Your Mind Makes it Real.

Any serious discussion about Second Life will eventually get to the issue of genuine experiences versus fake ones. Second Life emulates many aspects of real life from an open environment to physics, to money, to avatars. Many people who have an account get engrossed in what they’re doing. Considering the extent to which real life is emulated, there arises the concern about losing touch with reality, with common sense, with one’s own perspective. One can imagine that people try to delude themselves into thinking they are their avatar and their Second Life is their real life.

Personally, I don’t see it as being that simple. Its a false dichotomy of sorts, believing that there is only the acknowledgement of real life or the delusion of the digital experience. The misconception arises from not having taken the time to consider what “real” means and how the word is being used. Sometimes the word “real” is used when a better word would be “meaningful.” I think Second Life has plenty to offer on both terms.

When it comes to these questions of reality and meaning, I was inspired recently by a Ted Talks on “synthetic happiness” versus genuine happiness. When we adapt to the circumstances of our lives, we tend to settle back to a state of happiness equilibrium it seems and are happy or unhappy regardless of whether we have anything to be happy or unhappy about. The question becomes, does it matter if your happiness is manufactured in your head? If you're happy, isn’t that enough? You can watch the above link or skip on ahead. This post isn’t going anywhere.

Its an appropriate note to begin this discussion on. When the speaker refers to “synthetic happiness” it calls to mind many a debate about whats real and whats fake about the Second Life experience.

Inevitably, when I begin to tell people about the SL experience, I’ll get responses like “I like to go outside,” or “I like real interactions with real people.” I get it. Second Life is something that happens on a display monitor. Ultimately, its ones and zeroes organized in a meaningful way, like any computer program.

But the issue really is more complicated than that. One must consider what level of reality matters in what situations. Too, its important to realize that you can deconstruct “Real Life” in many of the same ways that you can deconstruct “Second Life.” It is only a lifetime of habit that keeps us from immediately deconstructing the former.

Consider the phone. When you have a phone conversation, are you having a real conversation? Is that conversation with a real person? Do you even know who you’re talking too?

Strictly speaking, the sound you produce when you speak is converted by a device in the phone, which transmits it though a series of towers, possibly a satellite, and that data is transmitted down to the other persons phone which uses the data to reproduce a reasonable facsimile of what you said. You’re not really speaking to and listening to the person, you’re listening to and speaking to your phone.

IT’S NOT MY DAD! THIS IS A CELL PHONE!!

["Threw it on the Ground" by Andy Samberg source: LiveOrDie.com]

Furthermore, you don’t really know that the person on the other end is who you think it is. Chances are, the sound quality is clear enough that the voice is a reasonable match, but even then, we’ve all been occasionally fooled for a moment and thought we were talking to someone else on the other end.

But this doesn’t matter to you. The vast majority of the time its not an issue and, while the phones are replicating and transmitting your voices, the net effect is a conversation with the person you meant to converse with. It doesn’t really matter that the sound you’re hearing is a reproduction of the person’s voice, the experience is roughly the same as hearing the actual voice.

Even here, though, we lose something from the experience of speaking to each other in person. You can’t see the look on the person’s face as they’re talking. You can’t touch the person, if you wanted to do that. Its important to remember that the experience of calling someone on a phone effectively creates the reality of a conversation within certain limits. But those are limits we have long been conditioned to accept.

It even has some advantages over a conversation in person depending on your priorities. Maybe you don’t want to be near the person you’re talking to. Maybe you’re afraid of what the person might do if they were. Maybe you don’t like how the person smells or you don’t want them to notice how you smell. Maybe you don’t want them to see the look on your face (a very useful feature when you work in a call center.) And of course, it frees you from having to physically travel to the person to talk to them.

You can apply this kind of analysis to any medium of interaction or communication including “real life” itself. Anyone who has seen the Matrix has some familiarity with this concept. The world you know is just the sensory input you receive, your ability to process it, and in many cases, your ability to use your imagination to extrapolate upon what you’ve seen and heard.

Studies have shown that the senses can be fooled (often by influencing your expectations.) Magicians make their living exploiting faults in the way the human mind processes the world around it. When we look at things, and people, are minds categorize the input in terms of concepts we’re familiar with such as “tree” or “woman.” Our minds assign meaning to the world.

