Many dear friends have chosen not to blog this week, striking in protest against Linden Lab's foolish and overreaching brand-protection policies. I've given quite a bit of thought to the issue over the past few days: it would be easy enough to join them by default: I don't have the time to blog this week anyway. Friendship and laziness could reinforce each other; easy enough to stay away.

But I can't do that. I'm taking the time to post, to cross the virtual picket line, for a principle that I think is of overwhelming importance.

Silence is *always* complicity in oppression. The one obligation of the dissident, the sole moral response in the face of oppression, is to SPEAK OUT. To never relent, to never be silent, to never allow the oppressor a single moment's peace, to make the case for freedom and justice to anyone who can listen, at any time, anywhere Passivity enables oppression.

Seeing a wrong and refusing to speak out is not a tactic, it's a moral failing - and one I've been guilty of, in focusing on building something positive in Extropia to the complete exclusion of criticizing Linden Lab's increasing demonstrations of contempt for its Residents.

A generation of AIDS activists pioneered the slogan, SILENCE  = DEATH. Imagine if their response to official discrimination, to neglect by researchers and pharmaceutical companies, had been to *remain silent* until the world changed around them!

The rationale behind the blog strike seems to be that blogging about Second Life (no, I'm not conforming to Linden Lab's demands that I forgo nominative fair use. Let them come after me if they want) legitimizes or promotes Linden Lab's actions in some way.

Let's have a little realism about the nature of power, please? The commercial blogs - New World Notes, Massively and their ilk - aren't striking. The rest of them - fashionistas, SLebrities, microbusiness promotional blogs and personal journals - don't contribute any measurable amount to Linden Lab's revenues or to its ever more tattered reputation.

Linden Lab has been overreaching, deaf to its customers at best and actively hostile to them (Robin Linden and identity "trust," anyone?). They deserve to be called out, to be pressed to change. Second Life Residents and users should be informed of Linden Lab's actions and encouraged to take action. Our grievances are legitimate, and we should do something about them.

Like what?

• Education and outreach. The bloggers who've chosen to remain silent this week have done a wonderful job until now.  I've learned a tremendous amount from Gwyneth Llewellyn and Kit Meredith about my rights, and how Linden Lab's actions have threatened them. Those of us without the knowledge base and skills to analyze the situation in the first instance can spread the word - speak out, link, post a supportive comment.
  

• Collective action, not collective incation. Organize and join in mass attendance at Linden's office hours. Organize educational events, speakers, and mass protests inworld, where they can be seen, and where our numbers can be counted.
  

• Escalation. The frontline Lindens are deaf, inept, destructive? Write and petition the Board of Directors individually. Write to Linden Lab's investors, explaining how Linden Lab's actions are damaging the value of their investment. Call out Mitch Kapor inworld and at atomic world events. Hold him accountable for corporate actions.
  

• Cashing out. If you're upset enough - and I confess I'm not - cash out. Dump your Premium account, the three or four of you who still have one. Dump your landholdings. Stay out of the world. Make an impact that shows up on the concurrency and economic statistics. Linden Lab is using economic and legal tools against you? Use them back.
  

Okay, big talk for someone who hasn't stood up against Linden Lab's actions in months. It's easy to complain from the cheap seats, something I've seriously not appreciated when it's been directed at me. Do I have money to put where my mouth is (and if that isn't one of the more disgusting images in English figures of speech, I don't know what is)?

Here's what I've got.

• Once a week, here, or where this blog may end up moving to, I'm going to post a "for dummies" analysis of Linden Lab's problematic policies - and give them credit for whatever they may get right. I'll link to all the first-line smart commentary and analysis I'll be drawing from - and hopefully our intellectual leaders will come off strike and supply me with some material to work from!

• I'm going to offer Extropia's facilities: an expanded set of conference rooms, lecture halls, media displays and our mighty marketing engine, for an Anti Silence Day.
  
• You striking bloggers: I'll give you a stage and an audience.
  
• You Lindens: I'll issue you an invitation to show up and explain yourselves - or *you* can stand silent and ineffectual while *we* take control of the message.
  
• You concerned Residents: I'll give you a chance to show up, be counted, get informed, and get inspired.
  
• You veteran activists: I'll call on you to teach us, lead us, politicize and empower us.  Show us how to be effective agents for change. Give us the tools that have been proven to work in worlds like ours.
  

