8 posts tagged “second life”

Yesterday's Linden blog entry over foreign transaction fees seems to have generated a bit of bruhaha, too. Most of the comments seem to be variations on a theme: why does a US company use a UK bank to process its electronic transactions? My initial take on this was to relegate it to the realm of trivialities. Aside from my bank flagging a couple of L$ purchases as possible fraud until I contacted them (they apparently paid Linden, but wanted verification from me), this is not something that even came close to pinging on my radar. I'm more concerned with other issues, such as the problems of voice chat in conjunction with streaming media in a client application that already seems to think that it rules the roost. Talk about bandwidth hogging.... Oh, and don't get me started on the fact that this is going to come as a forced update rather than an optional plug-in.

I'm generally the kind of guy that likes to call a spade a spade, so here it is for what it's worth. Folks, Linden Labs is a business. The objective of any business is to maximize profits for the stockholders. In Linden's case, it is a privately held company (its stock is not traded on public exchanges), but the stockholders still expect a return on their investment. There are basically two components of profit: revenues and expenses. You want the greatest possible profit? Then maximize your revenues and minimize your expenses.

There is only so much a company can do to maximize revenues. Leaving aside shadier enterprises where it's a case of your money or your kneecaps, a company must entice potential customers into parting with their hard-earned lucre. The enticement is always a cost-to-value judgment on the part of the customer, so there is a limit to what a company can charge its customers before they decide that the value they are receiving does not equal or exceed the cost of obtaining it. In the case of LInden Labs, consider how many of their customers they would retain if they did not offer freebie accounts or significantly raised the fees for land owners. That leaves minimizing expenses.

In today's financial environment, a large chunk of financial transactions are processed electronically. Banking institutions are also businesses and they do not do this out of charity; they expect to make money off it. So electronic transactions are accompanied by fees. My bank, for example, charges me a monthly fee to use ATMs. This is in lieu of a per-transaction fee as is the case with other banks. It's not much (a couple or three dollars per month), but that couple or three dollars multiplied by many thousands of customers translates into some serious money. Credit card transactions are also accompanied by fees, but those fees are almost always charged to the merchant. You can still see this in action at those gas stations that offer a lower price to customers who pay cash. The merchant is passing along the cost of the credit card processing fee to the customers who generate the fee.

It has been a few years since I've had to deal with these fees, but American Express used to charge about 4% (and took forever and a day to send the remaining 96%), Discover was about 6%, and I forget what Diners Club/Carte Blanche charged (or whether they are even still around). Visa and Mastercard were handled in much the same way, but the fee was assessed by the merchant's bank on a monthly rather than on a per-batch basis. Now consider a merchant whose business relies almost exclusively on electronic transactions. If a bank comes to you and says that they will knock a half percent (or whatever) off of the processing fees for electronic transactions if you'll give them your business, you'd probably jump at the chance to cut that expense provided the there was no significant difference in any other area. After all, that's a half-percent more going into your pocket. On a single $5 transaction, it's not much, but if your electronic transactions run into the millions of dollars, that's some serious money (OK, it's chump change for the Lord Reverend Gates, but for the rest of us ...).

Linden's statement that they have no control over the fees that your bank charges is absolutely correct. I'm a bit disappointed that it took an off-shore company to come up with the testicular fortitude to make the offer, but I can't fault Linden for taking reasonable steps to reduce the cost of doing business. But any additional fees are an issue between you and your bank. If that significantly impacts the cost-to-value ratio from your perspective, you're welcome to use a different method of payment that doesn't incur the transaction fee.

Disclaimer: I'm not one of Linden's stockholders, I don't work for Linden and I don't know that the foregoing is actually the case. It's reasonable conjecture based upon a single premise: if you want to know why a business does something, follow the money. Linden Labs is a business, after all.

Of all of the more recent posts on the SL blog, none seems to have generated as much comment as this one from yesterday (5/31):

The diversity of things to see and do within Second Life is almost unimaginable, but our community has made it clear to us that certain types of content and activity are simply not acceptable in any form.  Real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depiction of sexual or lewd acts involving or appearing to involve children or minors; real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depictions of sexual violence including rape, real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depictions of extreme or graphic violence, and other broadly offensive content are never allowed or tolerated within Second Life.

