[extropy-chat] Any Second Life users?

[Giu1i0 Pri5c0]

Second Life becomes more and more interesting. Any other user here? I will
try to go to the Future Salon meeting below, anyone going? Perhaps we should
build a classy transhumanist meeting place there.
I have been interested in virtual world after reading Neal Stephenson
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Stephenson>'s Snow
Crash<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash>(1992) and have
occasionally experimented with virtual worlds on the net
since. In the mid 90s I used to visit one of the first virtual worlds on the
net, Worlds Away (now VZones <http://www.vzones.com/>). But I have never
been an addicted, probably because I never liked computer games too much.
Now since I bought a new sufficiently powerful PC I am spending some time in
the Second Life <http://secondlife.com/> virtual world, which is the most
similar to Stephenson's metaverse that I have seen (from the Wikipedia entry
on Second Life <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life>: "Many *Second
Life* residents have noted the similarities between *Second Life* and the
Metaverse from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash * <http://wiki/Snow_Crash>*.
This is actually a stated goal of Linden Lab - to create a user-defined
world of general use in which people can interact, play, do business and
otherwise communicate").
Of the public open VR worlds that I have seen (I have seen some very high
tech and very closed ones, but this is another thing), this is the first
realistic enough to create a "real VR" experience (perhaps Linden
Lab<http://lindenlab.com/>have been the first to spend real money). My
interest in SL has been boosted
by reading this Business2.0
article<http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,1127659,00.html>which
explains how SL has already evolved into a real VR world with a lot of
interacting users and a real economy that permits making real money in VR.
See also this Fortune
article<http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,1130814,00.html>.
Some "evident" business models are already being exploited, other more
sophisticated will be developed, and someday someone will make a lot of
money.
So I have upgraded my free account to a premium one so I can purchase land
and property, building a house etc. The name I have chosen for my avatar is
Giulio Perhaps. For some reason you can freely choose your first name but
have to pick your family name from a list, and "perhaps" is a beautiful
word. Many interesting sentences start with this word, for example "perhaps
in a few decades I will upload my consciousness to my SL avatar and live
permanently in SL".
One of the things to do today  in Second Life is visiting a virtual Future
Salon. The Future Salons Network
<http://accelerating.org/futuresalons.html>runs one in Second Life
besides those in the Bay Area, LA, Seattle etc. More
details in the article " Second Life Future Salon: Why Meet in Second
Life?<http://slfuturesalon.blogs.com/second_life_future_salon/2005/04/why_second_life.html>"
on the Second Life Future Salon blog <http://slfuturesalon.blogs.com/>. I
look forward to attending the SL Future Salon next week.
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