thetubes.jpgAn old melody (first released in 1975, is it really “old”?) made by The Tubes and enti­tled “What do You Want from Life?” could be the hymn of a new vir­tual par­adise, the so called Sec­ond Life place. I’ve never vis­ited it, like many oth­ers, but I’ll try to write some­thing about it, made by sug­ges­tions received from some users I know. As a result, there is a sequence of ideas that prob­a­bly don’t fit with the real/​unreal Sec­ond Life…with a lit­tle help of Spooner and Evans.

What do you want from (sec­ond) life /​To kid­nap an heiress /​or threaten her with a knife”

In Sec­ond Life you can do every­thing: you’re free, you can buy or beg or bor­row or steal, you can visit muse­ums and enter restau­rants, meet peo­ple and talk and …yeah, you can fly! Lovely.

What do you want from (sec­ond) life /​To get cable TV /​and watch it every night”

SL is a time waster: we don’t have enough time for our real life, where we can find the time for the Sec­ond? Like a dis­guise, peo­ple go and hide into, and sub­sti­tute their exis­tence with a sur­ro­gate. Pathetic.

What do you want from (sec­ond) life /​An Indian guru /​to show you the inner light”

SL like any other vir­tual real­ity game: wast­ing time play soc­cer, bas­ket­ball, why not SL? It’s relax­ing, no more tears or fears, addic­tion is unusual for a kind of game that is for adult play­ers, and they can take under con­trol their com­pul­sions. Absorbing.

What do you want from (sec­ond) life /​a mean­ing­less love affair /​with a girl that you met tonight”

SL for rul­ing out: a lot of uncon­ven­tional expe­ri­ences with dizzy dirty Dan­ish dancers of lap dance, no dis­ease, no viruses, no involve­ment. Intriguing.

Sec­ond Life: easy to under­stand, easy to play, amaz­ing or fool­ish, so why to resist to the charm­ing call? It’s prob­a­bly because one life and one world at a time is enough, but why not sneak­ing into, one of these days?

Why do I blog this?
I’ve got some ques­tions about SL, about life and death, about mul­ti­ple iden­ti­ties you can have inside, if your avatars could sur­vive you after your First Life is ended. Any reli­gion? Any Big Brother? You change your body but your soul remains the same?

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  3. Order and Disorder
  4. Inno­va­tion Santa
  5. Twit­ter and the mobil­ity dilemma