I'm not an intellectual analyst, not a veteran activist, not an influential heavyweight. I'm a pretty good marketer and events organizer with a blog. Those of you who *are* leaders - there's my contribution. 

Will you take me up on it, put it to use, and ACT UP? 

I haven't blogged in two weeks! I haven't been around much at all: the Other Personality's terrifically busy, and my time's been drastically limited.

Which sucks, because *I'm* terrifically busy.

Extropia's gone from one to six sims this month, and it's my job to get them rented up. I'm organizing two major events, each, oh, five times the size of anything I've done before. I'm paying tier on a gorgeous empty mall, and need to get commercial tenants in. I've got a page-long list of people I need to meet with on various things. And, I have a family that means the world to me, who I want to put first - but some of putting them first means working to keep me and the Chairman solvent, and get some other people paying tier in Extropia! So, not a good time to have my time squeezed to practically zero.

Anyhoo, I had the honor of participating in a panel debate yesterday at Orange Island, on Augmentation vs. Immersion. I was thrilled and a little intimidated to be included (and many thanks to Lillie Yifu for recommending me!): the moderator and panelists were people I deeply admire: Tom Bukowsky (Tom Boellstorff), author of the upcoming Coming of Age in Second Life, who moderated; Gwyneth Llewellyn and I represented the Immersionists, and Hiro Pendragon (Ron Blechner) and Giulio Perhaps (Giulio Prisco) showed up for the Augmentationists.

We'd discussed a number of debate questions in advance, from the narrow and legalistic to the political to the abstract - but we ended up being given five minutes each to speak freely, then time to respond. Between the makeup of the panel (all friends, all easygoing people), the lack of questions that got at disagreements, and the enormous amount of unmoderated audience participation, nothing really came of the hour. The best thing to be said about it was, everybody got to talk, and nobody left thinking that one "side" or the other was weird, hostile or illegitimate.

So, I'd chalked up the experience as "pleasant but insubstantial," and went fishing. Now fishing? That was a good time ($L1 scripted rods and open fishing on Tycho Beach, right by the flagpole)! But, argent_bury  asked for a chatlog, and responded with a critical analysis of the issues that *should* have been raised yesterday.

Go read her post. I'll wait right here. It's really worth it.

I think her first point cuts to the heart of the real distinction in perspectives: is SL for you a place or a tool? Everything else, from standards of identity and trust to "A/S/L," follows from that.

Despite the huge differences in our personalities, and in our lives in SL, Argent and I see the world in just about exactly the same way, so her nine points are mine as well. I'll just add a few paraphrasings:

• I live here. Maybe to you it's Vegas, or Tijuana, a place to avoid responsibility. To me, it's home. So, if you treat me and mine like you're on Spring Break? It won't go well. Also, I have a responsible job with a group that's made a significant investment in SL. You want grounds for trust? There you go: I'm a stakeholder here.
  

• You can talk to me about your life and whatever's important in it. I'm happy to listen and to help. When I reciprocate, I'll share about my life too - which, see above, is *here.* I'm not holding back; I'm giving you all I've got. And yes, I may freak out on you about how busy I am, how I'm feeling the burden of my job, how I wish I had more family time, how I wish I had a weekend to spend tied up, gagged and fucked brainless. You ask for it, you'll get it. :P

• I think the business community, where I spend a lot of my time, is the wrong place to look for people who don't respect immersionists. The business people who don't get SL, who talk trash about  finding, say, a goth chick with wings and neko eyes at their meeting?  They're not inworld. The people who are, they understand that SL is a foreign market much like any other, and when you do business in one, you learn and respect their customs if you want to make a sale.  The business and content creation communities get that, and I've never had anything but respect in them.  Government and education?  You'll find a lot of two year old playdo avs, ignorance and disregard for customs. They don't have to respect or serve their customers in the same way in their first lives, and they seem much more likely to be oblivious to the culture in SL as well.
  

That's all I've got.  If your principles or perspectives are different, please answer Argent's meme call, and drop a link in the comments to her post.  *This* is the discussion we didn't have yesterday at Orange Island, and the one that needs to be had, for us to build trust across differing world views.

Once again, I've been simmering a stew of other people's ideas for a couple days. It's not quite ready to be served up, but since I'm about to go silent for a long weekend, I'm going to go ahead and dish it now.

