Second Life

To those of you who know me well, this will not come as a surprise. I even heard that some of you just waited on me to write a post about Second Life (SL) and my alter ego Erasmus Welles. So, here I am. I signed up shortly after Christmas, spent a few intensive days in this virtual universe before taking a long break. But now, with the article sent in, the exams graded and the snowstorm haunting Tornhem I felt like, this is the time to return.

For those of you unfamiliar with SL, here is the short story: SL is a computer game of sorts, using the internet you interact with people from all over the planet in a virtual universe. Unlike a normal computer game it has no plot, instead, like reality, it is what you make of it. This far I have met a lot of people in SL whom I would not have met in 1st life. These include a fairly large number of American librarians aged 53-70 who spend their days exploring the many libraries and genealogy research facilities. Like all Americans, they have already invited me to come and visit them in 1st life. Besides librarians I have met everything from Irish computer geeks to Swiss phd students studying the Swedish 13th century philosopher Boetius of Dacia. The only negative thing to say about SL is that it takes a lot of hardware to function smoothly, luckily my laptop is pretty new so it can handle most of the graphics. But just the thought of playing SL with a beamer on one of the white walls of Tornhem makes me rather excited... The future has arrived.