Where are we going?

Had a long discussion with my sister this evening about Second Life. Having been living a real Second Life for three years, I think of myself as a real person there, with a whole other life. Recently my siblings (I have five!) and I started discussing arragements for my mother’s seventieth birthday - though it seems impossible that she could be 70.

It’s a slow old process. As we are separated by a lot of miles, one brother in the Netherlands, another in London, sisters in Hampshire, Buckinghamshire and Devenshire, the conversation is by group email… so I suggested we might meet up in Second Life and make our plans there.

It was not an idea that was received well, and when I expressed some hurt and surprise at the negative response, I was then told to expect a phone call from my youngest sibling. She proceeded to inform me that she preferred real people in the real world, instead of the artificial world of Second Life, where she seems to think that we are all plugged into an artificial heart and brain as well as an avatar. She was vehement in her antipathy towards computers and towards things which separated real people from the real world.

It does me good to have a conversation like that from time to time, because of course most of the people I meet in SL understand what they are gaining from it, and most are awed by the possibilities that we are only beginning to explore. It isn’t often I meet people who regard the computer as an enemy to be avoided, rather than a tool.

I feel sad, I suppose, because I want to share and show off the things I have done, and the things I have learned, but I can tell that she is closed to the idea that anything positive could result from trying the experience. I feel I have gained such a lot from my contact with Second Life, in friends, in knowledge, in just the contact with so many people I would never have met if it hadn’t been for Second Life. In some ways I feel that rejecting Second Life is rejecting people, rejecting their friendship and rejecting the creativity and collaboration which form such a strong part of the virtual world.

She feels that even trying Second Life would be to reject the real world, and disconnect from real people.

I was feeling pretty depressed about the conversation and the content, and then I found a link on boingboing to this. It’s a video explanation of how things are changing and what Web 2.0 means to us, and inspired. I hope you will go look at it. And suddenly I can understand again what amazing possibilities lie ahead for collaboration and understanding. And I feel Second Life has a part to play in that.

Oh, and join ProjectHamad — or at least, go look at the website, and join if your conscience allows. I’m still wearing myProjectHamad box in Second Life. I met someone yesterday who commented on my appearance and said “Well at least it stops you being hit on, I suppose!”