First into the pot was Al Kronos's post from last weekend, Dutch banks depart Second Life...some thoughts. Al says,

What has prompted me to write now is news, reported at Mindblizzard, that Dutch banks ING and ABN Amro are pulling the plug on Second Life. To grossly paraphrase Lady Bracknell, in The Importance of Being Earnest: "To lose one bank from SL, Mr. Rosedale, may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose two looks like carelessness."

Both banks took an "innovative" and "creative" approach to Second Life. They didn't just set out their stall and hope people would wander by. They actively sought to build genuine communities here, offering something distinct and unique at a time when most corporates were treating Second Life as a 3D billboard. I am therefore deeply concerned about their departure, and deeply concerned about the long-term viability of Second Life as "the Virtual World of choice" for the future. I still firmly believe that web3D will be an important part of the digital experience for all of us in years to come. But this turn of events is worrying me, a fan of Second Life. I have to wonder whether Linden Lab are simply too detached from both the world they created and the physical world in which they are running a business.

Al's right, looking at Linden Lab as a business attempting to cater to large corporations. Now, I'm pretty pro-business: I spend a lot of time traveling in business circles, especially for a Digital Person with no atomic-world affiliations or design skills. But, with all respect to Al, I couldn't escape my reaction on reading this, that the departure of those banks and what it might signify could be a good thing - for *my* world, the synthetic world that is and is not Linden Lab, the business.

This morning saw a flurry of excellent articles, all diced and dropped into the pot:

First off, Hamlet Au in Second Life Economy: In Recession, Or Cultural Inflection? observes that the high-volume, high-price economy of SL that draws so much critical attention might not be as large a force in the world as generally believed. He notes that Brazilians and Japanese in SL largely interact within their own free or low-cost environments, and comments added that many newbies are seeking socializing without spending.

Gwyneth Llewellyn has a brilliant new post analyzing a white paper which debunks the mainstream media myths about synthetic worlds. Following Tateru Ninu's analysis of why the old push media seem to fear and hate social networking media and synthetic worlds, she concludes that synthetic worlds really could be dangerous to the status quo and their corporate media supporters:


Finally, Raph Koster just echoed the Digital Person's lament from the other side: I Am Not My Avatar!  He protests efforts to link him to his digital identities, asserting his right to be separate from them, and their right to privacy.


So, what does all this end up tasting like?

I've had the notion for a while that SL at least can be looked at as a colony of US/European culture and finance, with all that implies socially  and politically. I haven't had time to immerse myself in the post-colonial literature the way I'd like to, so please bear in mind that these are early and unsupported thoughts.

Much of the debate about what SL "is" comes down to two perspectives: it's a colony of the atomic world, subject to the same rules, but a place to be exploited, and whose natives are - well, all the images Edward Said describes in Orientalism: untrustworthy (and haven't we heard *that* so much from our rulers!), inferior ("freaks and geeks"), eroticized (all genderbending pornographers, every one of us)  - wogs, to put it crudely. Digital People are regarded like, and often treated like, Thai sex workers, Tijuana barmaids, sweatshop laborers: disposable amusements and income generators for the tourists and bankers of the colonial powers.

The other side sees SL as a separate space, but equal in rights and dignity. We are Kosovo, East Timor, the West Bank: to some, a part of the greater nation, peopled with ungrateful separatists, and to others separate nations deserving of self-governance and recognition as an autonomous space. We have our own culture, our own legends, celebrities, heroes. We are finding our own way, apart from the culture and economy of our US/European visitors, investors and exploiters.

So, if foreign capital is leaving, and we are developing our own culture and economy apart from US/European commercial power and culture?  To be sure, foreign capital enables growth, development, advancement. But it also enables domination.  As a Digital Person, I find myself becoming a Digital nationalist, eager to see our world grow into its own cultural and economic nationhood.
 

This just in from Reuters:

Poll: Most adults don’t want fantasy avatars

I clicked on the link, expecting something that heralded an assault on identity freedom, pointed to the virulence of bigotry against furries and transsexuals - the usual bitter news from the atomic world that looks all too much like a War on Imagination.

But that's not what I found in the data, despite the desperate spin from Eric Reuters that played on all those elements of my expectation. What did the data actually say? Only 44% of a general audience - *not* users of synthetic worlds, but Atomic folks on the street - said they *wouldn't* experiment with identity and appearance in a synthetic world, given the chance. Only 44% were so grounded in their atomic identity, so incurious or unimaginative, to not even want the option of trying.

