set me off trying to understand the intersection of policy, governance, law and culture, things I’d barely thought about in the real world other than in a sort of vague ‘I’m Canadian and therefore a wishy-washy liberal” kind of way.
It took me time, in other words, to create some kind of mental geography of what this all meant. And time to understand the true power of the prim, and of Philip’s underlying vision, which was to provide tools for creation that were granular, and which could be assembled in ever larger circles of meaning.
This wasn’t just a grass roots community kind of thing existing on a platform: the platform itself WAS the grass roots, it was assembled prim by prim. Creativity itself had been reassembled and a new tool set created that could allow us tell stories atomically, one bit at a time, and to attach cultural meanings to those assemblies – a culture and, I thought, a new way of seeing or being.
Dislocations
I often wonder whether Philip relates to the deeper changes the world facilitates. Reading Malaby’s book on what it was like at Linden Lab a few years ago, he paints a picture of coder culture informed by games, by a sort of geeky fascination with bending code, and then a vaguely confused reaction when those changes actually impacted the users. At points, he paints a picture of Philip as being fascinated with ’shiny new things’.
Now, I’ve only met Philip a few times. And while he has this vision-y far-off look in his eyes, he’s never struck me as arrogant or less than humbled by what has been created inside this world he made. And I can’t help suspecting that he does know – maybe not in the same time horizon as the rest of us, but maybe in the context of singularities or Zen waves or whatever mental model he runs around with.
See, it’s not just the prims or the code or some elegant script that makes a dance floor work really well. It’s the deep pocket inside where creativity mingles with people and with an almost spiritual zone – that space which creates dislocations, and maybe changes a mind or two about how the world should work and what the future could look like, if only we’d keep the faith and not lose our way.
“Second Life not only became a great tool for self-expression and a dream I could modify to my liking, but also a network of great and amazing people who have wholeheartedly accepted me and helped me to restore my sense of self-appreciation and willingness to live which I had misplaced within the darkness of young widowhood.
Many of these people are regularly welcomed into my ‘Real Life’ and will forever be. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that these people are ‘real,’ genuine, and that our bonds go beyond wire.” – Eshi
The Practical People
We’re getting work avatars now. We’ll be talking about platforms and applications more often when Nebraska is launched. We’ll have dress codes, and the Web will be brought into the virtual world and the virtual world will stream to the Web.
It’s time to be practical, I suppose. Philip has other things on his mind. He’s not leaving, but I can’t help thinking that there is one significant voice who will be absent in the debate when they’re talking about mesh imports or whatever: the conversation will focus on channels and product and whether it’s measurable or not.
I have great faith in Mark Kingdon’s ability to scale Second Life and his recognition that enterprise is not the future of the Grid, but rather a component of a platform in which community and casual users are the key to its success and sustainability.
But let’s be honest about this, because we’re increasingly governed by practical people:
“Pragmatic technology buyers will require immersive software to expose and document APIs and provide out-of-box interfaces to enterprise apps, information worker tools, and back-end systems. Pragmatic end users will demand that applications perform as expected and are easy to use, even for the first time. They will shy away from applications that cause frustration. Given these realities, these announcements coming out of the vendor community indicate steady movement in the right direction.”
I mean – you tell me: how exciting does that sound to YOU?
But thank goodness for those practical people: they help keep the lights on in my office, they keep things as orderly as they can.
But in these practical times I can’t help thinking that one by one we’re losing the voices of the visionaries who came here first, who saw that green light which beckoned across the waves: the ones who could stir us not with practicalities but with visions that didn’t quite make sense or were somehow blurry and ill-defined, but deeply compelling nonetheless.
Because if the visionaries move on, if all we’re left with are practicalities and business avatars and dress codes, then those deep and mysterious places may become increasingly hard to find.
Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
And as I sat there, brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out Daisy’s light at the end of his dock. He had come such a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close he could hardly fail to grasp it. But what he did not know was that it was already behind him, somewhere in the vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… And one fine morning ——
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
- The Great Gatsby
Ahh yes … I sense the ache to not loose our idealistic center, Dusan. I’d argue that what has made Second Life so special doesn’t have to be lost as long as Linden Lab continues be a part of mending broken fences and extending themselves more to the community from within and outside their garden walls. I’m speaking here to the notion of diversity – something this blog seems to really bring home. If the lament is that rules of behavior, economics and law are changing the landscape, smothering the unique diversity in Second Life, that might be true, but I would argue that the extent of that is controllable and in the hands of the powers that be and how they enforce it.
