Saturday, August 25, 2007

Zankisha

The other day I got an e-mail from a SL resident inviting me to take a survey. So I finally had a chance today to log on and check it out. I had a notecard with a teleport address, so I went there. I clicked on the survey board, but it didn't work. Maybe you had to take the survey right away. Too bad, since I could have earned L$400 for doing it.

But I was on the site, so I figured I would poke around some more. I did a search for places with the word "church." There was a church of Satan and some of the fundamentalist churches I'd seen before. But this time I also saw the Koinonia United Church of Christ, so I decided to pay them a visit.

They had a great looking place and I was just about to go in and look around (I don't even know where they're located in real life) when another avatar named Zankisha appeared. She had some very familiar looking hair and clothes--obviously she had started with the same City Chic prototype that I had--but she had also added large, black wings.

I opened the chat window and told her I recognized the hair. She laughed and we began a conversation. She's a Canadian from British Columbia and headed to college for the first time in a few weeks. Since she was going off to college her dad got her a new computer so now she had the graphics card to do Second Life. She was, as I guessed, new to SL. She turned 18 in June.

Since we were the only two people at the Koinonia UCC, I asked her what brought her to the church. She said she thought it was a restaurant from the look of the building. I told her she would only get bread and grape juice here, and she laughed. She had wandered over from another island that adjoined the one the church was on.

I asked why she joined Second Life. She said she was a lesbian and was looking for a safe community. I told her she had come to a GLBT friendly church. She said the island that adjoined the one the church was on was not friendly. She thought it was odd that opposite attitudes were right next to each other. I said that maybe the UCC had set up there on purpose to provide a safe haven where there wasn't one. We chatted for quite awhile just about things in general and ended up marking each other as friends.

My encounter with this young woman made me all the more determined that the Massachusetts Bible Society should add yet one more friendly place for Zankisha on SL. And it made me sad that we live in a world, even in Canada, where some people only feel safe in a virtual world.

As my colleagues debate whether virtual worlds are helpful, it seems to me that the most helpful thing is for more kind people to inhabit them and provide safety in the same way that we try to be there for folks in the real world. At the same time that I'm exploring Second Life, I'm a Night Elf Druid in World of Warcraft. (WoW players, look for Anfyral in Zangarmarsh--level 20 and counting!) There's a young teen from the Bronx who looks for me whenever he is online to group with him and to go on quests together. He sent me mail on WoW saying that I was his best friend. I help him level up, wait through the computer trials as he tries to play a game like that on a dial-up computer, and make him good armor with my leatherworking skills. He has no idea he's playing with a 48-year-old woman who heads up a Bible Society, but probably his parents would be relieved to know the true identity of the Druid guarding their son.

Call me crazy, but I think it's possible to have the virtual Body of Christ.

Monday, August 6, 2007

Politics

Things have been pretty quiet on the Second Life front. I logged in one earlier time to do a search on "Boston" and see if Emerson College had anything live that I could visit. They didn't, at least not that I could find. I wandered around a bit more and found a nice place to buy birdhouses, but no people to talk to. I logged in another time to accept a friend request.

When I logged back in today I decided to see if Hillary Clinton had a Second Life presence. Of course she does--a very nice place and it even has a podium where you can give a speech. I'm not sure how that works and didn't try it out. There were copies of recent speeches and several boards that told about various phases of her life. There was a dance floor and a baby grand piano and a great water area.

Vita Demina was sitting on the couch. She turned out to be a teacher in Pennsylvania and we had a great conversation about our political climate and the mystery of why there is such venom against Hillary Clinton in so many quarters. You can like her or not like her but I don't see any grounds for people hating her. Sounds like a personal problem to me.

We agreed that we liked her and hoped she wins. I told her about the video I just uploaded on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP3R65vG0eg. It's titled The Grim Reaper Political Action Committee (and if you like Dick Cheney, you probably don't want to view it). She said she'd check it out and we officially became friends. I'll go back and check out Hillary's place at a time when people aren't at work and check out the other candidate sites as well. Good place to meet people.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Land Possibility

I'll be back to Second Life as soon as I finish reading Harry Potter, but in the meantime, I saw this article in the Boston Globe. http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/07/21/hub_of_the_online_universe_city_plans_a_virtual_boston/. It looks like the City of Boston is being given a virtual life, so I'm trying to make connection with the head of that project to see if we could have space for MBS right in its current Boston location! That would be very cool. We're on Beacon Hill and my office overlooks the old Granary Burying Ground, which is part of the Freedom Trail. So I suspect this part of the city will be high on the list of early areas to create.