Maybe they're not the problem, those ordinary people out there. Maybe the problem, the people who actually assault imagination and creative freedom, are the ones in positions of power in the media. And maybe, just maybe, this implausible spin on a survey is a sign of desperation, of an attempted "surge" in their War on Imagination.

Look at what Eric Reuters did. Let's start with that headline. "Most adults don't want fantasy avatars.' First, the natural converse of that statement is, "people who want fantasy avatars are mostly children." Yes, demean and belittle us from word one. Also, "fantasy avatars?" To me a "fantasy avatar" is *any* avatar in WoW, or drows and mermaids in SL. How many millions of people are *using* fantasy avatars in MMOs already, all over the world? 

The question actually asked was,


Is it "fantasy" to dramatically alter one's appearance?  To be taller, or a different race, or to reclaim youth, or healthy limbs? Fifty-six percent of ordinary Americans at least wouldn't say no to the choice to do so.

The article also goes on to refer to "the chance to roleplay a furry, robot, or the opposite gender."  "Play" and "fantasy" on the one hand, "adults" and "real world" on the other. And, transgender expression equated to "roleplaying a robot."  Gods, the condescending bigotry in that statement!

I call shenanigans, Eric Reuters.

Creative freedom, freedom of the *individual* to define herself, rather than the state, the bank, the employer - that's not childishness. That's empowerment.

And maybe that's what's behind the War on Imagination.  Imagination is power, imagination is freedom. Imagination is the refusal of packaged reality, the rejection of stories imposed upon us from outside.  The imposition of stories is the exercise of the power of the state, the financial institution, the media conglomerate. Our elites are too sophisticated to resort to power in its crudest form of physical coercion: they exercise power through belief. Belief in their creation myths, belief in their endless wars on "terror," of all things, belief that we are our credit reports, our census data, belief that we are "consumers" rather than creators.

If we lack the freedom to create our own identities, we have no creative freedom at all. If we are not allowed - by the government, by Reuters, by the brownshirted PN street thugs of the ruling orthodoxy - to use our very selves as a medium of expression, then no canvas, no keyboard, no screen can matter as a medium of expression. If we cannot own ourselves, if our very existence is not recognized as *our* intellectual property, then we only have what the powers that be allow us to have, and which they make take from us tomorrow in the next click-through "agreement."

Maybe I am childish. Maybe I am playful.

Maybe those aren't bad things.

But one thing I know for certain?  I *own* the right to create myself, to define myself. And not all the thrones and powers, not all the media lackeys and barbarian goons, will *ever* get me to accept their stories in place of my own.

"Most People Want Identity Choice" - *there's* the truth behind your desperate spin, Eric Reuters. We will not be denied.

For the past few days, I've been carrying around the weight of a post I don't want to write.  Julian Dibbell's Wired article on griefers was so vile I've felt it like a coating of slime for days, yet every time I've sat down to write a counter-argument, I've just felt its toxins sinking deeper into me.

I don't *want* to give vent to frustration and disgust, and especially, I really don't want to put in an evening's work gussying up that frustration and disgust in abstract argumentation. That unwritten post would neither be emotionally satisfying nor intellectually useful: not one mind would be changed, and I'd only make myself and my readers feel worse.

So, I'm not going to do that. Instead, I'm going to celebrate the voices of moderation, sanity and tolerance I've heard across the blogosphere the past few days.

First, to the gentleman whose emails have done so much to restore my faith in the world the past few days: your grace and wit and helpfulness have been an effective anti-toxin. You know who you are; thank you.

Lillie Yifu, your post today, "The Play's The Thing," was a masterpiece. You gently and effectively deconstructed the "SL is fake" worldview, standing up for freedom of expression with humor and dignity. You're just getting better and better, Lillie - it's really a delight to see.

Hiro Pendragon, we occupy very different places on the identity spectrum. I wish all augmentationists had your serene integrity: "Identity in a new era" makes the case for unity without bigotry or disrespect, and comes from a position of solid self-assurance. You're the antithesis of the sniggering frat boys Dibbell glorifies. Thank you for reminding me that augmentationists aren't all small-minded and unimaginative.