Please help us to keep Second Life a safe and welcoming space by continuing to notify Linden Lab about locations in-world that are violating our Community Standards regarding broadly offensive and potentially illegal content.  Our team monitors such notification 24-hours a day, seven-days a week.  Individuals and groups promoting or providing such content and activities will be swiftly met with a variety of sanctions, including termination of accounts, closure of groups, removal of content, and loss of land.  It’s up to all of us to make sure Second Life remains a safe and welcoming haven of creativity and social vision.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was sort of under the impression that what avatars did among themselves was pretty much up to them (paragraph 1.2 of the TOS: "Linden Lab generally does not regulate the content of communications between users or users' interactions with the Service. As a result, Linden Lab has very limited control, if any, over the quality, safety, morality, legality, truthfulness or accuracy of various aspects of the Service."). So either the blog entry is fru-fru for the consumption of those who believe anything that they read on the web, or the TOS is a lie.

On the other hand, Linden Labs touts that you retain all rights to any content that you create as your own personal intellectual property, but buried in the TOS is this nice little gem:

You also understand and agree that by submitting your Content to any area of the Service, you automatically grant (or you warrant that the owner of such Content has expressly granted) to Linden Lab and to all other users of the Service a non-exclusive, worldwide, fully paid-up, transferable, irrevocable, royalty-free and perpetual License, under any and all patent rights you may have or obtain with respect to your Content, to use your Content for all purposes within the Service.

Understand that I am not a lawyer (I don't even play one on TV). But my read on this is that anyone can take anything you create and redistribute it as they would like within SL, which seems to go contrary to Linden Labs' assertion that your creations are your creations and you retain all of your IP rights to those creations. The reason why this is important is that in order to report something, someone would have to more-or-less violate your IP rights by providing a copy of whatever the violation was to Linden Labs. Basically, by requesting that community members report violations, Linden Labs requires that the reporting person violate your IP rights. Of course if the Linden Police catch you in the act, you're probably hozed, but since I can't even get them to respond to an email or answer a phone, the odds of that happening appear to be pretty slim. So maybe the blog was fru-fru after all?

By the way, the quotations from the TOS are as of 4:14pm. PDT on 6/1/2007. Since Linden Labs agrees that they can change the TOS at any time and for any reason, you might want to verify them. You can read the TOS here.

The upshot of all of this is that for some reason, the Lindens have decided to become the morality police. Why? I have no idea. I'm not disputing that they have the power to do it (they do control the servers, after all), but I question whether they SHOULD do it. And that's not even getting into what do they really mean when they say "broadly"? Is that a certain percentage of the population? If so, no one ever asked me so the percentage is probably wrong. Is it a certain number? If so, how many individuals out of a population of almost 7 million constitute "broadly"? And remember that I'm a stoic - if I'm offended, it's because I choose to be offended. Is that the fault of the person who offended me or is it my fault for allowing myself to be offended? But I digress.

Consider, for example, that I (an adult) and a significant other (also an adult) decide to engage in a little real life kinkiness (kinky is using a feather; perverted is using the chicken). So I dress up in a sheep suit and the other dresses up as Little Bo Peep (let's have her be a minor so I can kill two or three birds with one example) and we go to town. Have any laws been violated? I mean it's not like anyone's doing it with a real sheep or with a real minor. And if we were to do this in SL, it's all just cartoons, so it's not like it's even real people doing it. So who cares?

Apparently the Lindens do. Why? According to the TOS, everyone in SL is an adult since you must be over 18 to join. To steal an idea from elsewhere ("Demolition Man," I think), if I want to paint myself purple and run naked down the street, I should be able to do that. Not because I really want to, but because to tell me that I can't is to limit the means by which I may express myself. Well, express myself within limits, of course. Second Life has a rating system. At the moment it's PG (good for just about everyone) and Mature (you'll probably want to keep the kiddies away, but they aren't supposed to be here anyway). Running naked down the street would probably fall under "Mature" so I'd want to confine my purple nudity to one of those areas.