Monday, July 9, 2007

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

So real life has kept me out of Second Life for a bit and when I finally went back I appeared right where I had last exited...in the pews of the ALM Cyberchurch.

Since it was Saturday night, the sanctuary was empty and I took advantage of the solitude to try to organize my inventory and to edit my appearance a bit more. I had never done the editing of my avatar while viewing side angles and when I figured out how to rotate the camera, I found that Voces' face was way too flat for her other features when viewed from the side and her City Chic torso was a bit too well-endowed.

And my inventory was quite cluttered. When you pick up boxes of free things, there's a lot of stuff that won't appeal to you, so you can ditch it. For me that meant the male avatars and clothes, things like Vampire skin and, ironically, the pile of Jesus-related T-shirts I got at the Dokimos Cafe. Not that I have anything against Jesus, mind you, but the messages just weren't my style. There wasn't one that asked "Who would Jesus bomb?" (which is one of my favorite bumper stickers), so out they went.

As I was purging my inventory of purple hair and spiked collars, someone walked into the sanctuary. The group name above his head was SL Body of Christ and the name was Pastor Reifsnider. Not the guy who preached a couple of weeks ago. He came up and said hello and gave me a teleport to a prayer and praise service that was about to start in another location. It seems that the 7-7-07 date was not just appealing to those getting married but also to the numerological branch of Christianity. Seven is, of course, the number of perfection in the Bible, so I guess it seemed like a "perfect" time for such a service. Not wanting to seem rude, I teleported there to the area called "Bodhisena."

I ended up in an outdoor amphitheater (okay, it's virtual outdoors, but you get the drift) with some others standing around. They had names like "JH Senior Pastor Rick Liveoak" "Apostle to the Goths Ulfilas Graves" "EC Owner Sonic Rang" and the group-less "Faith Enoch." Just like in church, no one spoke to me. That has been an interesting phenomenon. In non-religious areas, when I walk in people say hello and we often start a conversation. Not in these Christian groups. Maybe because I ditched my T-shirts. Perhaps I should change my group name from "Friend of Tolkien" to "Sinner in Need of Saving" to get some attention. Or re-endow my torso.

Anyway, the guy at the front several times said things would be getting underway shortly and invited people to take a seat on one of the benches. I did, and Faith looked like she might, but others disregarded the injunction. After a bit, so did I. And, heathen that I am, I wandered off to a series of Native American posters I saw in the adjoining lot.

I clicked on one of the posters. They were for sale and one gave me a notecard. The card encouraged purchase of the posters so that the Native American group could pay someone to create the animated gestures that would let an avatar do the Ghost Dance. I read with a touch of sadness as it said, "So that we can pray, too, and not just the Christians." Other cards told of White Buffalo Calf Woman, a legend I have a sort of odd connection to, and which tipped me off that those who owned the area were connected at least loosely to the Lakota Sioux.

Thinking maybe I had stumbled on an area with other religions I wandered further and did find a little Christian chapel. But there was no information inside, no praying poses or anything. But mostly it was shops and I noticed I had left Bodhisena and was now in Batchelor. Just beyond that there was some land for sale near some water, so I made a note of that.

I flew around some more and saw another church--more a New England style--white with traditional steeple. I went in. It was a country store. I found a dance hall in Asanga. Nobody was there, but if I clicked on a particular dance style, my avatar would get her groove on and do whatever it was. After a bit of Salsa I noticed a couple of swords on the floor and, being a Robertson, I clicked and Voces leapt into an award-winning sword dance. It was a bit less satisfying since there was rock music playing and not bagpipes, but still--she was good and not the slightest bit winded at the end!

I flew down to some homes and looked around. One was empty and for sale. Not on that land, but you could buy a copy of the house and its contents to put on your own land. It was a possible beginning dwelling for the MBS and cheap, so I got a copy. I saw another home in a different style and opened the door. There was a man inside, lying down on some pillows, and an animation ball above the pillows said "lie with him." Ummm...I don't think so. I closed the door and flew away.

Then I remembered that a place called Svarga was supposed to be very cool, so I searched for it and teleported there. The reports were correct. I found myself initially next to a single-person transportation pod that offered a guided tour of Svarga. I got on and it took over, flying me over the area and describing the places of interest.

