Second Life: A New Hope?
I am still a newbie in the world of Second Life, but it hasn’t taken long for me to realize the almost overwhelming potential for the concept behind it. I’ve only recently moved on from collecting Linden (the virtual currency of SL) from the branches of the ever popular “Wolfhaven Money Tree.” Now that I’ve discovered the world of Zyngo I needn’t really bother with teleporting from tree to tree in hopes of finding one or two Linden that have escaped the view of throngs of my fellow tree pickers. Even better still, with a few of the projects I’m working on, Zyngo may soon become obsolete for me too as I will begin to earn my Linden by providing a service rather than playing a game. Don’t worry, if you’re lost right now I will explain.
Second Life is the creation of Linden Lab, which is itself the creation of an American businessman named Philip Rosedale. Within SL users can do virtually anything that they can do in the real world—including buying and selling real estate, holding a job, gambling, dancing, and dating—to name just a few of the more popular pursuits in this vast, virtual world. Incidentally, what you and I call the “Real World,” SL fanatics refer to as the “Old World.” Indeed, as tempting as it may be to call Second Life a game, the moniker really doesn’t fit the enormity of the SL metaverse.
Mr. Rosedale’s words on the subject of his aim with creating Second Life:
“I’m not building a game. I’m building a new continent.”
And he’s done just that, plus so much more. Sure, there are elements of gaming inherent in the SL metaverse and there are even spots where you can go specifically for gaming. But there is no overarching goal, no set mission parameters. The 40-60,000 people who are logged into SL at any given time aren’t logging in to kill boss monsters, collect points, or save the princess—though there may in fact be places within SL where those things can be done. Still, my father would probably consider the whole thing to be a giant pursuit in wasting leisure time, something he would rather accomplish by swinging a stick at a little white ball on the golf course.
Somewhat ironically however, it was talking with him a few nights ago about global economies and the transmogrification of production/distribution in our modern world that really got me to thinking about the astounding implications of SL. My father, a retired elementary school principal here in Western Colorado, is currently reading a book called The Post-American World
I used this as entrée to the topic of SL. It took some time to convince the grade school educator that I wasn’t recruiting him for an online game. In fact, I wasn’t recruiting him at all. What I really wanted to do was to show him that there was already a successful model for an economy without borders where absolutely anybody with a good idea could design, produce, and put up for sale quite literally anything. Indeed, one might consider SL to be the personification of a perfectly equal market, where there are no such things as corporate giants, nor are there any little guys—not really anyway. Equal footing is what SL does best, and it delivers with all the might of a juggernaut.
I’ve written before about a technological coalescence that I like to refer to as the “One Machine.” The OM is akin to the ever popular replicator of Star Trek origin. While I came up with the idea of the OM after reading articles in Popular Science and Scientific American about related research being conducted at universities around the world, I do not claim to be the first to have done so. In fact, if anybody deserves credit I would think it’s probably Gene Roddenberry. It doesn’t really matter much who creates it though, the very idea of an OM is to obliterate borders and antiquate the notion of a supply and demand economy. No one person can lay claim to ownership of everything—a major prerequisite for anyone interested in ownership of the OM.
In home, on demand manufacturing is essentially what we’re talking about here. Never again would you have to rely on corporate product lines for procuring what you need and want. Instead, the sky would be the limit. Say you come up with a way to improve a product. You would be able to design, produce, test, and manufacture the item right there your own living room, or office, or garage, etc. If it worked, you could turn around and sell the blueprints to the item via the Internet (if it’s still called that in the future) so that literally everyone in the world would have the option of purchasing and using it.
Economy would move away from product driven business all together, whittling the transference of “wealth” (a concept that would also be revamped by the OM) down to two primary areas: 1) natural resources to include the entire periodic table; 2) blueprints and/or recipes for products that will literally be manufactured right there in the end user’s home (or local neighborhood for larger items such as vehicles). It’s an astounding concept, to be sure. It’s also one that I’ve been kicking around in my head for some time now. But clearly, I’ve not been alone.
Enter Second Life, and the creative mind. Remember what I said above about there being no overarching goal or mission set for SL? Well, this is perhaps it’s most important feature. Think of SL as the Jeet Kune Do of virtual economy—actually, don’t stop there. Think of it as the JKD of all economies; the singularity for economy in general. SL takes my idea of the One Machine, an item that gives equal footing to anybody with the time to think of something new, and makes it absolutely real in the here and now. No waiting for technology to catch up with the front lines of conceptual idealism is necessary. Just as JKD was to martial arts, the SL economy is the formless form of business. (Have I lost you yet with the esoteric gibberish? No? Good, read on.)
SL can take on whatever shape you wish. If you want a place to log in and sit down with friends for a graphically enhanced phone call (because SL uses Skype to allow for open, verbal communication—even with folks who don’t have SL)—Second Life can become that for you. Want a place to tinker with architecture while avoiding the inherently massive costs of building? SL can be that too. Sure, SL can be a place to go for recreational gaming pursuits, but to sum the metaverse up in such a narrow sense is something along the lines of a travesty.
