Does anyone know if there's a libertarian presence in Second Life www.secondlife.com?
Best, Michael
Michael,
A Libertarian named Suezanne Baskerville contacted us about this way back in May 2005 (see correspondence below). I copied Marcy on her message, and think I posted something to the list, though I can't find that email. I've been sort of watching Second Life out of the corner of my eye since then. In fact I joined like a year ago when they made membership free, but found I was not able to properly use their software without getting a system upgrade. Now that I've recently done that, I plan to get involved and buy some land. Anybody want to create a libertarian island? 8)
Last year when I took a closer look at it and read a couple articles, I became convinced that Second Life is an extremely exciting development. I believe it may signify humanity turning the corner where virtual reality, long nascent in all kinds of video games and other manifestations of cyberspace, finally really takes off. If so -- and this may sound crazy, but who imagined 20 years ago that the Net would be where it is today? -- it could come to rival or even supersede the importance of the Internet itself. If governments don't manage to shut it down or stifle it first, of course. Hopefully it will be too big and popular by the time they get around to trying.
In her email below, Suezanne referred to "thousands" of Second Life members. According to the site, they are now up to over 6 million residents, with nearly 2 million logged in during the last 60 days and around $1.5 million spent in the last 24 hours. No, Linden Labs is not a public company yet, but if/when they go public, I want to buy stock!
Love & liberty,
<<< starchild >>>
Does anyone know if there's a libertarian presence in Second Lifewww.secondlife.com?
Best, Michael
Hello, Starchild, I too am no speed whiz at responding to email.
I live in Mississippi now, sadly enough, so attending a meeting in SF is out of the question. It is good though to hear that there is enough libertarian activity to be having social gatherings.
The company that produces the Second Life game (or whatever one wants to call it) is not my property at all, I am just a customer. The company that owns it is called "Linden Research, Inc." and was founded by Philip Rosedale, former chief technical officer of the scompany that produces the Real Player streaming video products. It has among it's board members Mitch Kapoor, founder of Lotus, the creator of Lotus 123, at one time the world's premiere spreadsheet program. And recently the Second Life service received major backing from from a venture capital company called Benchmark Capital, backing in the amount of 8 million dollars, part of which came from Pierre Omidyar, the founder of Ebay.
I am just trying to get some libertarians to join so I won't be one of the only two libertarians who know what libertarianism means among the thousands of Second Life members. Checking out the game is free for a week. The company is listed in the yellow pages as "Linden Lab" and is located at 577 Second Street, San Francisco, if you wanted to see what the headquarters looks like in person. I feel reasonably sure that at least some libertarians who play multi-user online games like World of Warcraft would find Second Life at least somewhat interesting.
Thanks for taking the time to read and respond to my email.
I hope you are enjoying SF to the fullest. I wish I was.
SuezanneC Baskerville
Starchild,
I agree with your optimism anent Second Life.
I would be interested in creating a libertarian presence there.
Do you have Baskerville's eddress?
Best, Michael