How does this apply to Second Life?

You may be ahead of me on this one. Second Life is another medium for exchange, communication, and more. But whats “real” and whats “fake” about it?

Lets start with the people. When you see an avatar in Second Life, you can generally count on it being run by a person. Its true that some avatars are controlled by bots but it’s usually easy to pick those out. But lets leave the “bot” issue for another article.

The bigger complaint in this category is that, in Second Life, the person on the other end is not what their avatar makes them seem to be. It may surprise you to learn, for example, that not everyone in real life is a 7 foot tall woman with a barbie doll figure, glowing red hair and gossamer wings. In fact, it turns out that people in real life can’t even fly.

The more important question is, why does it matter? So you don’t know that the woman you’re talking to is a fat pimply greasy couch potato and possibly a man. Does it matter? You have an opportunity to be able to ignore the person’s unpleasant superficial physical features and get to know them as people. And its not like it’s any big secret. Second Life is a place where you can go to realize a fantasy, this often includes a new fantasy body.

In fact, you will often get to see more of the individual’s true personality here than you do in real life. Its the “online disinhibition effect” in the field of psychology but known to Penny Arcade fans and others on the internet as GIFT, a term which has negative connotations. The more obvious manifestation of this is the internet loudmouth, the braggart, or the jerk. People who would be mild mannered and polite in real life may unleash their darker side in the virtual world.

But you also have people who are shy and afraid to speak up for themselves. Maybe people make them nervous and the distance is soothing. Maybe the confusion, noise and over stimulation of a real life social setting affects their concentration and the still and quiet of the computer room helps them gather their thoughts. Maybe they’re insecure about their appearance which is something you don’t have to worry about when you can make your avatar look however you want, giving you a shield against the unfair standards people in real life hold you to.

These people finally get to open up and just be themselves.

There’s also a saying “integrity is what you are in the dark.” Given the online disinhibition effect, the nice, patient, fair people you meet in Second Life are more likely to be showing you their true character. They’re not just being nice to you so that you don’t yell at them or use violence on them. They have nothing to fear from you. Here in a digital realm of information, some truths are even more evident than they would be in Real Life.


So whats real about Second Life?

A good many things are real about Second Life.

First, the money is real. The Linden is a currency exchangeable with many Real Life currencies. The weight of this reality helps lend reality to other aspects of the game.

Goods and services are “real.” Maybe the phaser you buy isn’t really a phaser but what you’re paying for is an item that emulates the behavior of a phaser. The work that the merchant put into making that phaser for you is real work, the time it saves you in making it yourself is real time, and the fun you have zapping your consenting friends with it is real fun, all of which makes the value of the phaser real.

When griefers do harm, it is often real. Because SL business owners make actual money in SL, the damage griefers do to them can often harm them financially and occasionally they do worse. They often ruin real fun.

When a superhero or other volunteer helps you or stops a griefer, the good they do is real. When groups raise money for charity in Second Life, the good they do is real. In Second Life, “Relay for Life” has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for cancer research, and I’m talking in terms of United States dollars, not Lindens.

As I mentioned, the people that you meet here are real. They may not look or behave the same here as they do in the real world, but people are different under many circumstances. In Second Life, the person you meet is what they are in Second Life. As long as your interactions remain in Second Life, it should not matter what these people are like in Real Life. If you do plan to meet them in real life, it is reasonable to ask for interaction through video and voice which should tell you a lot of what you need to know.

Their feelings are real too, as are yours. Your friendships and relationships with them are real, they’re as real as they are in real life. People can pretend to be your friend in real life too for any number of reasons.

It only requires that you invest yourself mentally in the experience. If its not for you, we get that, but don’t write it off before you try it. You could be denying a new and fantastic world of experiences that are real in some of the most important ways.

Ring of Empowerment

Once upon a time, the Guardians of the Universe were not as they are now.

When the first decided to battle injustice throughout the universe, the knew they couldn't be everywhere so they deployed a race of androids known as the Manhunters giving them the power of the Green light. They programmed these sentient androids with their values and sent them out to do justice. This being science fiction, this naturally turned disastrous as the Manhunters were too zealous and relentless in their pursuits, applying uniform values across the universe without empathy.