It took some time to convince my father that there was more to SL than a game. I tried to briefly describe my One Machine to him, being that he too is an avid Star Trek fan, but all I got for my effort was the look of a disbeliever and the all too dismissive, ” Sure. Okay.” Spotting his doubt with the ease of locating the letter “A” in the alphabet, I moved on to compare the OM with SL. The underlying concepts are precisely the same. We are moving, as a society, toward instant, on-demand fulfillment of quite literally every need and/or want that we might have at any given moment. Instant fulfillment of all needs is on the horizon.
Though there is no One Machine or other tangible mechanism involved, within Second Life you can design, “manufacture,” and make for sale absolutely anything that your mind is capable of dreaming up. This is no exaggeration either. Have an idea for an improved banana hanger? Create it! Then, sell it to people. Think you can design a better bike than the guys from Orange County Choppers? Then do it, and may it make you rich! But here is the sticking point for most folks, including my father. How can a “game” make you rich in real life?
Within SL the currency of affluence is the Linden Dollar. These can be purchased for real money on the Linden Exchange, at a rate of roughly L$230/$1. Just as you can deposit Linden into your SL account using the exchange, so too can you withdraw funds—straight to your PayPal account. There are people who make good money doing this. In fact, Second Life is credited with creating the first real world millionaire (Anshe Chung) to earn their entire fortune within the confines of a virtual world. But she’s not alone.
According to the SL website there are tens of thousands of people who generate a positive cash flow entirely inside of the Second Life metaverse. Some people do this by dabbling in virtual real estate, others by providing services, and still more by way of designing and selling virtual products. Linden Labs offers the following as a partial list of means by which SL users create positive revenue streams:
- party and wedding planner
- pet manufacturer
- tattooist
- nightclub owner
- automotive manufacturer
- fashion designer
- aerospace engineer
- custom avatar designer
- jewelry maker
- architect
- XML coder
- freelance scripter
- game developer
- fine artist
- machinima set designer
- tour guide
- dancer
- musician
- custom animation creator
- theme park developer
- real estate speculator
- vacation resort owner
- advertiser
- bodyguard
- magazine
- publisher
- private detective
- writer
- gamer
- landscaper
- publicist
- special effects designer
- gunsmith
- hug maker
And the list goes on. Indeed, the SL economy is the formless form—a free market on speed. In my first week on SL I bought up a handful of tiny pieces of land in hopes of following in Anshe’s footsteps. In that same week I converted two pieces of land that I bought for L$99 each into a single piece of land (because fighting advertisers who use these small plots for billboards is all the rage in SL) and then resold it for L$555. That’s a whopping profit margin of 280%! Granted I’ve not been able to replicate such a deal since, but it was a very promising start for me.
From there I moved on to the services industry. Because Second Life users are so vehemently opposed to “ad farms”—blocks of land that are divvied up into the smallest allowable plot size (16m square) and then plastered with unsightly billboards—I decided that there had to be an environmentally friendlier way to go about offering ad space. Before long I had created my very first product and begun to take steps towards offering said product up as a rental, providing advertisers with a service that would have no lasting impact on the SL landscape while simultaneously improving the market saturation that clients get for their advertising dollar (Linden). Watch the video below to see what I mean.
I won’t likely be getting rich any time soon, but then that’s not the point. I suppose that the possibility exists for my advertising drone blimps to become all the rage and thus kick start my Linden influx. But the odds are more in favor of an outcome that will have me tweaking my ideas and rebuilding my creations until I find a product or service that will truly fill a need. Just as is true in the free market environment of America in the “real world,” Second Life business is all about who can come up with the better mouse trap.
On a related note, there are some “real world” businesses with a presence in the SL metaverse. Some of my favorites are the bookstores, like Bantam Dell, mostly because I’m always looking for new ways to market my own book. With that in mind I’ve recently built a Greek-ish sort of building on a small piece of land that I own, and have decorated it in a very Spartan theme (in that it sports minimal amenities). There are three Persian rugs on the polished marble floor, chairs to relax on, and a table upon which sits a copy of my book. Actually, the book hovers above the table and rotates slowly to allow for a better view from all directions. I’ve even gone and added a Zyngo Wyld! machine. Come for the book, stay for the Zyngo!
Click to enlarge.
Visitors can buy a copy of the book for L$5, though it isn’t a complete edition—yet. Presently the book contains two note cards. On the first is a link to a website where they can download the first chapter for free. On the second is a link to my publisher’s website where they can buy a complete copy of their own. I do have an e-book edition for Five Years in Hawaii, which I could include in the sale of the digital edition in SL, but I’d have to raise the in-world price of the book to over L$1200 in order to avoid a pricing conflict with my publisher. It’s something to consider, for sure.
Anyway, the point that I’m getting at is that the formless form of the SL economy is a wonderfully promising model for the sort of economy that I believe this world is headed for. I know that the technology exists to make the OM real, though some of it is in the embryonic stages of life. The problem that we face out here in the “Real World” however, is that the transition from capitalist free market economy to in home, on demand manufacturing would require one major, missing link: a way for the implementation of the OM to make somebody rich. Sadly, the machine that would bring instant gratification to even the greediest of people, will likely be blocked by the greed of those who see it as an end to their era. For now, we must save such idealism for the Second Life metaverse.
I hope to see you there soon!
JMK
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