This is the 16th in a series of largely demographic interviews that are conducted with established residents, to find out more about them and their involvement with Second Life, and to contrast the differences between their views and experiences and those of the newer residents. The questions may be tailored slightly for each interview; responses may be edited for purposes of clarity.

I bumped into Olmia while I was doing some photography at the ABC Island sandbox tower. She was fun to talk to, and I was able to talk her into telling us a bit more about herself.

This is the 14th in a series of largely demographic interviews that are conducted with established residents, to find out more about them and their involvement with Second Life, and to contrast the differences between their views and experiences and those of the newer residents. The questions may be tailored slightly for each interview; responses may be edited for purposes of clarity.

Pavig Lok is a charming individual with a fascinating turn of phrase.

It makes sense, really. Run it through, you'll see. The fantabulous Jacek Antonelli on her blog Jacek Lives has put together a well-thought-out post regarding the recent back-and-forth between Hamlet Au and Frank Rose regarding this article. Go read it for yourself, it's thorough and substantial. So much so that it prompted this response from Our Tateru:

Rose does hit a lot of truths, but seems to be very selective about which ones, and uses phrasing and terms with negative or disparaging loadings. "Created by an underfunded startup using a physics engine that's now years out of date, Second Life is made up of thousands of disconnected "regions"" - might be the stark truth. But it makes it sound far worse than it is. It's certainly not the whole truth. Maybe Rose's facts are more solid than Au suggests, but the selectivity of them borders on a bashing.

So what we have here is a comment on a post in a post about a post about other posts. I love it when things get hopelessly Meta.

(Thanks, Jace!)

This is the eighth in a series of largely demographic interviews that are conducted with established residents, to find out more about them and their involvement with Second Life, and to contrast the differences between their views and experiences and those of the newer residents. The questions may be tailored slightly for each interview; responses may be edited for purposes of clarity.

I've known Lienna for some time - life kind of threw us together in Second Life. She's a fascinating and engaging person. We'd spoken for some time before we actually met inworld and I took her skin shopping. Lienna writes for the excellent Pixel Pulse magazine, and has her own blog - which you may be warned, is not safe for work.

This is the seventh in a series of largely demographic interviews that are conducted with established residents, to find out more about them and their involvement with Second Life, and to contrast the differences between their views and experiences and those of the newer residents. The questions may be tailored slightly for each interview; responses may be edited for purposes of clarity.

I see Dustbin regularly at my office hours in Hallasan. I originally met him on what I think was his first day in Second Life. "I am a Second Life Mentor," he says, "I have been since I was about 90 days old I think. It has been a great experience. I have met people that are great artists just starting out in SL, it is incredible watching them progress quickly to making new and unique things."

This is the second in a series of largely demographic interviews that will be conducted with established residents, to find out more about them and their involvement with Second Life, and to contrast the differences between their views and experiences and those of the newer residents. The questions may be tailored slightly for each interview; responses may be edited for purposes of clarity.

I've run into Nightbird Glineux a few times lately, she's been coming to my office-hours inworld. She's thoughtful and self-effacing, and still sees herself as very junior, despite having joined Second Life in November.

One of the greatest strengths of the SL community is the creativity of its residents. Never will you find a more wretched hive of -- I'm sorry, a more imaginative and giving assembly of artists. Patou Dumont is one such artist, having created a comic using SL as his medium for the title "Le Rendez-vous". (incidentally: NSFW)

This is something I'd like to see more of. I've always enjoyed Our Tat's comics, and of course Plywood while it was still going strong ... but I know it's a metric tonne of work to accomplish. I'll just bide my time and wait for the next thing to come down the pike. More like this, please!

(Thanks, Patou!)

Trust betrayed. How could this happen?

I logged out to head to the store and get groceries. I come back, check my messages, see yet more press about the First Life website, and log back on to Second Life ... Only to catch my avatar in the act! There she was, logged into First Life!

The masses rejoice! Our Tateru has a new comic up on her personal blog, and it's another fun one! I could go on and on about it, but I think one word sums it up: NSFW.

*cackling madly, loping away*

Oh, by the way: how IS life in Nestor?

Internet analyst Clay Shirky recently wrote a piece on inflated press hype that caused some controversy, and New World Notes' Hamlet Au has responded with a mighty rebuff. For completeness' sake, here's Hamlet's post on the piece.

