2 posts tagged “ideas”

One of the greats passed yesterday. George Carlin left for that great stage in the sky on Sunday evening and shall be sorely missed. His style of humor was not for everyone, but I believe he tried to offend everyone and mostly succeeded at one time or another. The offensiveness was not (to my knowledge) malicious. Rather, Carlin used his remarkable gift of language to craft a mirror that highlighted our imperfections, usually in a grossly exaggerated way. As Paul noted in one of his epistles to the Corinthians (and I'm too lazy to look up which one), "we see through a glass, darkly". In this usage, we see only a distorted reflection (a "glass" is a mirror, not a lens) and George magnified those distortions in a way that both entertained and allowed us to to see more clearly if we dared to look deeply enough.

There will undoubtedly be many tributes to George over the coming days and weeks. Some will speak to his comedy or to his political or social philosophy and that's fine. He was great in so many ways that it would take a few biographies to capture him fully and a few minutes' tribute can do no more than scratch the surface. But above all else, I think that George was a teacher. And he taught the power of words. Words do have power, but the idea that seems to underlie most of George's work is that words can only have the power you let them have.

There are words and there are ideas. We, as a society or culture, decide that there are certain words that are not to be publicly used and certain ideas that should not be publicly discussed. The question, though, is whether it is the word or the idea behind that word that don't want. Once a word is removed from the realm of public discourse, it has been given power that no word should have because it expresses something forbidden. Even more frightening is the thought that by removing a word from the realm of discource, we might also remove the idea. For can an idea exist if there are no words to express it? And if it's acceptible to talk about the idea, why worry about the word since it's just the container into which the idea is crammed.

So, for those thinkers out there, which words should never be uttered and what is so repugnant that it requires such censorship? And for George: thanks for all the shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits. You taught much, though I'll never know if that was your true intent.

An article by Mitch Wagner at Information Week a while back got me to thinking: what's the purpose to SL? People are joining the community at a farly fast clip, but once they have joined, then what? Mitch's article attempted to deal with that question from the user's perspective by listing 12 things to do, but I think he missed the larger issue. What's the purpose of Second Life? So let's consider what's possible.

To judge by the results of a few cursory searches, there's a lot of sex going on in Second Life. Some of you may be too young to remember the cybersex craze a few years back. If you missed it, think of it as a lot of one-handed typing (which might lead to a good pun on "sticky keys," but let's not go there). To be fair, Second Life takes it a bit farther by giving the user something look at besides lines of text on the screen, but still...

I'm not trying to denigrate anyone who might be into that sort of thing. I'm a bit of a 70s throwback - if it feels good and doesn't hurt anyone else, go for it. But there must be more to it than watching some avatars do the nasty. My personal take on it is that the participants are either getting something that they cannot get in real life or they are exploring aspects of their personality that they might otherwise repress in real life for fear of repercussions. Second Life, like almost anything on the Internet, affords a degree of anonymity that is not available in real life (for a good look at how anonymous you really are in Second Life, consider the Identify and Anonymity section of Mitch's interview with Phillip Rosedale from last week). So people can indulge their fantasies with little feal of real world consequences. This raises a whole slew of ethical questions that are far outside the point of this whole ramble, so I'll let it drop for now. Perhaps I'll come back to those in another entry, perhaps not.

There is also a lot of money-making going on. Well, money-making of a sort. If you consider April's economic activity, the vast majority of transations were for less than L$1000 (a bit more than four bucks (US$)), and perhaps half of the transactions were for less than L$20 (less than a dime). Now keep in mind that these transactions are only for Lindens. If someone goes off-grid to transact in real money, there would be no way to keep track of that in-world. So if most sellers are collecting less than $.10 per transaction, whatever they are doing must be because they enjoy it, not because they're expecting to become the next Second Life billionaire. The money is gravy rather than the primary motivator. On the other hand, a lot of $0.10 transactions can add up over time. And if you think about it, there are few material costs involved - just skill and creativity (which kind of goes back to my previous post), so perhaps they are thinking volume?

To pick up on Mitch's #2 activity, people chat. A lot. I was tangentally discussing this with a couple of friends last night (maybe the night before) at Philosophy House.  A point that I raised in the discussion was that I would have had to scour the entire town to come up with even a couple of people who could discuss philosophy intelligently and at Philosophy House there are a good dozen or more who show up on a regular basis. I didn't have to do any scouring - there they are, all gathered together in a single place at the same time. I think it is the one area where Second Life excels: the capability to gather people who share similar interests who can share those interests in real-time. I don't think any of the discussions have changed my viewpoints on most matters, but the exchange of differing viewpoints in a civilized manner is the best part. I may not agree with others' views, but the mere communication of a differeing view is enough to make me sit back and go "Hmmmm." And in my book, that's the most important part: the expanded view.

Many years back, British science historian James Burke made a comment in one of his history serials (I forget whether it was "Connections" or "The Day the Universe Changed"). Acording to Burke, one idea plus one idea doesn't equal two ideas; it equals three or more depending upon how good the original ideas were. And that is Second Life's strongest asset - the ability to draw people together and have them share ideas. Whether anyone makes money off of it is completely secondary to the original exchange of ideas.