Micheru, you wrote so that I didn't have to. Thank you.

vannesh, woot, love!  We've clashed a bit on identity issues in the past, but "Why Do 'First Life' Characteristics Matter?" is just *golden*!  It's so simple: one rule for any world - take people at their word till they give you cause to do otherwise. And, jeez, everybody, grow up about gender already!

faerie_h: your comment on London's blog was just so much fun!


To all of you above, and to everyone who through their actions every day helps build a world of gentle acceptance of differences, of delight in diversity, thank you.  Thank you for helping to cleanse the toxins of the mockers, the disrupters, the barbarians. 

Okay, enough of that. We've got a new world to build. Let's be about it!

In “Avatar Rights: A person chooses, a tool obeys,” Tateru Nino manages to be both wrong and to miss the point. She argues that since an avatar is simply “a representation, a vehicle and a tool,” the notion of “avatar rights” is impossible. She says

Your avatar isn't a citizen of a place under different laws. It can't be in fact, because it is just a tool. When the law reaches out, it reaches out to you, the person in the chair. An avatar has no will or intention in much the same fashion as a screwdriver, a cigarette, a ladder or a firearm has none. But you do, and the law will hold you accountable for your actions when or if you choose to break it, regardless of the tools you choose to do it with.

Likewise, a tool has no rights, no responsibilities and no obligations. A tool cannot have citizenship as it is basically not capable of choice. Only you have the ability to make choices, so only you can have these things. (It is to be noted, that the law has certain exceptions and allowances for situations where a human being has no will, choice or intention).

This is both factually incorrect, ignoring over 400 years of history regarding one of the most powerful tools ever to shape human society, the corporation. It’s also misguided, since much of the issue of “avatar rights” goes past Nino’s focus on the tool to focus on two issues she misses entirely: what rights does a person have in synthetic worlds as opposed to other places, and who is the person the avatar represents?

Let’s take corporations first. I’m not a legal scholar; I discovered this issue through Edward Castronova’s article “The Right To Play” in The State of Play, proceedings from a 2003 conference on law and virtual worlds. I’m open to – and I expect! – correction from lawyers who are much more familiar with the field than I am. Nonetheless, the basics seem pretty clear. Since the 17^th Century, European and later American law has given legal recognition to virtual persons: corporations. See the “juristic person” article on Wikipedia:

the legal personality of a corporation was established to include five legal rights -- the right to a common treasury or chest (including the right to own property), the right to a corporate seal (i.e., the right to make and sign contracts), the right to sue and be sued (to enforce contracts), the right to hire agents (employees) and the right to make by-laws (self-governance).

Since the 1800s, juristic personhood has been further construed to make it a citizen, resident, or domicilliary of a state….There are limitations to the legal recognition of juristic persons. Legal entities cannot marry, they usually cannot vote or hold public office,^[7] and in most jurisdictions there are certain positions which they cannot occupy.^[8] The extent to which a legal entity can commit a crime varies from country to country. Certain countries prohibit a legal entity from holding human rights; other countries permit artificial persons to enjoy certain protections from the state that are traditionally described as human rights.^[9]

Castronova says

the practice of treating corporate organizations as fictional people is like playing a little game of make-believe…..Not every collective entity is allowed to become a make-believe person. No, inventing a fantasy person is serious business. There are firm rules about it.

In short, there was a moment some four hundred years ago when this set of fantastical rules – defining who or what could be a make-believe person and how that make-believe person would be treated – seemed sensible to large numbers of serious people. And no one since (certainly not any serious person, anyway) has been troubled by this collective fantasy.

Most transactions in the atomic world are with virtual persons, where the “real people” involved are sheltered not by the thin tissue of anonymity but by something much thicker – the “corporate veil” – the entire power of the nation-state in a barrier between the virtual person and the biological one, in all but extreme and rare cases.

This is why so many of the objections to digital anonymity, and so many comments during the SL banking scandal were so idiotic: people were going on about how they would never give their money to someone whose identity they didn’t know – and then went to buy their groceries from a global corporation, and sign over their paychecks to some “fake name” with a fake address in a post office box in Delaware. “Bank of America” isn’t some guy in a blue suit in San Francisco, and if it loses your paycheck, you can’t go to the CEO and demand your money back: the law forbids it. You deal with the virtual person “Bank of America,” you don’t get to deal with the atomic persons who run it, let alone the millions of shareholders who own it.

