John Curran posts diagrams from anthropology, linguistics, and social theory. And I love that stuff - it’s visual, it’s entertaining, it’s intriguing.

And I ran across one that struck me as a close representation of what virtual worlds mean. Not “mean” as in prims, or socializing, or business collaboration, or education, or dance clubs, or sex or whatever - but that sense of being in a waking dream.

Swap out Daydreams in the following diagram with “Second Life” and see what you think (click for full size image):

Second Life…involves play, which includes inner play and self-narration…which is a complicated process starting in early childhood. Narration is both performance and a game that creates/relates to an audience, a hero and a narrator.

Second Life is located in the space between waking consciousness and nightly dreaming, that combines a social world and dream images.

Second Life sees results in adulthood through the construction of one’s particular individuality, beginning in fantasy and daydreams.

Second Life includes internalized narrative games filled with preconscious or unconscious material to create “A Voyage Into the Blue”.

I wonder whether the difference between daydreams and night dreams has a parallel in virtual worlds. Or whether we could do a mash-up of this map, which strikes me as a good start at capturing that “other thing” that virtual worlds can often provide.

If nothing else, I want to swipe the title:

Second Life: The Cinema in Our Head Made Real.