Welcome Miridawn Carpathea

The real world and the virtual world are colliding.

Several years ago I signed up for an account at this very cool online world called "There.com" It was very cool. I created an Avatar, checked out clothes, puchased a hoverboard and zoomed around the world. It was great fun. It was even really cool to consider the marketing applications. But then the Ph.D. set in and time became even more of a premium.

And then Second Life started up. And I signed up for a beta account...and time being what it was...well...didn't move forward.

Fast forward to today and the wonderful world of Second Life where we have places to shop and now even a wire news service is playing! It's been very interesting actually watching the press coverage on this one. I've seen references to Harvard in the Virtual World -- see their course in "Law in the Court of Public Opinion", and places to shop in the real world for "stuff" for your avatar in the virtual world (just Google "shopping in second life" and see what pops up). So I've decided to jump back in...check it out. Go back into that virtual world. Of course it's happening at the same time that the New York Times does a story on Reuters joining in Second Life, media outlets such as CNet not only cover Sun Microsystems and IBM going into Second Life but also have their own virtual presence -- AND these big-name companies get to buy their real names to have in the virtual space!

So this leaves me wondering how things are evolving in Second Life...hence I have created Miridawn Carpathea. Right now she kinda looks like the real me. And I'm in the process of rediscovering this virtual world with a whole bunch of other people. At the same time.

Remember the days of the early computer, when you'd start a loading process then go eat dinner and come back to the computer to play the game or run the program? Well my goodness. Here we go AGAIN!

In between trying to create my avatar and figure out how to move around in Second Life, I'm writing this blog, eating my dinner, petting my cats...well you get the idea.

The potential is quite interesting actually but limited by lack of bandwidth and as is always the case when the media starta fire-storm and the company isn't ready...Second Life is dismally unprepared so things are very very sssssssslllllloooooooooowwwwwww........

Be that as it may, the marketing opportunities and the economic ramifications are fascinating. We talked about this in our Internship class today and it was a very interesting discussion. Students didn't know anything about it and many of them found it to be well...a bit on the disturbing side. "Why would anyone want to spend their time in that?" was the overall reaction.

The chance to be whomever or whatever you want to be? The ability to learn about other things without taking risk? hmmm....for me, if I only had the time!!