Second Life

In my E-Commerce lecture today we learned about Web 2.0. This is like the internet where everyone can contribute to what everyone else is doing. Its basically things like comments on YouTube, customer's book reviews (not actual critics), blogs, and online games. Have you heard about Second Life? Essentially, people create their virtual alter ego and play "life" on the internet with other people's virtual alter egos. You can be a smokin' hot babe, a judge, a rockstar or even a cat (which is apparently a really popular one). I was completely taken back by this. Why would you want to spend time online talking to virtual animals that are really people who want to be animals? Then I learned that Barack Obama campaigned in it on billboards. Billboards? Are their other advertisements? Wait a second... People actually make money. They host club meetings at their virtual houses and charge admission. Who brings the snacks? Then I learned that some people own property and sell it or rent it out. What??? Who controls this? Are their laws? Regulations? Can you commit murder and get away with it? What if its accidental? What if you're a giraffe driving a virtual bus you just bought from a virtual bus dealership and you're on your way to your giraffe club meeting after you went to Diets of Large Mammals class at giraffe university and you run over a virtual cat named Sam-Sam and kill him? Can you take his money? Do you go to a really tall, thin prison cell? I'm trying to understand what need this fills in people's brains. Books are imaginative but maybe restrictive (some would obviously argue differently), Choose-your-own-adventure books offer greater liberation but less interesting characters, the people you meet everyday are nice but not that interesting, certainly not as interesting as talking to cats and pornstars and landlords on the internet, but maybe thats just it. Maybe a lot of people want to be something they're not. If everyone in the world was something different, but knew it, then who's going to call you out and make fun of you for it? They would just call you out for being something totally ridiculous and then the whole world would come crashing down. I'm going to stick to becoming something I want to be (not sure if thats a cat, pornstar, or landlord) and if it doesn't pan out, I'd watch out for bus-driving giraffes if I were you.

Oh, a cool video we watched today. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE.

I would avoid thinking about ourselves as machines though. We're more like the breeze that creates ripples in a global flag.