Unfortunately I missed part of the tour because my real life dog, who was outside ostensibly to do his business, began to chase after someone on the street. "Ruckus!" I shouted, "I'm on a guided tour of Svarga and can't pause it!" But Ruckus was unimpressed with my plight and continued his wayward behavior. So I had to go tend to my neighborly duties and corral the dog. I got back in for the very end of the tour and shortly thereafter ended my session.

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

It wasn't me!

I picked up the following information from a great e-newsletter I get called TechCrunch:

"A case of alleged copyright infringement in Second Life is heading to court.
According to Reuters, Second Life entrepreneur Kevin Alderman, the owner of Eros LLC, a company that makes virtual sex beds, filed the “Eros LLC vs John Doe” lawsuit on Tuesday.
Second Life user Volkov Catteneo is alleged to have copied and distributed the “SexGen Bed”, an item that sells for L$12,000 ($45.11). The lawsuit seeks to force Linden Lab to disclose Catteneo’s real-world identity, as well as asking Catteneo for damages.
The case, the first of its kind for Second Life, will be interesting from a legal perspective. There is no legal precedent for the case, and as Stanford University’s Lauren Gelman said in a Four Corners report earlier this year, the concept of virtual property ownership is vexed:
“All of this is virtual bits and bytes, ones and zeros that are sitting on the servers at Second Life’s headquarters and the server farms they have around the world…how much can you own something that’s really under the control and domain of another party, this is really where the law is being tested to see how they’re going to figure that out.”
On the surface it also seems a little strange that Linden Lab has not already dealt with it; Second Life has strict rules in relation to copyright infringement and has previously acted in favor of in-world copyright owners. "

But...just for the record...it is not the Mass. Bible Society stealing the SexGen Bed!

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Church

I've spent most of the weekend getting a new laptop set up ("downloading update 1 of 57...") so it wasn't until today that I had a chance to visit SL again. Since I was home, I decided I would visit someplace peculiar to my interests and did a search on groups related to J.R.R. Tolkien. There were several, and I joined the one with the most members...the Tolkien Education Center and Museum in Eldamar.

Group names appear above the head of your Avatar, so Voces now has "Friend of Tolkien" above her name. Once the Bible Society has its own group, that name can go up there. I'm assuming that if you belong to more than one group, you can pick which one defines you. If not, the Massachusetts Bible Society will simply have to live with being a friend of Tolkien. Could be worse, but I won't go into that...

I had a good time at the Tolkien Center and dropped some Linden dollars on an Arwen gown, a celtic cross, and some furniture that may come in handy later on. There were some elaborate residences for sale that I took cards about--styles out of Rivendell and Lorien, and a castle or two. There were some caves also, presumably for the dwarven types.

I picked up some free Tolkien stuff, most notably a bracelet that triggers Tolkien trivia questions when near a treasure chest. I needed Gwyneth by my side who has a much better memory than I do for Middle Earth history (outside of the events in the books and movies). I did not do very well.

After wandering around the lovely land of Eldamar and then some of Eragon and wondering if the Bible Society wouldn't like to have a castle near an elven tree house, I decided that I would pop over to the dokimos cafe and pick up the Second Life Bible. As you will recall, I got e-mail right after joining from California Condor inviting me there. It's basically a Christian hangout, although no Christians were there hanging out except me. Of course it's Sunday and good Christians are in church and not home on their computers.

Except for the Christians who attend the ALM Cyber Church. I saw it on a list of churches in a search. I teleported to the church and looked around. The outside was contemporary and very colorful. I walked in and saw a notice that a worship service was to begin in 28 minutes! Obviously God wanted to be sure that I did not burn in hell for missing a Sunday at church and provided an opportunity where one would least expect it. SL runs on Pacific time, so it was a normal 11 am service, 2 pm in my time zone. I had company arriving at 3 pm and realized the clothes I was planning to wear were still in the washer, so I logged off, dashed down to the dryer, did a few other things to get ready in case the service took a full hour, and then logged back in for church.

The doors to the sanctuary were open and a few people had begun to gather. I went forward to one of the pews toward the front, right clicked on the seat and chose "sit down" from the menu. it told me there was no room. Well, there were only two other people in a pew that could have sat 15. But there was no room. I tried a pew with only one other person. No room. "Hey," I thought, "This is truly like a real church. I must be trying to sit in someone else's pew!" After several more pitiful attempts to find a seat, I caught on that you left-click instead and the avatar just sits down. A number of people were coming in now. No one spoke to me. A true church visitor experience--don't know where to sit, unfriendly people, etc.

