I also posted this in the forum for further discussion, but here it is for those who don't make the jump:

 

 On Second Life we will create a virtual prototype for ENN, the Evolver News Network, an organization that uses a media and membership model (similar to National Geographic or AAA) for the purposes of planetary transformation and consciousness research. Media and membership could be called "mediaship," a new hybrid, where the individual members are empowered to create the media and disseminate it. In a sense, ENN is the logical advance and polar reverse image of Nat Geo, which went across the world to explore exotic cultures and environments to bring back material for the Western middle class observer/outsider, using anthropological tools. ENN now uses the insights of anthropology to reverse-engineer contemporary civilization, consciously re-tribalizing it and spreading McKenna's "archaic revival."  We realize that local indigenous cultures are much better at conserving local resources, so we delete artificial boundaries between states and nations and create new tribal councils, with local currencies and gift economies. Trading between larger entities uses the Terra, a currency with "negative interest" as defined by Bernard Letaier.

ENN also recognizes that nonviolence can be taught just as easily as literacy or violence - as Gandhi understood, and practiced. So we disseminate a simple technique for teaching nonviolent activism as a warrior's path, creating a show format similar to Sesame Street, using puppets and animation, for this and other developmental teachings aimed to retrain the cognitive habits of degenerate adults.

ENN's travel show scans the planet for techniques of natural bioremediation, technologies that remove carbon from the atmosphere, alternative fuel production that does not influence food production, etc. Other shows explore unsolved mysteries such as the giant skeletons found in the South West, the 1,000 ton blocks moved hundreds of miles across Ancient Egypt, Nazca Lines, etc.

In its "Beyond the Known Universe" series, ENN also takes seriously fifty years of data on UFOs and alien abductions, and offers a dedicated channel to exploring the "extraterrestrial other" as both legitimate contact phenomena and archetypal projection of the psyche. 

ENN's popular "Initiation? Wow!" Reality TV show follows the effects of various disciplines (such as dark room retreats, Tantric training, or Amazonian dietas) on a dedicated group of brave and glamorous young people.

 Our even more popular Reality TV Show, "All You Are Is Love", follows a group of beautiful multigenerational adults as they seek to put nonattachment into practice, and challenge convention by creating new models of relatedness that range from erotic intimacy to empathic friendliness. 

Etc.

The corporate offices and studios of ENN can be in Second Life, while the shows are filmed here in First Life, then edited in our virtual second life studios. 

"Will the transformation."-Rilke

DP, your thoughts from the forum to this posting have evolved - I dig the titles you've come up with "Initiation? Wow!" is my personal fave. I am so excited to see what others come up with!!!

"The only thing constant in life is change" -François de la Rochefoucauld

I think this is a great idea, but I don't play Second Life. Hopefully this will be the first step that the ENN needs to become a bonafide "First Life" media network! If so, I might actually turn on the TV for a (drastic) change.

Perhaps the most irksome thing about the first Matrix film for me was that the Wachowski brothers chose to present the perspective of willing submission to the Matrix through only the most despicable character, when I see Cypher's decision as the most common response to the situation. Given the opportunity to live a conscious life in the brutalized "desert of the real" in revolutionary struggle with the colonizing intent of machine intelligence, plenty would opt to flee from consciousness into the comfort of an immersive distraction. After all, we live in a beautiful world (for a little while longer, at least) and still the average American spends over four hours staring at the glow of a television screen (and then, on top of that, there's the internet). Clearly, emancipation is a struggle that most are too weak, afraid, or just plain confused to really pursue (I count myself among the confused in my present state of mental slavery).

All of this is a way of saying that I am wary of Second Life and its ilk. Partly it's the Illuminatiesque eye-in-the-hand logo. Partly it's the quickness with which it has integrated itself with other heinous cultural forces like CSI. Partly it's the fact that the bulk of Second Life activity, and its true raison d'être, is financial (see http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php ), situated within the neolib wetdream of an economy completely controlled by whoever controls Linden Labs. And that Second Life essentially embodies the complete fulfillment of the capitalist tendency toward what Marx called "commodity fetishism." Partly it's the ease with which new threats can be constructed and "made real" (see http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article2199193.e... or type "second life" and "terrorism" into Google for over one million search results) and the way these "real" (constructed) virtual threats are used for brand new methods of surveillance and control (see the US intelligence data-mining and prediction program named Reynard), situated within the neocon wetdream of a society in which every single action and interaction is able to be monitored, recorded, and ultimately controlled.

But, most of all, what bothers me about these techno-mediated virtual worlds is the opportunity cost: every hour spent in Second Life is an hour sacrificed alone sitting entranced in front of a machine in "First Life." Surely this is what I am guilty of right now, and I would not suggest that such sacrifices can never be worthwhile: the magical conscious effects we can instantly transmit to other minds situated at other physical locations by way of the internet is one of the most powerful forces for mental emancipation in this historical moment. At the same time, we should recognize that this channel has been compromised, and we'd do better to cultivate another means of communication before this very new media completes its rapid colonization by surveillance capitalism. Fortunately, there's a better (non-technological) means of instant global communication we could utilize if we can just stretch our minds toward it together.

In the end, I really must wonder: what does Second Life add to the Reality Sandwich experience (or any internet experience) aside from the seduction of a more immersive, more "real-seeming," virtual experience? And what does it take away? These questions should be well considered before we bound into this brave new world of glittering distractions.

Q~ You make some great points and I respect, if not agree with you about many of them. But there's no doubt that many people have immersed themselves in this virtual world, and my hope is that we could bring them out of it. Outdoors, into the light of day, to change their life and others and come back to boast (or at least report) about their transformations. I would bet that a goal of Linden Labs is to have more people log more hours in Second Life, but if our goal was to ultimately pull people out of Second life into their First life, and spend their 4 glow-box hours a day (or at least 2!) enhancing it. Your comment "emancipation is a struggle that most are too weak, afraid, or just plain confused to really pursue" truly exists in both first and second lives, and I would bet that where you find it in one of them, it would also be within the other. People feel pretty safe in virtual worlds, more willing to open up to themselves and others, so perhaps that is where we would have a good time helping others transform into stronger, confident people?

"The only thing constant in life is change" -François de la Rochefoucauld