Category: pre-image catastrophe

There’s a very nice summary by Christopher Mims of a presentation by Mitch Kapor, chairman of Linden Lab, (complete with slides) over at Scientific American: Second Life chairman’s stump speech takes us down the rabbit hole. Kapor, of course, is a yea-sayer. Christopher Mims is, if not a nay-sayer, certainly a skeptic. Much of the public conversation about Second Life as a business platform is neither here nor there for me, and so I often find critics’ objections or cautions to be irrelevant. Mims has one statement, however, that reveals a narrowness of vision that goes beyond Second Life:

This is the part of the speech where Kapor tells all the haters to talk to the hand. I’m not sure what this proves other than that in any transition, there are people who lack vision. This doesn’t mean that the folks who say similar things about Second Life are wrong–it just means that Kapor left off the ten million other quotes that would have represented legitimate skepticism of technologies of dubious value. Like, say, the airship.

Yes, it’s that little gratuitous dig at the airship. What world does he live in? Does he pay for gas? Has he heard of global climate change? Does he know what a massive amount of non-perishable goods are shipped by truck, train, or freighter, all powered by non-renewable fossil fuels? Airships would be an excellent solution to many—not all, of course—long-distance transit needs.

If we’re going to survive in anything like the style to which we have become accustomed, we need to get real serious about what parts of that style are essential, and which are not, and above all we need to become more creative in our thinking. Airships of dubious value? They may not turn out to be the best (or even a good) solution to our long-term long-distance transportation needs, but to dismiss them out of hand as part of a rhetorical argument reveals a mind-set that isn’t going to help us get closer to solving some of the worst problems facing us.

I’ve met two of my SL UU acquaintances here at the UUA General Assembly: Cathryn Cleanslate and Chara Allen. Both have been a delight to meet, and it makes me eager to have other opportunities.

In a similar vein, my (RL) friend Jan sent a note saying she had spoken at Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting and Association, and had mentioned me, and that two people had asked to be remembered to me: Harmony Bright and Turtle Boogiewoogie.

I got a geeky urge, and played around with the SL statistics for May 2007. I added country population (July 2007 estimates, according to the CIA World Factbook) for the top part of the list as sorted by number of avatars, as well as selected countries from lower down the list.

Antarctica, 211 active avatars (who knew they would keep statistics?), is number one with over 5%, based on the peak summer estimate of 4,000 residents. If based on the winter population estimate of 1,000, the percent would increase to a whopping 21%. American Samoa, 419 active avatars, comes in with 0.73% of a population of 57,663. Netherlands, 17,130 active avatars, is third at 0.10% of a population of 16,570,613.

The United States, predictably, drops from 1 (130,033 active avatars) to 19 (only 0.04% of 301,139.947). Most European countries at the top of the avatar numbers move ahead of the US.

Here’s the abbreviated list sorted by % of population (google docs).