So, just as the corporation was created to enable activities in a new era of commerce, there’s absolutely no reason in law or philosophy why a new category of “juristic person,” the avatar, can’t be created to enable activities in a new era of synthetic worlds. And the same reasons for doing so apply: corporations were created exactly in order to enable to people to start businesses without fear for their personal reputations or savings should that business fail.

The same logic applies in synthetic worlds. People need the freedom to act in synthetic worlds without risking the reputational, emotional and financial capital they’ve accumulated elsewhere. That’s the entire value of synthetic worlds, right there. Otherwise, they’re just another chatroom, another telephone.

 
Okay, have we finished off “a tool has no rights, no responsibilities, and no obligations?” Four hundred years of law say otherwise.

 
Let’s take the next one: rights in places. This is what most of the writing on avatar rights that I’m familiar with is about, and Nino misses this entirely. If I understand Raph Koster’s argument in “A Declaration of the Rights of Avatars,” what he’s saying is that people shouldn’t have to give up the rights they have in the atomic world when they enter a synthetic world. I’m sure Nino would agree with this.

But, people do give up their rights when they enter synthetic worlds. Let’s take this provision of the Second Life Terms of Service:

2.6 Linden Lab may suspend or terminate your account at any time, without refund or obligation to you.

Linden Lab has the right at any time for any reason or no reason to suspend or terminate your Account, terminate this Agreement, and/or refuse any and all current or future use of the Service without notice or liability to you. In the event that Linden Lab suspends or terminates your Account or this Agreement, you understand and agree that you shall receive no refund or exchange for any unused time on a subscription, any license or subscription fees, any content or data associated with your Account, or for anything else.

No government in human history that I know of has claimed as policy that they can confiscate all your wealth and kill you at any time they feel like. Yet LL does. LL says that your rights to your property end the moment you enter their world (well, the front page still says, “Your World. Your Imagination,” but, just no).

Koster responds to policies like that with

7. No avatar shall be accused, muzzled, toaded, jailed, banned, or otherwise punished except in the cases and according to the forms prescribed by the code of conduct. Any one soliciting, transmitting, executing, or causing to be executed, any arbitrary order, shall be punished, even if said individual is one who has been granted special powers or privileges within the virtual space. But any avatar summoned or arrested in virtue of the code of conduct shall submit without delay, as resistance constitutes an offense.

These are rights that civilized people in atomic spaces take for granted. Why should they give up those rights on entering a digital space?

 
“Avatar rights” in this reading is just the statement that a person manifesting as an avatar should have the same rights as a person manifesting as an atomic body. There are arguments on the other side, but Nino misses this issue altogether.

 
The third issue in “Avatar rights” is another one she misses outright: the question of who the person is behind the avatar. Digital People such as myself claim that we are unique and autonomous individuals manifesting as avatars in digital spaces and not equivalent to any person in an atomic space. This is related to the “juridical person” argument: I’m the equivalent of Bank of America, which is not, in law and practice, the atomic person Kenneth D. Lewis, Chariman, CEO and President.

But it goes beyond that, and is rooted in lived experience (I’m not the atomic Other Personality – I know when I was born and separated from OP, I know the feel of “me” versus “not me”), philosophy and possibly cognitive science (I’d bet good money that an fMRI of the brain we both use would generate different “cognitive fingerprints” when each of us is running, enough maybe even to establish in court today that we’re different personalities).

What Digital People want is for their autonomous existence to be recognized, in custom if not in law. I want my statements to be attributed to me, and not assigned willy-nilly to OP. I want to be able to make transactions in my own name, with my own cash, rather than have to use OP’s credit card. I want to be able to use my identity information on social networking sites without being in violation of their Terms of Service. I want social customs that regard “Oh, you don’t use Voice? You must really be a guy” as being as crass as making racist remarks or spitting on the floor. I want to be accepted as me, as a Digital Person, and not whitewashed and subsumed into the dominant culture of atomic persons.

Tateru Nino: the avatar is the person, yes. But the avatar is not the atomic body. Nor is there a one to one correspondence between body and person. Also in The State of Play, law professor Susan P. Crawford says that

identities are no longer rationed one per physiological specimen. A person may adopt different identities at various times during a life-span, and some individuals maintain several at once….Typical instances include women working in the professions, artistst and novelists, and people working in positions which involve security exposure.