Supposedly they are adding an "Adult" classification so that we can relegate all of the unbridled sex to somewhere inaccessible to the freebie accounts unless they pony up some ID (Officer: "got any ID?" Driver: "bout whut?"). So if someone is going to be offended by something that they see or hear in a Mature area, it begs the question: what were you doing there in the first place? It's not like anyone stuck a gun to your head and made you go. And even if they did stick a gun to your head, who cares? Your avatar is indestructible. People can shoot nuclear missiles at you all day long and nothing will happen except some flashing lights on the screen and maybe a few sound effects. But you're going to get upset over cartoon people who want to dress up and play? Perhaps you should get a first life before getting a Second Life.

As far as the rape statement, you should keep in mind that default avatars are not equipped for sex. Second, no one can animate your avatar without your consent. Trap you and knock you around? Yes. But no one except you can decide what your avatar does. So if you happen to see a rape in SL, it's happening between consenting adults who have modified their avatars to be able to do that. It's none of your business in that case unless it's happening in a PG area. For the record, I'd like to point out that after many conversations with many female friends over the years, women (in general) do not have a "rape fantasy". Many have a "forcible seduction" fantasy, but note that it a seduction fantasy where consent is initially withheld, but eventually given. I don't know a single female who fantasizes about having some slimebag shoving a gun in her face and threatening to splatter her brains while he gets his rocks off. If you do, you might want to urge her to seek counseling. If you know such a slimebag, call the cops (the real ones).

The funny part of all of this is that I've wandered far and wide and haven't come across any unbridled sex that would need to be corralled. Scantily clad avatars, sure. Strippers and hookers? Yep. Strange things in shops, you bet. Role players who are into things that I'm not? Of course. Hot, sweaty, monkey-love? Nope. Maybe I need to look harder.

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.

Last night, the Level Playing Field Institute hosted an event in Palo Alto, California. The event was somewhat mirrored in SL through streaming media. Mitch Kapor (chairman of Linden Labs, founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and creator of the Lotus spreadsheet application among other accomplishments) gave some introductory remarks at the SL portion of the event. In his remarks, Mitch made a few comments that lead me to believe that in his view, Dr. Martin Luther King's hope for a completely equal society had been achieved in SL. Not being a professional journalist, I didn't take his words down verbatim, nor do I know the address where the video stream was hosted so you may check for yourself. You'll just have to depend upon my recollection. [edit: better yet, here's a report from the Second Life Herald]

Mitch's proposition was that in SL, everyone is equal because no one knows (and most don't care) who you are, where you live, what kind of car you drive, what color your skin may be, whether you attend a church or not, etc. What matters in his view is what you know and what you can do. So we now have a world where people are truly judged, "not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

I might agree with his assertion, in principle, but I think it falls short on the practical implementation. Consider me, for example (what can I say? I'm an easy target). Leaving aside a fairly strong background in computers (in comparison to Joe Six-Pack, anyway), I don't know anything that would be useful to anyone in SL. It might be possible that I could function as an academic tutor in some subject areas, but because I don't know much about working with prims or scipting and am not terribly artistic to begin with, my potential to be an economically viable entity in SL in its current incarnation is very slim. Instead, I would have to exist as as nothing more than a consumer, cabable of interacting with other SL residents, but incapable of being economically productive.

Consider, also, the basic infrastructure that must be in place for me to even be present in SL. I must be affluent enough to own a fairly current computer (or at least have easy access to one). I must also have a fast internet connection or be willing to wait a very long time for all of the textures to finish rezzing on a slow one. I must be comptuer literate enough to use the software. I must be capable of using text as a communication tool (enough written language skills to be able to communicate effectively) and I must have something to say that people might actually be interested in hearing (arguable whether I meet that condition, but we can pretend).

In effect, SL is an environment where the residents have a greater degree of commonality than you would find in real life. Until such a time as SL is practically accessible to the public at large, Dr. King's dream remains only a dream, even in the virtual world.

At one of the many chats and discussions that take place at Philosophy House, someone asked me about my own philosophy (perhaps that's why it's called Philosophy House -- wow! What a concept!). I was pretty much thrown for a loop by it, too. Not so much because I don't know what I believe, but because I wasn't sure of a label that I could attach to the whole shebang that would make sense to anyone other than me. I don't have any single overriding set of beliefs, and would have to call myself an "eclectic" since I do tend to draw from several fields of thought.