Soon some folks began to walk up to the chancel in the front. Of course I took some pictures.

The screens ran announcements before the service and there was praise music playing as we gathered. The avatar on the piano was a furry--the name for those who choose animal avatars. The guy who came up to play the guitar was named Blundergroin Snoats. The pastor's name was Benjamin Psaltery. I'm absolutely sure there was no option of Psaltery for a last name when I signed up. Hmmm.

As the service was about to begin the pastor invited us to touch the pulpit and get a card. Right-clicking on an object and selecting the "touch" option is how you get things or operate things and none of us had to leave our pews to do it. The card had the order of service, which consisted of words to the praise songs, several scripture readings, and a place to take notes on the sermon. The songs were "There Is A River," "Humble Yourself" and "Hallelujah." The Scripture passages were Daniel 10:1-12, Jeremiah 29:13, and Daniel 10:20-21.

After inviting us to get the card, the pastor announced some prayer requests which sounded like real ones, so I'm guessing there's someplace there where you can put prayer requests. As he named those folks and then prayed, the furry avatar played at the piano. Also on the announcement screen was a notice that you could stay in the foyer afterwards for prayer and counseling. I noticed that California Condor was present. The screens advertised the dokimos cafe.

As you can see in the picture, there were several microphones across the front, but someone only came up to one of them and the praise songs began. Unlike the music playing as we came in, which was a professional recording by a contemporary Christian artist, the praise songs seemed to actually be the voices of the pastor and the one woman at the microphone in back. They weren't quite singing in different keys, but it was off enough to know that this was either performed live or recorded in someone's garage. We had the words to the songs, but if there was a way to actually sing along, I never discovered it.

Of course like in many evangelical churches, most of the worshippers were slipping off into their own little praise worlds--an interesting concept when you're already an avatar in a virtual world, but so it goes. As the singing went on, we were invited to stand--gotta stretch those legs, you know--and I took another picture of the congregation.


That is Voces in the foreground. I don't remember if I took a picture of myself with my new clothes on. As you can see, it was quite an eclectic mix. I don't know that I've ever seen a techno-warrior in church before, let alone a techno-warrior praising the Lord--check out the front pew across the aisle from me.

I discovered that one of the things I had been given in the box of freebies at the dokimos cafe was a folder of animations. Animations are things that your avatar can do in motion. These were specifically worship animations, which is what those avatars with their hands up in the air were doing. I turned on the "worship the Lord" animation and instantly Voces was in the praise groove, hands in the air and swaying side to side. I added the "receive" animation, which moved her arms from straight up to out in front of her, elbows bent and resting at the waist, hands upturned to receive. With the first animation still going, she held the new pose and swayed. When I turned off the first animation, she stopped swaying but left her hands in the receive pose. There was a praying pose also, which is the more traditional hands folded and head bowed.

I suspect there's a sermon there in the ability to turn worship animations on and off like that.

The music went on for quite some time and wasn't all that good. It was then I realized how handy it is to be able to have your avatar sit dutifully in church while you are in the next room folding laundry. When I came back, Voces was kind of slumped over, which is what happens to your avatar when you have been idle for a bit--or what happens to you in real life if you fall asleep in church! If I had stayed that way for 30 minutes, Second Life would have logged me off. But, one bump of the mouse, and Voces was back in the final strains of "Hallelujah."

The pastor read the first Daniel passage as the piano played and then began what seemed a rather shallow but not offensive sermon. He talked about how we rush about our business and don't wait for God to speak. Time and time again he said "God hears you from the very first day you seek him." "You have God's attention. Give it your all." He talked about Daniel humbling himself and seeking after God.

And then, like I would have expected from the Romans Road stuff on the walls of the dokimos cafe, it took a turn. "God is not a nice teddy bear who will embrace everyone like some churches think," Pastor Psaltery warned. "God does not turn a blind eye to sin. If you reject the sacrifice of the cross, judgment is coming. An hour from now you could be out of your body waiting for the gavel to fall with your judgment." And so it went from God longing for you and waiting for you and hearing you from the very first day to God salivating for that moment when the gavel comes down and the trap door to hell opens beneath your feet.

Thrown in was an occasional mocking of traditional spiritual disciplines ("Daniel didn't skip his favorite TV show and eat fish instead of steak for three weeks..."), which was an interesting choice of things to attack when preaching from Daniel since it is Daniel and his friends who gain favor with the King by sticking to their religious discipline of not eating the meat in the royal household. But I digress.