The Guardians ultimately scrapped this project and opting instead to find living beings throughout the universe possessing sufficient virtues and empowering them to do good where they were. This iteration, the Green Lantern Corps, isn't perfect but certainly proved more effective. The empowered living beings generally understood the circumstances of their local civilizations better than the Guardians could be expected to, making their judgement superior and their application of power more efficient in addressing their needs and threats.

We can learn some lessons from this example, the first being never be afraid to reexamine and retool your processes.

But this story has some specific applications in to our project. The Council of Lanterns history parallels that of the Guardians. We wanted to recruit, train and control a uniform body of likeminded individuals to be our "army" of justice. This insular approach alienated us to many of the existing Lanterns Corps, ultimately to all of them.

So we let go of control and decided to instead focus on supporting and empowering existing Lantern Corps, helping promote exchange and sharing to provide a benefit so that we could all better achieve our common goals.

We should go still further. At the end of the day, we're still promoting justice in Second Life as group sharing a common culture and environment trying to bring justice to many and diverse corners of this metaverse that we may have little experience with or understanding of. True, we can ameliorate this issue by plugging into these communities. That's a laudable and rewarding approach that broadens us, but its not something we can expect of every Lantern or in every community.

Therefore, we should also consider doing what the Guardians did, finding people of character within these communities and empowering them to help their own and bring a more positive Second Life experience to them. Unlike with the Guardians, this empowerment doesn't come from a power ring or costume, but knowledge. In a realm built entirely from information, the right knowledge is literally power. The knowledge the superhero community has collected empowers us and it can easily empower others.

In this way, our influence can spread and a broader exchange of culture and ideas could empower us all.

Eh, you guys figure it out. I'm done sermonizing tonight.

I swear, I'm going to right an article in reaction to "When ideas have sex" next time. Its just such a good video. It deserves a better reaction than the one I have the energy for tonight.

My Blue Lantern Superman Avatar.

Justice has been done.

Probably anybody reading this blog is familiar with the Blackest Night storyline from DC Comics. If not, trust me, you can find plenty on it with a quick search.

Anyway. The Blue Lanterns were introduced with rings fueled by Hope the way Green Lantern rings were fueled by Willpower. With the rise of the colors came the Blackest Night when Death tried to reclaim the universe using super powered zombies with power rings (I wonder how long the average DC citizen's sanity stays intact when they realize the universe is trying to eat itself and even suicide won't save them.)

Late in the war, one of each color had gotten together to combine their powers to kill the bad guy, but it didn't work, there wasn't enough of them. But each one was a leader in their group and had the ability to deputize one other person for 24 hours, temporarily giving them a power ring.

Red went to Mera (Aquaman's wife, I'm gonna trust she's the best choice.) Orange went to Lex Luthor (total win.) Yellow went to Scarecrow, okay looking good so far. Green went to Ganthet, well he's a Guardian, so sure. Violet went to Wonder Woman, because of her gift from Aphrodite. Indigo went to Atom (okay? I guess.) And naturally Blue went to . . . Barry Allen?

Okay what the hell Johns? Flash is cool and I'm really happy to have the Barry Allen version back, but I've never seen him as the embodiment of Hope. Thats Superman. A number of stories have presented him as icon of hope and his symbol is the kryptonian symbol for Hope (also his family crest.)

Well, I fumed and I raged but eventually I settled down. Then I went to Katana Woolley in Second Life and paid for a custom made one of a kind Blue Lantern Superman avatar. Add that to the list of reasons I fight for it.

I have a longer post coming tomorrow. But tonight, I'm going to take to the skies and be all hopeful and stuff.

Introduction to Project Beacon.

Project Beacon is an initiative begun by a group of users to find and promote the best of the Second Life (SL) experience. We hope that by doing so, we get more people and more creative energy invested in SL and we hope to show why we think its worth our effort to defend.

This is an introductory article organized to help you skip what you don’t need. Hopefully future articles will be a little less dry.

Intro to Second Life.