I suppose that ethically I'm pretty much a Stoic in the classical sense of the word. In today's language the term has come to mean someone who's "stiff upper lip" and that sort of thing; kind of a cold-hearted, unfeeling bastard in some usages. However, that's not what the Greeks and Romans meant by the term. A Stoic is one who tries to be rational by controlling their emotions. The Greeks used the term "apathos" (my Greek is almost non-existent, so please don't hold me to that), which we now call "apathetic". In our usage, it means one who really doesn't care about much of anything. To the Greeks, though, it means not driven by their passions ("a", meaning "without", and "pathos", meaning "passion", but probably closer to "suffering" or "pain"). The idea is that emotion, especially strong emotion, leads to false perceptions and interferes with rational thought. Therefore, by keeping a tight rein on one's emotions, one can approach life rationally and logically.

In the Stoic belief system, the self is the only thing which is truly within our power to control. Thus, there is the self and everything else is information, which we may choose to act upon or not, as reason may dictate under the circumstances. In the search for any capital-T truth, there are certainly flaws within this system. But since its beliefs are centered around control of the self rather than around control of the surroundings, its ultimate end would be a harmonious relationship with the world at large by adapting ourselves to the world as we perceive it to be rather than trying to change the world to suit our desires. Perhaps "happiness" might be an accurate term, but it's more more along the lines of eudaimonia ("the virtuous exercise of rationality") than anything else. Keep in mind that "virtue" to the Greeks was something closer to "habitual excellence" than to any sort of cheerfulness. In other words, whatever you're going to do, do it well.

Because the self is the root of everything, this would logically imply the existence of a self. Which more or less leads into a second foundational belief. In order for this to work well, I must accept two concepts: existence and identity. In simpler terms, "I am" and "I am me". Existence is a constant (otherwise I wouldn't be here writing this - of course I could be a figment of your tormented imagination, in which case I would suggest that you are in serious need of therapy because you should be able to come up with a better imaginary friend); identity is not. If we are shaped and molded by our experiences (well, those experiences which we allow to shape and mold us, anyway), then our identify must change to a certain extent. In many ways, I am the same person that I was when I was 10, but in many other ways I am a completely different person than I was when I was 10. I am also a different person than I was when I woke up this morning. It's probably not a noticable difference, but that difference must exist or I would stagnate.

Somone asked if this was a Cartesian view. I suppose that at its core it is ("cogito ergo sum" and all that), but it really isn't. Descartes' next leap was something to the effect that God would not try to deceive him. I can't make that leap. So instead of relying on some divinely given version of reality, I have to rely on what I can perceive. But I must also concede the possibility that my perception might not be an accurate rendering of reality. However, to make that concession, there must also be some degree of probability that it is accurate. Being rather confident of my own perceptive ability (self-centered SOB that I am), I assign it a higher probability of accuracy than its probability of inaccuracy. So, using the example of rain in Dallas that I mentioned in my previous post, if I walk outside and get wet, it is highly probable that it is, indeed, raining. But there is some chance that I am not perceiving the event correctly, so I cannot say with certainty that it is raining, merely that it is highly probable. Sounds a bit Bayesian, but I don't have the head for math to be able to calculate it precisely. Instead, I believe that it is raining, but concede the remote possiblity that I could be wrong.

So, in short, I am certain of my own existence. My identity is somewhat malleable, but I am certain that I have one. All else is probabilities.

One of my friends in Second Life calls me "the wandering Fergus" ("the wondering Fergus" might work, too). I'm sure she means it as a joke or as friendly teasing, but it's very close to accurate. I'd like to see everything that I possibly can, while still allowing myself time to socialize and have a good time. It's a tall order and most likely well nigh impossible as the content is growing faster than can be seen by any one person. But, hey! A fella's gotta have goals.

