[extropy-chat] An excellent overview of SecondLife from a futurist persective

[Hal Finney]

Second Life may be of interest as more than just a platform for business,
which I think was Giulio's perspective.  The company does promote it for
this purpose, and they make a big deal about the fact that the in-game
currency, "Linden dollars" (Linden Labs is the company that created SL),
is convertable to real money.  Many users make enough money from the
game to pay their user fees, and a few supposedly make enough to live on.

But there is more to SL, or virtual worlds in general, than business.
I would like to see them as a place where we can engage in a wide variety
of activities.  And indeed it seems that the main activities for many or
most SL players are dancing, gambling, and "getting it on".  Sexual poses,
animations, and attachments (you would not believe the ads for some of
the attachments!) are sold widely and appear to be very popular.

On a more serious note, communities have attempted experiments in
self-governance of various flavors.  There are themed areas that do have
zoning and maintain a consistent experience for residents and visitors.
Some areas use democratic voting, others rely on a benevolent dictator
to keep things on track.

There was a proposal on the FX discussion list a few weeks ago that SL
could be a platform to experiment with Robin Hanson's futarchy.  Futarchy
is described by Robin's slogan, "vote for values, bet on beliefs".
The community would use voting to establish what their goals were,
and then policy proposals would compete in an Idea Futures market to
estimate which had the best chance of realizing the agreed-upon goals.
Since Linden dollars can be exchanged for real money, plus of course
they are valuable in-game, the IF market would be a real-money market,
which should help make it reliable as a judge of what people believe.
This could also test the effects of people trying to manipulate the IF
market in order to get their favorite proposals accepted.  People from
outside the futarchy community could be allowed to participate in the
IF market (but not the voting) and that should make it even more reliable.

Hal