Second Life is an open interactive environment. Its massively multiplayer like World of Warcraft, but its not a game in and of itself. In this world, you create an account and a digital avatar of yourself. After learning the basics, you then can go do pretty much whatever you want. This includes exploring the virtual world (most of its flavor coming from the creations of other citizens, as opposed to the programming team), meeting other people, finding and joining groups, learning how to “build” (make digital objects) how to “script” (write programming code that you can stick inside physical objects for interactive behavior) buy your own land and create whatever you want on it, go into business and sell, or simply spend and collect neat and useful tools and accessories.

If it seems open ended, that’s because it is. The Lindens (the team that created and runs Second Life) provide a virtual environment with certain basic tools and abilities available to all users, and then leaves it to us for the most part to figure out what we want to make of it. Perhaps to get things moving, the Lindens introduced a currency called “The Linden” which has an exchange value with real life money. You can spend your money to buy Lindens or cash out your Lindens to receive real money. Many who are in business in Second Life make enough money to support their buying habits in sl. Some make enough money from their in-world businesses that they need no real life job. Their job in Second Life is actually their job. All of this will be important to understand as we proceed.

Intro to Griefers

While Project Beacon does not primarily concern itself with griefers, they are a part of our origin story so they’re worth mentioning. A griefer is someone who causes grief in a game. Some make their own tools and perform elaborate attacks but most griefers are angry/bored immature individuals borrowing gadgets, scripts and ideas from people much more clever than themselves. Some aren’t even that clever, just grabbing a freebie weapon and shooting people with it.

This is not limited to Second Life and I think this is where the waters get muddied for a lot of them. In a game like World of Warcraft, a griefer might run around killing less adept players in inappropriate situation, might try to hack the game to get advantage, or might simply pester others. Its annoying, but at the same time, its just a game.

In Second Life, griefers have been a substantial problem. Because the game is open ended and allows for all kinds of gadgets to be created, a griefer can crash regions, flood chats with offensive, bigoted racist rhetoric, and more. It ruins the fun for their victims. If they get you angry over a grief, the griefer wins.

The problem is, unlike World of Warcraft, Second Life is not a game, its an environment. Griefing someone in Second Life is like if someone came into your office every couple days and start chucking smoke bombs around everywhere or taping swastikas all over your house, and it was a different person each time. Its annoying and distracts people from getting things done.

Some do it to vent their aggressions on seemingly acceptable targets (SL, like many open internet environments, attracts many unusual and misunderstood groups of people, which some griefers use to justify their hate.)

So claim to have a point to make with their attacks. Perhaps they’re commenting on the aforementioned "weird" populations, or they have a beef with the Lindens over one point or another. Some even claim they’re trying to shake us out of a “pathetic” virtual existence.

And I’ve encountered some who are sympathetic to that attitude without themselves being griefers. Its that attitude we hope to change.

Intro to Superheroes.

You can style your body however you want, and add gadgets and special effects. People are creating this stuff all the time. Some create superhero avatars and gadgets, mostly for play.

The admins can only go so far when stopping griefers. Some felt like the Lindens needed help from regular Second Life citizens who know the rules, know how to file reports and know how to clean up messes. Some of these people decided to dress like superheroes.

Being a superhero in this context, is performing services in the Second Life community, from helping to newbies, to reporting and cleaning up after attacks, to raising money for charity, all while in a superhero avatar. We’re not doing anything special in this regard, its just more fun for us to help people while playing superheroes. If being a superhero gets you excited about helping people, its a good thing.

The vast majority of us don’t believe we’re actual superheroes. We’re not confused about reality. We don’t think we have any special privileges. We’re just helping people while having fun.

Its true that some come to the superhero community because they’ve been burned by griefers and they want to burn back. They’ve heard that we’re doing something about the problem and “fighting back.” We all try to help them understand that “fighting” accomplishes nothing. Avatars cannot be hurt or killed and battles only cause added lag on the server running the environment (called a sim) and add to the distraction for innocent bystanders. If you seen anyone doing this, they don’t represent our community.


COUNCIL OF LANTERNS

Thanks to comic book writer Geoff John’s revival of the character, Green Lantern and the Green Lantern Corps have skyrocketed in popularity among comic book readers. Along the way, Johns brought back Sinestro (who uses a yellow power ring) and Star Sapphire (who used a violet power gem) positing that they, along with the Green Lanterns were wielding the power of a spectrum of color.