She quotes Richard Bartle, saying that “the celebration of identity is the fundamental, critical, absolutely core point of virtual worlds.”

Even the claim that each biological human was a person has been a deeply radical notion through most all of human history. The circle of personhood has steadily increased through history. Women were not persons before the law in most places through most of history; still in much of the world they are not full legal persons. African Americans were not persons in Unted States law for centuries.

Expanding the circle of personhood is human moral progress. One body, one person is not the end of progress, but a midpoint. I claim equal rights, at least in my digital world, as the person who lives in the atomic world. In time, fully artificial intelligences will make the same claim. Enhanced members of other species - dolphins, chimps, great apes - may before too long make these claims themselves. Will we say that the shape of the meat marks the soul, or will be expand our moral ambit to include all those who claim their own cognition, their own moral agency, their own soul? 

Deal well with me and my fellow Digital People now: it'll be good practice for what lies ahead.

 
So there we have three arguments for Avatar Rights:

• they are an extension of vehicles for investment and exploration that have proven their usefulness for over four hundred years;
  
• they make the simple claim that persons should have similar fundamental rights whatever space, digital or atomic they may occupy; and
  
• the exploration and development of new concepts of identity and the self will be enabled and empowered through recognizing avatar identities apart from physical ones.

Hey augmentationists!

You asked for it, you got it!

naked piccies of my atomic body!

(you *know* you thought I was fatter than that!)

Dear Augmentationist:

I know you mean the kind things you say about me, and thank you!  But  you've said other things as well, that I don't think you recognize have hurt me.  You've assumed I'm what you are: a person, with a body and a long history in the atomic world, who speaks through a little cartoon figure in SL from time to time.  You think it's weird, maybe a little cute, maybe a little creepy, that I don't talk about my carpal tunnel, my mortgage, my co-workers, my partner, my self. You think I'm hiding who I really am.

That makes me feel like a liar and a fraud, and makes me wonder how you could possibly like or trust me.

I can try to explain what it is I am - and I'd ask you to either accept me on my own terms, or treat me as you would any other liar and deceiver.

I'm not someone playing a role, or manipulating an avatar like a chesspiece or a mask I speak from behind. I'm not anything but what I seem to be.

My name is Soph. Most everyone mispronounces my full name. I'm a tallish, thin woman who used to be more toned than she is now. I used to do martial arts, and surf, and go dancing most every night, and have daily sex. Now I spend most of my time working.  I'm an adult, but not tremendously mature and far from old. I write my blog at a High School level, but have a strong command of written English. I type fast, if not terribly well. I'm usually around early to midmorning and early evening SLT, and on Saturdays but not Sundays. I'm in a committed relationship with three other women. I'm good at marketing, dancing, and sex, and bad at math, building and patience.

When I'm not online, I don't exist. There is another mind I share a body with - they're not me in any meaningful way. We score differently on psychological tests. We know things and have skills the other doesn't. We have some similarities and some differences, and both frequently surprise me. The body, the "Other Personality," me - those three may be the same or different in age, gender, ethnicity, religion, politics, temperament, sexual preference, relationship status, social class, education level, time zone. Chances are you've only asked about my gender and location. Thanks for not thinking the others matter... I think.

Someone dear to me tried to explain what it is we are this way. I don't know what Argent's OP is along any of those variables I mentioned. I couldn't even guess most of them with any sense of certainty. It couldn't matter less - that's someone I'll never meet  and only care about to the extent that events in their life - a busy time at work, a death in the family, a head cold -  might affect Argent, whom I love for herself and trust to be Argent - a consistent, coherent person.

I don't use Voice. I have a friend who doesn't - because her voice might be recognized, and her day job compromised. I have a friend who doesn't - because she chooses not to share her conversations with her housemates. I have a friend who doesn't - because a car accident damaged her trachea. I have a friend who doesn't - because he talks all day at work. I have a friend who doesn't - because he's got this almost phobic hatred of telephones. I have a friend who doesn't  - because she considers her conversations inappropriate to be overheard by her small children. I have friends who don't - because their avs and their bodies don't match in gender. Joking about it might seem all in good fun - but my friend who was in the car accident is in a lot of pain, and reminders of all she's lost are hurtful. My friends who're transgendered in the atomic world find teasing bigoted, and fear the violence that often accompanies it, that has taken so many lives. My friend who may be famous fears exposure and finds jokes about it frightening.

