Social changes? Nah… just rambling
Sometimes, from time to time, i like to sit and think about anything. I would say i have some like a passion for analyzing almost anything, or to try to look back and see how everything changes.
Most of the times i keep my thoughts for myself, sometimes i share them with some friends and sometimes i write about them, like i’m doing now, so it seems this will be a rambling post…
Last October was my third rezday, three years in Second Life, wow, that seems a lot, and someway is. Lot of things changed, not only technically (i mean how SL works and all that), also the people, how people lives SL. Three years ago i saw Second Life as a world of fantasy, a world where anybody can be anything and do anything. Also saw it as a world of freedom and coexistence, with his issues, of course, but only small ones. And even always there were some conflicts, some “racism” (against furries, tinies, whatever…), most of the people was pretty open-minded. There was… how to say it?… some respect to others, some feeling we all were pioneers exploring different paths. I presume this feeling was even stronger in people really old in SL, i mean older than me. Maybe all that was that way, or maybe i was just too naive, who knows? Anyway, then the number of active residents was quite lower and the maximum number of residents in the grid at the same time was maybe 8000 or 10000.
With the time all this changed. More and more residents came, with different views about things and the social structure of Second Life changed. Someway the Second Life society became more “mainstream” and the “minorities” became real minorities since most of the new residents were “Augmentationists”. This is an old SL dilemma, “Augmentationists” vs “Inmersionists”. I’m sure most of you know what these words means, but well, in short, “Augmentationists” are the ones who feel and live Second Life as an extension of the “Flesh Life” (or Real Life, but well, both lifes, SL and FL are pretty real) and “Inmersionists” are the ones who consider Second Life a different world and life, isolated and individual, totally independent, with its own rules and existence. Personally i consider myself an “augmentationist” with some “inmersionist” streaks. This two definitions are pretty extreme and i think most of us are somewhere in the middle but they are interesting as definitions.
This process where Second Life became more “mainstream”, as i said before, reduced the presence (in relative terms) of “alternative” cultures-communities as Furries, possibly because they were not enough attractive for the new residents. Does this process damaged Second Life as a community? Well, i don’t think so, just made it slightly different. But made it better or worse? Ah! That’s the big question!
I think is not worse, but is not better either. I love some things of how Second Life society is now and i dislike some others, exactly as it happened always. I miss more diversity, but at the same time i think a lot of people are creating right now amazing stuff. I dislike that feeling of living in a eternal high school year with gossip and drama some blogs use as main topic, but we can consider it a Role Play that takes itself too seriously (OMG! Just found the connection between Gor and SCD! 
) and have fun with it.
OK… i know all this long text can be written in a few words: “I love Second Life as i loved it always, but i miss some more diversity and that feeling of being pioneers, but that feeling can’t come back since time passed and things changed. I miss also some respect to others.” So don’t get upset with me for making you lose some minutes reading 500 words of something that could be said in 40… i said in the beginning i was rambling. 
Augmentation or Immersion
Looking around the blogs and “wikis” related to Second Life I found an interesting page talking about Immersion and Augmentation, as philosophical concepts of our metaverse. And that made me thought… Am I an Immersionist or an Augmentationist? I’ll try to be as objective as i could.
This “philosophical issue” has existed in Second Life forever, since the early days, maybe is even part of the metaverse itself.
The definition of Immersion in that page is:
“… The immersion view is that SL is its own thing and should not be contaminated by anything from the outside. Many people in SL will bring up the metaverse. This term and a notion self contained internet worlds were introduced in Neal Stephenson’s Snowcrash. [Stephenson, 2002] Since the early these sci-fi worlds has been repeatedly mentioned as the inspiration for SL. Residents that subscribe to this belief often feel that SL should evolve at its own pace as we continue to gain a deeper understanding of how our metaverse should and could look. …”
Immersion vs. Augmentation by Henrik Bennetsen.
Immersion also means that your SL and RL identities are different sides of you and shouldn’t be mixed, this way you can be free to live your Second Life (quite an immersionist name) in a way you may not feel able to do in your first life, so this concept includes a role playing component. Immersionist residents don’t use the 1st Life tab in his profile, or use it in a way they don’t give information about his real life.
This concept defends also the “sanctity” of the metaverse, so any external influence (RL corporations, for example) or any change that could affect the resident “immersion” level (as Voice Chat) will be conceived as a potential aggression. The “government” (Linden Lab) will be asked to protect this sanctity. If is the “government” who is producing or facilitating that “aggressions” then the protest against Linden Lab will be big and hard through different channels (forums, blogs, Flickr, …). Immersionist are not against a market in SL, but prefer to keep it inside SL, residents creating objects and/or services and selling them directly to other residents, again, no external influence.
Augmentation considers we have to stop thinking SL and RL as different spaces. SL is just an extension of the real life, so is a part of it. Second Life is, for augmentationist, just an Internet application (maybe a future Web 3.0?). Something, not somewhere. A tool to work, interact, meet, and even create, but create as you can create a web page or a web 2.0 application. In this case the SL and RL persona are the same, openly. This option is specially followed by the “professionals” of Second Life, production companies as Electric Sheep Company and some particulars, when you are moving big money you need to know who are you dealing with. Also is usual to consider the avatar as a brand, in the sense is the representation and the image of a business.
Of course there are conflicts between this two positions, one is “idealistic”, the other is “realistic”, impossible to make them compatible at the same time. Even the Augmentation theory is more recent, it has been growing in the last years, and some new features of the platform, like Voice Chat, were something applauded by the Augmentationists and refused by the Immersionists.
OK… now, where i am? What is my position about this? After being for a while thinking about it, looking at the Linden ocean through the window of my bedroom i think i have a conclusion, or something like that: I’m almost an Immersionist, but that’s the point… “almost”.
In Second Life, in my blog, in Flickr, even in my business, I’m Raul Crimson, an SL persona, that’s all. Anyway Raul Crimson is so me as my RL “avatar”, so he is just myself. Anyway, with the people who I trust or feel comfortable I don’t need to hide my RL persona. Also i can use voice openly, anyway i don’t do it always because English is not my first language and is easier sometimes for me to communicate typing and reading than speaking and listening.
I think also i prefer the Immersion because the romanticism implied in it (…you may saaay i’m a dreamer….. but i’m not the only one… ), anyway i understand and even share sometimes the augmentationist ideas.
If there are place for both philosophies in me, then sure is place for both philosophies in our metaverse.
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