The idea I can’t get in line with though is the notion that all grids have to service the same audience, follow the same rules and goals, and that any shift to target a segment of the larger audience might be seen as ANTI-Second Life. What we should NOT do is become so enthralled with Second Life that we scorn any other cousins that grow from it. After all, wasn’t that one of the reasons Phillip Rosedale opened up the client code? We should not be afraid of these migrations and changes or the competition they bring, because they will allow the industry of virtual world/environs to expand to new audiences offering niche groups a home where none exists or clashes with others. Good competition makes businesses work harder to create a better experience FOR THEIR TARGET MARKET. This is an evitable and necessary exercise for any infant industry. Without these changes things grow stagnant and stale. If anything, these expansions should help Second life can RETAIN its openness and freedom.
For anyone who worries about Second Life’s survival due to increased competition, don’t. They will be here 20 years from now. To know this all we need to do is to look to its predecessor, Active Worlds.com, who after 14 years are still evolving and growing and enjoy a very devoted community. All of us know Linden Labs has to make money to keep the lights on and that means their business model will have to continue to change and morph to grow. No one wants to see them fail or sacrifice their core community in that process.
What is true is that Second Life will no longer be the only virtual destination of its kind. It would be unrealistic to think ANY ONE COMPANY OR GRID CAN OWN THIS. Business grids, dating grids, shopping grids, furry grids, naughty grids … these are sprouting up as we speak and there are more than enough people in the world to give them all an opportunity to be profitable. That why I think the growing pains we are seeing and feeling are indeed very much in the spirit of Phillip Rosedale’s dream, but on a whole other level he couldn’t have foreseen back in 2002. With the ability to create our own grids we can gather those around us who share in our beliefs and dreams and as a community grow in new and exciting directions.. Embrace it and find your niche. Support it with your memberships and your purchases and watch this grow. It’s going to be exciting and wonderful ride I think.
maybe someone will link to a youtube of Jimmy Kimmel from last night’s monologue, It plays “live” to me as i read this article.
Gov Arnold speaks to the religious of technology at Oracle, and suggests that he couldnt have saved his daughter in a harrier jet without technology.- Ill let Mr. Kimmel offer the punch line…
It seems to fit this article.
Fitzerald’s “Gatsby” was the critque, not the belief of the moment. It was 1928 after all.
c3
I say – if the visionaries move on, we’ll move on with them, and/or help them to find new paths to new deep and mysterious places!
I have faith that the deeply embedded creative spirit that is the heart of Second Life will continue – because people like you write about it from a very personal experience with it – and the creative spirit is very tough and never has been entirely defeated by those who only operate in a realm of practicality. If those who keep that spirit alive do not abandon SL, the heart of it will thrive.
That was an EXCELLENT read and writeup.
I’m here, not commenting on what the topic of the post, but to say… Dusan, that was poetry.
What a brilliant piece.
I left my comment about Philip moving on to a next project in their blog, but it basically said “WTG Philip, looking forward to hearing about what you’ll be working on next”
[...] Notes, Prokofy Neva on Second Thoughts, and undoubtedly many other posts, but Dusan Writer’s The Green Light is about exactly what I’ve to say about it, so I won’t bother writing it down [...]
Bravo! You have captured my thoughts but given them a coherent and far more well crafted voice than I ever could.
Which is, in a way, what Second Life has done for me. I’m thrilled that he has new adventures to pursue but relieved that he plans to share them with us as well.
[...] a full-time job, anyway. There are theories as to what he’ll do and elegiac meditations on his legacy, and among long-time users of Second Life, there are crises of [...]
Dusan, now it can be said: I always regarded you as the most insightful writer about SL. Gatsby is my favorite novel, so it was quite lovely to see you tie this together with Philip. Thanks.
[...] a full-time job, anyway. There are theories as to what he’ll do and elegiac meditations on his legacy, and among long-time users of Second Life, there are crises of [...]
From Peter Ludlow’s and Mark Wallace’s book: “The Second Life Herald, The Virtual Tabloid That Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse”
“Second Life is in part a fantasy. But these fantasies are driven by real-life psyches and concerns of the typists behind the avatars. While many people take Second Life for little more than a 3 D chat room, closer inspection reveals much more going on there. As it looked to Uri, in fact, what happened in Second Life, far from being virtual at all, was largely an extension of what happeed in the real world.
Second Life was a place–though not a physical one–where people gathered, did business, and formed relationships with as much complexity and enthusiasm as anywhere on earth.”
In Second Life, different than literature, film, television and theater, there is no need for a “will suspension of disbelief.” Why and how come its “real” to me, like alchemy, remains a mystery.
All the more reason to use it as a studio, to creat fiction, to tell stories, to dream and imagine.
We may be at the end of an era, difined by the prim and by building…now is the moment for the reanaissance and for the arts to florish.
“In Second Life, different than literature, film, television and theater, there is no need for a “will suspension of disbelief.” Why and how come its “real” to me, like alchemy, remains a mystery.”
