PseudorealityPrevails

Coke or Pepsi?

The bulk of this conference focuses on pre-built and pre-scripted virtual worlds.  The illusion of choice is presented by quantity; here are 19 different shirts for your avatar, here is a game where you collect virtual pets, here is a puzzle with 11 branching pathways. 

But not only is customization not true creativity, it actively diverts it, in the same way that junk food fills you up but provides no nutrients.  A type of choice is involved in selecting skin tones and hairstyles from a menu, but as a closed system it is not creative at all.  It is also perfect for the commodification of those impulses, as finite systems have closely defined elements that can be (and are) packaged and sold.  This environment of faux choice is further compounded by the fact that we live in a culture of commodification anyway, from objects to ideas, and so we're familiar with that context and easily fall into the usual behavior patterns. 

This qualitative difference, between customization and creativity, is where the tech can really be used for good or evil.

Le roi est mort, vive le roi? Ou vive le monde?

Philip Rosedale has announced that he's stepping down as CEO of Linden Labs, although staying on as Chairman of the Board. Wagner James Au of New World Notes has described it as the end of the "Burning Man" era for Second Life. Linden Labs is at a crossroads where growth and stability might be more important than creativity to the continuation of the Second Life experiment.

BMan and SL are both places where you, with others, create your own reality. And although there are certainly people who could thrive in (either) environment who have not been to either "there" yet, it is also the case that not everyone wants to do that.

I think it makes perfect sense to hand the LL reins over if the race is now about growth and stability and other business tropes - let someone who is excited about those goals achieve them. But SL is not going to continue becoming a new Possibility Space by focusing on increasing subscribers and profit margins. I am glad that PR is going to stay on in some capacity, but hopefully he, or someone, won't lose sight of the creative kernel at the center of the expanding multiverse from which the new and the different emerge.