What’s up
January 6, 2010 3 Comments
M Linden has a “What’s ahead in 2010?” post over at the official SL blog site, and, as one might expect, it’s the usual “bigger, better, faster, more” stuff. What’s interesting is that amongst the questionable self-congratulation (the adult content changes were a big success apparently) and the borderline-delusional optimism (“Second Life [will become] a standard in business, education and government”) there isn’t a single word about introducing more democracy into the user experience.
This seems a strange omission, given that the Lindens are always keen to make out that the Second Life grid is just like a real country, with lots of landmass, millions of residents, and the GDP of Guinea-Bissau. They’re content to impose taxation, in the form of subscription charges, tier payments and the cut they take from L$ transactions, but representation is clearly not on the agenda.
Are we going to let them get away with this? Or are we going to draw up our own revolutionary roadmap? Watch this space.
[When I was composing this post in my head I was thinking that Bigger, Better, Faster, More! was the title of an album by The Sugarcubes, but I had it mixed up with Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week!; BBFM! is by the rather lamer 4 Non Blondes. Yet another sign that my brain is slowing up as the years pass by. Still, the lyrics of 4NB’s big hit are at least tangentially relevant.]
Second Life Shrink 
I was reminded of “Bigger, Faster, Harder, Stronger” by Daft Punk, but, hey.
I think you shouldn’t expect representation in Second Life. It’s called “a world”, there are “taxes”, but it’s actually just an online service, and we’re not goint to get representtion.
I appreciate some of your thoughts I read on your blog, but remember that delusion only comes out of illusion, and illusion is based upon unreal expectation. Having political representation in Second Life is what I would call an unreal expectation.
And by the way, I think the Lab is way smarter and insightful about what to do with Second Life than the average of SL residents combined.
Well I don’t think we’ll be proclaiming the Soviet Socialist Republic of Essellonia any time soon, but we should be able to mount a campaign to persuade the Lindens to grant us some sort of Duma, like the Council of Stellar Management they have at EVE Online.
It would actually make sense for the Lindens to try to increase resident representation in the decision making process, since it would defuse some of the discontent that is around, while coopting the more committed layer of residents into working for the Lab for free. The problem they would have, like Czar Nicholas had, would be hanging on to control after raising the population’s expectations.