We Are Real

Wednesday, January 28, 2009 Wednesday, January 28, 2009

 
It was both a small thing and enormous at the same time. Tonight we avatars took a giant leap into the far future, at least in one tiny place.

We became Real tonight.

We became real when Plurk added "Second life" as an official country, alongside Angola, Belgium and Canada and all the others. Second Life plurkers can now forsake their atomic origins and be literally from “Second life”, just as they previously claimed to be from Australia or the United States.

Frivolous? Perhaps. But I think something truly profound just occurred. Consider what has happened: someone in authority, someone completely outside the Second Life community, has deemed that we are more than just a community.

We are a nation.

We are a nation, not of flesh and bone, land and lake, but of bits, patterns and networks.

We have no latitude, no longitude. But we exist, and we are everywhere and nowhere. We are a new type of nation, one that has a right, at least this once, to appear on the sacred roll of countries. It will not be the last time.

Distant generations of avatars, who might not even have atomic counterparts, may look back and see this moment as the beginning of a new stage of reality, where the digital nations first emerged from the muck of atomic reality.

Look proud, avatars - today we became Citizens, not just Residents.
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5 comments:

Moggs Oceanlane said...

The plurk team kindly responded to our request - if anyone wishes to say thanks for the recognition, they can do so here

Rika Watanabe said...

The next step is making LL recognise residents as people having a mind of their own. :)

Unknown said...

YAY!! Thank you for the request Moggs! I think it's a great step!

Hugs

ArminasX said...

I must thank Moggs for starting up this amazing sequence of events. She opened the original trouble ticket that triggered the entire operation. Moggs' work here, as elsewhere, has done everyone a great favor.

Other reactions may be found here:

Vint Falken
Botgirl
Moggs

Moggs Oceanlane said...

It's true, I opened the customer support request. I did so based on a lot of discussion I saw in Plurk threads so it was very much a team effort.

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