[Edit: URL deleted by siteowner; spam comment retained for humor value]

Thanks for stopping by.

I’m sure future historians looking at the later stages of the same millennium will also note the almost addict-like dependence of the “developed” world on that white substance that formed the basis of escapism for so many people: paper.

rr – every avatar created consumes the same amount of electricity as the average Brazilian
O.K., so my insinuations above were not completely out of line. That is pretty scary, though.

I empathize with your colleague. I like my belly the way it is! More than that, I’m turned off even by static, two-dimensional gravatars, and I find the emphasis on mugshots in sites like MySpace, Facebook and Blogspot hard to understand. I think it’s one example of how growing up without television and outside the pop culture matrix makes it hard for me to relate to other people my age and younger. My sense of identity has very little to do with the way I look.

I have come across Second Life in a work context. I know people who enjoy the liberation of constructing an alternative identity (“changing” sex, for example) but my feeling is that my first life is complicated enough and escape into an alternative reality is not the answer. However the point about blogs is interesting… they are, in a very real way, what I escape to, but feel “real”. An issue of trust I think.

A colleague was distressed to discover that he couldn’t have an avatar which looked like him – the representation was deeply cool with a sculpted six-pack. He found this profoundly discomforting :-)