HUH?
total hogwash.
who writes this stuff.?
I feel your pain Dusan.
It seems like the heart has left with Philip if he truly departs as a presence and as someone who thinks deeply about SL as a virtual world. I haven’t read all of the blogs yet so I’m in the dark as to what prompted this and how sudden it was. It seems very sudden to me.
I also share Philip’s vision as presented at SLCC and don’t see a conflict with any of the ways the huge numbers of creatives in-world are and will be using/residing in it.
I too have devoured every book I can (and time permits) about SL culture and history. I believe that there are visionaries who come from education and art and business and all the other constituencies in Second Life and that we will stay as others who don’t understand may depart.
The most thoughtful avatars will be able to live in multiple virtual worlds at once and won’t have to desert one community to become part of another.
Chimera Cosmos
Wow, this was one of the best articles I ever read about the vision of Second Life, and why it is so important to you — and very likely a few million residents too. It was also one of your best articles ever.
Thanks for sharing both your thoughts and your emotions. I felt… moved.
Dusan…I’ve never before felt compelled to post a comment here…
Your post today took me instantly back to the day I first came to Secondlife…Always nice to know I wasn’t alone in my feelings in those days…or these days.
Your post also eases some of the nagging fear that this dream won’t last…Thank You
Namaste
Dusin, your post reminded me of something that Jenaia Morane wrote about virtual worlds and what her feelings were about being an avatar. See my “Avatar is my Soul”
http://www.daysofoursecondlives.com/2008/02/my-avi-is-my-so.html
Your post took me back to the days when I played with dolls, and spoons, pots and pans. The days when my son played with Playmobile and Lego. Building. Learning by doing, imaginative play with “real” friends, in our virtual worlds – with the dolls, soldiers, sailors, super heroes and doll carriages and plastic ships that took us on journeys to discover and create new lands. Your feelings are universal – the dream will last as long as we – like Calvin & Hobbes are ‘Forever Six.’ Yukon HO! Here we Come!
There are exactly two important decisions by Linden Lab, and both happened under Philip’s watch:
1. Making the SL client multi-platform instead of Windows-only.
2. Releasing the SL client source code under GPL terms.
Some people believe that these were in fact Linden Lab’s worst decisions because they made content theft in SL much easier. But those people never really understood Philip’s vision: to create an open-ended 3D version of the World Wide Web.
In some ways, Philip was a Manchurian Candidate CEO. To venture capitalists he sold the idea of a virtual world with built-in protection of intellectual property and no way for users to download and save even their own creations, thereby locking them into the platform indefinitely. But many of his technical decisions were in fact undermining those plans. OpenGL instead of Direct3D? Quicktime instead of Windows Media? A client for Linux? Open Source? Don’t fool yourself into believing that he wasn’t aware of the consequences.
The consequence of those two decisions above is that Second Life as a platform will continue to exist even after Linden Lab (and their new competitor Blue Mars) is gone. The client/server protocol is open and fully documented, a Mono-based reference implementation of the server exists (OpenSim), anyone can set up a small version of the grid at home, connect it to other grids and then teleport between them as easily as browsing one website after another. Some of OpenSim’s features (e.g. megaregions) already go beyond the original server’s capabilities, without breaking interoperability.
I think Philip is leaving because he feels that he has reached his original goal. His job at Linden Lab is done. The genie is out of the bottle, and there’s no way to put it back there.
[...] LL’s blog, hasn’t been too bad. We all shed one tear or two — or copiously cried like Dusan Writer in the best article I’ve ever read on the SLogosphere. It’s a very moving article, and it addresses one fundamental point: in a virtual world where [...]
Dusan, thank you for this fabulous post. Your description of how Second Life affected you is stunningly beautiful — and one I totally relate to. You do a superb job of describing that nebulous quality, that indescribable experience of being immersed in Second Life that is so difficult to express with words. I hope SL continues to provide that mind-expanding (even mind-blowing) experience to all who explore it.
Excellent points, Masami! Yes, it seems that Philip probably felt he had accomplished all his goals and there is little more he can do at Linden Lab except tweak things here and there, but not do any major changes. Nevertheless, there is one goal missing from Philip’s original plans: Second Life grew beyond the “millions of users” stage, but not “hundreds of millions”. That’s the next goal, and one that seems as impossible as reaching a million users was impossible in late 2005…
ô¿ô wipes his eyes.
Now that I see once again, I often believed that all men should have been to the Military, the Government, or to prison. The lessons you learn in these walled societies, teach us all that their is a separate reality, with it’s own laws and self sufficiency. Entering into anyone of these arenas, has it’s own orientation and adaptivity capacity. So it was with Second Life. I now believe that in any man’s life, he should transcend some Interactive, Virtual arena in his growth.