I had to log off before the end of the sermon, since my company was arriving, but I'm not sure I could have stomached the rest of it anyway. I'm virtually (no pun intended) sure that it all ended with the typical "now with every head bowed and every eye closed" type of altar call, but I couldn't stay.

Another religious voice is clearly needed in Second Life. Now I need to scope out some land with the "Where would Jesus live?" question informing my search. Probably not in the castle in Eldamar, which is a pity.


Monday, June 18, 2007

unknown friends

My next stop on info island told me about an upcoming Second Life scavenger hunt. Sounded interesting, but what caught my eye was an area advertising Techsoup.org: The technology place for nonprofits. That would be me.



So, I teleported to the Nonprofit Commons. It was basically a city, and I presume the buildings are for rent to non-profits. It's easy to wander out into for-profit areas, but I wandered about and found organizations like Preferred Family Healthcare, the Transgendered Resource Center, Refugees United, and Cystic Fibrosis Support. I also found a place called Good Samaritan, thinking it was related to the counseling center hosted by many churches. It wasn't. Apparently they help people on SL. Nobody was there, but there were free things--free textures and an age identifyer (for all those people lying about being 39?).



With nobody around (remind me not to rent in the non-profit sector!) and things for free, I was reminded that the SL guide I bought told me about a place called the Freebie Warehouse. Sounded like my kind of place, so I did a search and teleported there.



The Warehouse is set up like, well, a warehouse with lots of big boxes and not much else. When you right-click on each box, it reveals the contents and gives you the option to buy. They are all zero dollars, but you "buy" them anyway. There are vehicles and gadgets, furniture and buildings, clothing, and weapons. I haven't picked up any weapons, but I took everything else and will now have to sort through over a thousand items in my inventory and delete what I don't want.



I can't figure out how to look at clothes without actually wearing them. After having a couple of people run into me because I was just standing there trying on clothes, I moved in between a couple of the boxes. I just had ended up with different hair again when a woman in a white jumpsuit came by. She saw me, stopped, and said hello. "R u nu?" she asked in her best text-speak. I alluded that I was. She said this was her first day which already made her more adept than I was since she was off of Help Island, was wearing non-noob clothes, and had been places.

She told me she had already been to a monastery, the beach, and a church. It was an interesting set of locations, so I asked her about her choices and if she were religious. "I'm a Christian," she said. Obviously this was not a coincidence--hiding amongst the boxes as I was. I told her that I was head of the Massachusetts Bible Society and that I was clergy. Her SL name is Rilis and in real life she is an executive with a large computer company. I felt better about my inferior abilities. She was there for the same reason I was--to scope out SL so that her company can have a presence there.

We had a great conversation and became official Second Life friends, which makes her the first friend that I don't know, which is a decidedly odd thing to say. Her family came home and she had to go, but first she gave me the landmark for the monastery she visited. I teleported there and she left.

There is some lovely artwork in the monastery, all of it that I saw by German artists. When I clicked on each piece, I got a notecard about the art in German. Click again and you get it in English. There were a couple of people in monk's robes around, but I needed to wander to an unoccupied room to get my hair back. Another odd thing to be saying.

I found a nice room with some benches, sat Voces down, and set to work on the hair.

I got that basically figured out and saw a Bible on a stand that you could click on. As I was trying to make it open or something, a man in a green suit with wings and a cigar flew in a window. Just another day in my life...

Anyway, his SL name was Philosopher Iohan Beck. I don't know if he used "Philosopher" as part of his name or if that's a category you can adopt. The Iohan Beck part coupled with the German cards made me think I was in a German monastery, but as Iohan and I got talking, I discovered he was from Mexico. We found that we had a love of Kierkegaard in common, an interest he had not yet found in another SL person. So we became friends--the second friend I don't know.

Iohan invited me to come and meet the Cardinal and I followed him about the monastery grounds until we found him talking with another monk. All in Spanish. I really do need to learn Spanish. I could make out some of what they were saying just from common usage and a few things taught to me young by my Aunt Judy, who teaches Spanish. Iohan volunteered to translate for me.

I greeted the Cardinal. He speaks three languages, and I said that's how he got to be Cardinal. He said he was lobbying for pope, and we all agreed he would need at least nine languages for that.

It was getting late and I had an early morning coming, so I took my leave and logged out. Apparently there's a visitor's center for the monastery, which I missed somehow, so when I log back in (you go back to the place you left), I'll check that out. I'll also check out the surrounding area in case it might be suitable for MBS land.