The popularity and all the options created by the storyline has resulted in more than 100 “Lantern Corps” groups being created in Second Life. Some were created because users were ignorant of the existing groups. Other groups were created because users wanted their own group run their own way or they were rejected by another group but still wanted to be a Lantern. A lot of these groups are open, sprawling, and inactive.

The Council was originally the United Lantern Corps, with the goal of creating a centrally managed and unified set of Lantern Corps. The Council of Lanterns originally inherited this purpose, but we have since decided to disband most of our Corps and focus on fostering relationships and cooperation among the other existing groups (several of whom are older and more established), facilitating the pooling of resources.

To that mission, we have added the goal of being a one stop shop for newcomers looking to become lanterns. The idea is, you can come to our tower, buy a costume and ring, find roleplay opportunities if you want them, or find a legitimate active Lantern Corps groups to join and even take classes to learn more about being a good Lantern. We’re more than half the way there on that goal.

PROJECT BEACON

As I mentioned above, we’ve come to realize that “crimefighting” only goes so far. We can catch and stop attacks quickly many times, but they do continue. Whats worse, there are many others who find it amusing. There’s an attitude or a set of attitudes behind griefers and their sympathizers that suggest Second Life is nothing but deviant freaks and losers, often with no grasp on reality. Some of them believe that superheroes and other volunteers are busybodies and tattlers at best, fascists at worst.

And its not hard to portray Second Life this way. Its true that the place attracts some pretty weird people (nothing wrong with being weird, but I’m talking about bad weird.) Like an unprincipled journalist, you can focus on the weirdos and try to make it look like they’re most of the population. Also, as I’ve mentioned, there are some individuals running around in superhero costumes who attack griefers, get into shouting matches, and report over the most minor infractions without giving the offender a chance.

Also, Second Life itself has had its missteps along the way. There was a time when most of SL was overrun with ad farms, stripper bars, and gambling as these were all easy ways of making money. But ad farms and gambling have been banned and the adult stuff has been moved to its own continent. Today, when you come to Second Life, you can have a much more rewarding experience than might have been the case a couple of years ago.

For this reason, we created Project Beacon, who’s goal is to explore the possibilities of Second Life. The first phase is simply to collect a list of interesting destinations for new people to visit. We also plan to post here about our Second Life experience and hopefully offer video on our YouTube channel.

A great thing about SL is, if you know about the best it has to offer, then the worst doesn’t matter. Citizens can teleport from one awesome experience straight to another without having to deal with things they’d rather not encounter.

People who might be overloooked in real life due to their background, education, or appearance are given another chance to shine here. In Second Life, the baggage of the real world is left behind. You can begin anew and be yourself in ways that real life doesn’t allow. People who can’t walk in real life can fly in Second Life. People who can’t leave the house now have a world to explore and communities to connect with.

You might be saying “But its not real. What you really are is the couch potato at the keyboard.” We understand where you’re coming from, but let me ask you this: Have you ever played a video game or known anyone who does?

Talk to anyone who has interacted in a virtual environment in this way. You stop thinking about the interface, your body, the fact that you’re sitting in a chair in front of a keyboard. You screen all that out and focus on the monitor. With practice, our brains remap to these new interactions. You don’t think about the keys you’re hitting or the mouse you’re moving, you just know you want your digital “body” to move and it does. Amputees with prosthetics experience the same thing. With time, the brain views the new prosthetic as a part of its body and the brain remaps so the amputee doesn’t have to really think about it anymore. You probably don’t think too much about your typing I’ll bet. This is normal for all of us. Its how we learn to interact with any environment, material or digital. Its not the sign of a delusional mind.

What this means is that, for a little while each day, we can transcend the arbitrary limits of our mundane reality and live in the realm of the extraordinary. It’s true we have to come back to this world and these limitations eventually but what we take back to the “real” world are memories, skills and discoveries about ourselves and others that feel are worthwhile.

This is a preview of the future, where resources are less scarce and opportunities more open to all, and the powers of imagination and creativity matter more than the power of your circumstances. We hope you’ll join us there.