At any rate, while engaged in my wandering a couple of days ago, I stumbled onto a place called "Knowledge Park". You might think of it as being SL's equivalent of a small web portal with teleports to other places in SL that others might find interesting. They're pretty much grouped by interest area. For example, there is a section for sci-fi buffs and another one dealing with astronomy. Although Knowledge Park provides portals to other areas, there is no return teleport, so you'll definitely want to set a landmark so you can revisit. I took the portal to the SL Planetarium and was astounded by what I found at the other end.

The planetarium itself was nice, but a bit disappointing. It's a good start, but would take a great deal of scripting and texturing to bring it up to its full potential. Don't take that wrong. I'm not throwing stones at anyone's efforts. "Those who can, do" and all that. The surprise was in what was right next door to it: the International Spaceflight Museum. The ISM is worth every minute you can spend there, and you can easily spend a few hours. I highly recomment the rocket ride to Near Earth Orbit, just for the fun of it. If you'd rather not bother, there is a simple teleporter to take you there. I did not find a teleport back to the museum from Near Earth Orbit, so you may want to set a landmark before heading off.

Once there, you can explore the solar system, including the planets, their moons and exhibits on some of the major satellite missions to them. New exhibits are under construction and I spent a few minuts chatting with some universtity students who were working on a mock-up of one of the Apollo moon landings.

My first thought upon arrival was, "WOW!" But my second thought was that this would be a wonderful place to bring students for a virtual field trip. Then a couple of other thoughts hit and convinced me that this was not such a hot idea, after all.

First, I teach middle school. I can just imagine the problems with shepherding a group of rambunctious 13-year-olds through an environment where they are pretty much free to go where ever they would like and, let's face it, a major chunk of SL is definitely not for kids. It's possible that the ISM is mirrored in Teen Second Life, but I don't know for sure (minors aren't allowed in SL and adults aren't allowed in TSL - east is east and west is west and ne'er the twain shall meet). The second problem that occurred to me was that the SL client software needs to use a couple of TCP/IP ports that are probably blocked by any school district's firewall. Thirdly, SL itself is typically classified as "entertainment" by most web-filtering software, so you probably wouldn't be able to contact the SL servers even if the necessary ports were open, although it could probably be added to the a white list of approved sites (not likely considering the other content in SL). And lastly, SL is a bandwidth hog. Unless someone can come up with an SL caching proxy of some sort (all clients talk to the proxy - content is transferred over the WAN link once, and then redistributed over LAN links as needed), the sheer volume of data being sent to a 30-seat lab would choke an entire district's WAN lines in a heartbeat.

There are probably work-arounds for all of these problems. Some of them would depend upon the cooperativeness of the IT department, while the bandwidth issue woudl have to be resolved by the good folks at Linden Labs. At any rate, the potential use of this virtual world technology in an educational setting is phenominal. It's just not feasible in my present situation. Bummer.

First off, let me state that everyone is entitled to their beliefs. I don't particularly care whether you believe in God, Allah, Buddha, the Great Spirit, or nothing at all. If it makes you happy to believe it, then go for it. So what follows is not to belittle anyone's beliefs, but rather to show what happens when people's most important beliefs are challenged or perceived as challenged.

Sunday's topic in the epistemology discussion was "evidentialism". It's not a bad system, as far as it goes. In fact, it pretty much forms the foundation of our legal system. The afternoon discussion went very well, essentially arriving at the conclusion that it leads to no capital-T truths, but is workable enough for dealing with small-T truths (everyday facts and conclusions regarding perceived objects and events). The evening discussion started off well enough, pretty much agreeing that it works when you're talking about "normality", but starts to fall apart when one begins to examine other possible explanations.

The example used was a statement by a friend that it was raining in Dallas. For most of us, a generally truthful person's statement about something of that magnitude is sufficient evidence to accept it as a factually accurate description of an event that we are not capable of experiencing for ourselves. We believe that the speaker is rational enough to know whether it's raining or not and truthful enough that we believe they would not intentionally tell us something that they did not believe to be accurate. But for a person with a less-than-rational outlook (what we might commonly call "paranoid") then those two assumptions may not pertain.