It's a lengthy piece that applauds Shirky's initial point (that the media needs to carefully check its facts and figures before running off with a sensational story about SL's resident retention rates and overall population numbers), while at the same time taking him to task for a number of supporting statements. The article is chock-full of links to past NWN articles (well worth reading in any case), and also features a graph by Our Tateru (who Hamlet calls his 'demographitrix') that supports his thesis: Clay is correct in the broad sense, yet diffuse in the details.

Although Shirky does make a comment after the piece, we've yet to see a full rebuttal of Hamlet's article. I hope it's forthcoming; this is something that needs to be talked about, and LL sure ain't doing too much of it.

Our Tateru has posted another New World Numbers here, with some fairly alarming statistics for your rumination. So, we're attracting more and more people to SL, but not enough of them are staying and paying, meaning that we're looking at a rather substantial continuing drain on server resources. Live Helpers are overwhelmed, sometimes under-trained. The costs of owning land is rising. Where will this lead us, O Wise Readers? Chime in with your entertaining pronouncements of Doom!

This is the twenty-third in a series of mini-interviews with the residents of Second Life. For the most part, I'll try to leave the responses unedited, except where editing will grant greater clarity.

Shockwave Plasma, or Shocky, as I like to call her, is someone with whom I don't get to speak more often, and that's a shame. I've always found her to be intelligent, witty, insightful, and whimsical, frequently all within the space of 3 minutes. I don't know how she was able to slip the Resident Snapshot noose for so long, but I finally nabbed her!

How did you first come to SL?: I was looking for some sort of on-line social, or gaming group, and tried to find one that was more than just blasting people and space ships. The ones I found were rather bland, or rather stifled, until I came across Second Life. It reminded me of Snow Crash, I must have read that in 2000.

How did you choose your name?: I was trying to decide between Plasma and Pixel, and as Plasma is the fourth state of matter, and as we are neither gas, liquid, or solid,
then a Plasma I must be. One of the first Cyberpunk novels was "The Shockwave Rider" by John Brunner, so that was suitable for for my first name in my first
cyber world. Now I find a Shockwave Plasma is also a spectroscope.

What's your favorite thing about SL?: The people and the imagination they display. Touring the Sandboxes can be more like walking in an interactive art gallery, than walking through a building yard. Meeting people from all over the world is my cure for insomnia. Sometimes I would be awake until 2am, but logging in to SL seems to get rid of the thoughts that kept me awake.

What do you like least about SL?: Being in the UK, and most of the parties, weddings, shows are mainly for a USA audience, where most of my friends reside. (That's life). No boolean searches in FIND/Search. Griefers. LL not banning Mime avatars.

Favorite hangout/store?: Shelter/ Shelter in Exile. I don't have a favorite shop, but I like to crash test Cubey Terra's planes.

Name one new feature you'd like to see added to SL: To have the servers spaced around the globe.

Shout outs: Hi Tateru, Mera, Sumar, Pip, Ordinal, Dani, Erbo, Aldo, Misty, and Oni (where ever you are!)

Many of you know who Tateru is already. You may have been helped by her on one of the Help Islands. You may belong to the Cult of Tateru. You may even know her from this blog. Regardless, I'm pleased to announce that starting today, she'll be posting regularly to SLI, and I couldn't be happier. Tateru's a well-loved, active member of the community, and we can all benefit from her insight and wisdom. Welcome, Tati!

I'm not a big fan of schools, but the first lecture I received at school, aged 12 and knowing not one person in the whole 1800 pupils, stuck in my terrified mind. The headmaster told us all that we had the choice in life of being drivers, or being passengers in the train of life. I've always been headed for the front of the train, not due to any particular ambition or application controlled by me, but by an eldest child's natural leaning towards taking responsibility ... something I really don't feel I can take the credit for.

I was reminded of that lecture when I saw Erbo Evan's blog, called Evans Avenue Exit, in which he talks about SL culture. His motto at the top of the page reads: "On the road of Second Life there are passengers and there are drivers. Erbo Evans has a Chrysler that's as big as a whale and it is about to set sail...Welcome to your Second Life." This is all a bit blog-cannibalistic as he in turn refers to Tateru's article on New World Notes. Over there she writes, and Erbo quotes:

"You and me, we had a culture. Maybe it was a good one, maybe it wasn't. But it's gone now, for better or worse. By sheer numbers, these new women and men are Second Life. They outnumber us, and they will be the ones to make or break the world. They don't know who Aimee Weber is, or Anshe Chung, or Starax Statosky or Prokofy Neva or Torley Linden. They'll likely never even hear the word "FIC" during the rest of their second lives. The tax protests will probably not even register as a curiosity."