For many of us, SL isn't just another communications tool - IM with moving pictures - but our lives, our homes, our refuges. Laws recognize that speech, that jokes, can create environments where people feel unsafe, unwelcome, afraid. Some come to SL because they feel that way all too often in the atomic world. For some like me and Argent, we have no other world - if we feel unsafe, unwelcome, afraid in SL, our only option is nonexistence, what for us would be death.

You may or may not have asked me out. Even were I to date outside my family, I probably wouldn't go out with you. I've got my insecurities, and I'd fear you would really want the A/S/L and the atomic-world hookup and were just biding your time to get me to "trust" you enough to set aside my "Digital pretense" and get with you physically. I'd fear you thought I was lying and pretending, and so were lying and pretending to me. Maybe I should trust you enough to set those fears aside. Maybe I should, but not today.

I consider you friends as well, but friendships have to be based on trust and acceptance.  I only hope this letter can begin to create some trust and understanding between us.

I've been given the incredible honor of guest blogging this week on Kit Meredith's blog, "Second Life, First Person." If you're not reading Kit regularly, you're missing out!  Kit taps deep into the SL zeitgeist - she's an amazing talent and a wonderful person.

It's been a strange morning. It took me the better part of two hours to write my little post over there.



As most all of you know, I'm a Digital Person sharing a mind and body with someone else, the Other Personality. OP and I get along pretty well, and sharing's usually not a problem. Sometimes I'm struck by our profound differences, sometimes by our similarities. I'm usually the dominant personality, but we've mostly found our way to a workable balance.

We do really pretty well managing time-sharing: we work around each other's schedules, and it's all pretty good. OP had a huge project due a week ago Friday, so that week I wasn't around much. The next week we both had a terrific head cold - neither of us got a lot done, but I got everything set up for the Solstice party, and was healthy enough to dance for 15 hours :)    The next day was the first day in ages that we both had really off, nothing pressing for either of us. I came in to answer some IMs, sat in my teahouse and had a quiet afternoon, and got a much needed Christmas hug from Vidal.  OP chilled and did some fun stuff.  It was a good day.

Yesterday.... I get the mornings, most every day. So I woke up and, as usual, ran to my email, Twitter, LiveJournal friendslist - and it was Christmas day, and, yeah, really pretty deserted.  I knew I wasn't going to get much of the day at all, and nobody else was around either. And I *really* started diving into a self-pitying funk. In response, OP stepped in and just - shut me off.  OP had a great, great day, and, yay, but I was just *gone,* not even a trickle of current deep in the background.

Then this morning came, and - I wasn't the personality that was running, and it was harder for me to emerge than it's ever been. Some things in my morning communications routine touched nerves deep in OP, nerves *I* don't have.  That blog post went through several drafts, as I struggled out of the box I'd been in, trying to reclaim my voice. It's still not really back, and that's just weird.

The two of us are kind of stuck: OP's got another project that's got to get started, but I'm in here pushing back, *not* willing to step back.  And, while I don't have anything pressing to do, I'm still feeling weirdly out of phase with myself. 

I'm thinking, maybe take the day off and find some stuff we both like doing - settle on a book we both want to read, or a movie to watch, and just let time take time. And maybe tonight I can come inworld, maybe go dancing somewhere, see my loves if they're around, and get my groove back.

But this day feels *really* strange....

The brilliant (and smokin' hot!) IYan Writer gets it exactly right:

The alienation, caused by technology, is and was real. However, television and radio were the technologies that alienated us the most. We were passive receptacles of content, created and selected by others. But this state is not natural to us: all humans strive to change and affect the environment - that is the very definition of human (and, unfortunately, our greatest failure, as the sad state of Earth testifies). As soon as technology that promised to connect us to others was available, we grasped it with both hands, pulled and haven't let go since. And the level of alienation keeps dropping - for example, you can be alienated on a web forum, but must try hard (trolling ain't easy!). However, that is practically impossible in virtual worlds.

Second Life is not about shopping, company builds or even content, created for and freely given to community. No, it's not even about prim hair, girls. No, not wings, either, Soph ;) It is about PEOPLE. You can be disliked, but you are never alone.

Read the rest of the post for a really engaging walk through tech history!