The point was then raised questioning whether an otherwise truthful person's assertion regarding the existence (or not) of God was sufficient to cause someone else to change their belief based upon that assertion. For example, my friend says, "I know God exists." Is that statement sufficient evidence to justify my own belief or changing my own belief in God's existence? And the discussion began to deteriorate from about that point. All in all, not a pretty scene with the topic now being existence or non-existence and replete with "how dare you?" and comments of that sort.

Whether true or not, there seem to be some topics which are real hot-button issues with some people. Especially when taken in a different context from what was originally intended. Back in my college days, I worked as a bartender (among other jobs). The standard rule was to never discuss religion, sex or politics (sometimes sports, depending on who the local favorite was). Being an essentially filthy-minded lecher, I couldn't abide by the sex part. Since my minor was Political Science, I couldn't stay away from the politics part (probably lost more than a few tips in the process, too). But the religion part was a hard and fast rule for exactly this reason - even people who practice the same faith have a hard time agreeing on some aspects of their beliefs. Imagine the problems with people of different faiths trying to persuade each other that their most closely-held beliefs are wrong.

So, I'm back to my "no religion" stance. Believe what you want. You might even be welcome to discuss the topic with me privately. But it probably has no place in any public philosophical discussion unless everyone involved is amenable and agrees to remain civil about it.

On rye with swiss and just a bit of dijon mustard, please.

So what's to tell? I'm exploring this thing called "Second Life" (www.secondlife.com). Being the kind of person who likes to talk about things as an aid to learning, what better way to do it than by blogging it? In real life, I'm a social studies teacher in Texas.

I got onto SL out of curiosity about all they hype I've been seeing for the past few months in the various trade mags that I receive (and seldom have time to do more than skim through). I suppose the biggest draws to SL are the fact that it's free (for now, anyway - looks like they're going to start charging a fee for age verification for users who want access to adult-oriented areas) and it's almost entirely user-built. Linden Labs provides the server space and basically sets the ground rules; the users do everything else. There are currently around 6,000,000 registered users (called "residents"), although that number also includes those users who have more than one account. There have been a bit more than a million and a half logins within the past 60 days, though I don't know whether that is total logins or unique residents logged in. At any rate, it appears to be a rather large user base in spite of the arguments over just how big. There are two Second Life realms (for lack of a better term) available: Second Life and Teen Second Life. Adults, with very rare exceptions, are not allowed in Teen Second Life and minors are not allowed at all in regular Second Life. I'm sure there are at least a few minors in SL. Create an environment where males (adolescent or not) can see cartoon boobies and they'll flock to your site, at least for a while.

At any rate, I can see where SL might fill a void in the online community. Unless you're willing to spend some money, about the only things you can do are sight-see (it is generally quite striking) and chat.In practical effect, it's no different from web-surfing (which can be a lot more educational). IM'ing or hanging out in chat room. Where SL comes in is that it's a 3-D environment, so you actually have something to look at while you're doing it.In that respect, it's pretty decent. And it may sound funny, but an avatar party is infinitely better than reams of text in a chat room. Where it also stands out is with musicians and artists being able to share their work through streaming media.

So there I am - wandering around like any noob. And the first places that I manage to find are the library and a place called "Philosophy House". How's that for being a true nerd? The bad thing about the library is: no books. Lots of notices about events and exhibits, but no books that I could find. Bummer. You'd think they'd at least make their knowledge base available. Think I'll head back there and do some more exploring. It's a very interesting place.

The Philosophy House, though... That's something else entirely. It's not even fair to call it a house - it's just a dozen or so stumps arranged around a fire pit. Works out well, though. The minimalism of the surroundings lets you concentrate that much more on the conversation. And what conversations! I think I have died and gone to heaven.

Start from the premise that I'm not just a nerd -- I'm a super nerd. Pick a subject, any subject; I've probably studied it, at least a little. And if it's in the liberal arts, a lot. Now tack onto that the fact that I'm curious about almost everything. I want to know what it is, why it is, how it works and how it fits into the big picture that we generally call "life". It doesn't matter that it's not relevant to what I'm currently doing. What matters is that at some point it might be relevant or useful. Now add to that mix a group of highly intelligent and articulate people with similar interests and let them start talking. Some of it really makes my head spin, but I haven't had this much fun since arguing with my friends in college.