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.
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.