The issue here is that for the time being, so few individuals earn their life's income from product or services transacted in the virtual environment.

I suspect a small percentage of the approximately 100,000 regular, repeat users of the Second Life Grid are earning reportable income in this medium. When a critical mass of the residents of Second Life are generating revenue large enough to feed their family, a descriptor that affords the proper respect for this mode of employment will develop. Right now, the job listings in the newspapers do not have any distinct section devoted to real-income-from-virtual-office-work. When the need to articulate the distinction becomes paramount the terminology will become commonplace.

Well the top line of your article. says it all. " Written by Kim Smith (SL Rissa Maidstone)"

I have been online since before there were images available, and it seems the online community is constantly coming up with new acronyms and terms to describe things. I have noticed many are so they do not have to type as much. I remember when the word "newbie" was used to denote that the person in question was new and will most likely need help. Now today "noob" is a derogatory term used to denote a new person that will most likely be a menace to other community members.

So I think it is proper to refer to Real life as RL and the meta verse environment as SL or second life. I refer to it as "online" and Real life.

I do not agree that my use of these widely accepted terms is a scorn or say I think online is make believe. If you think to the future SL will simply become a bigger part of the internet.

Well said. I hadn't thought about the term "Terraverse". I think that's an excellent way to reference this. Thank you!

The SL business community is as varied as its' clientèle, and the reputation of each speaks for itself, those who invest their time, money and effort to create and run a successful business guard their reputations by working hard to ensure that their products are well made, their service impeccable, and their customers happy.

The customers, who are they?

My ongoing observation of the SL paradigm has shown me that there are many ways to see this world, and those who share a common perception of the virtual world can be be generally grouped in terms of their common understanding; there are "role players", who use their avatars as vehicles for the characters in the stories they create, there are "gamers" who come to SL expecting a game that can be "won", there are would be entrepreneurs who come looking for "easy money", expecting to profit from a world in which they invest little, and (of course) there are numerous variations on the ubiquitous (cyber) sex trade.

The vast majority refer to the physical world as "RL", in an abbreviated shorthand for "real life".

For me, and the rest of the small percentage who immerse themselves in the virtual world, type in complete sentences, and invest our avatars with our sense of self, the virtual world is merely an evolving part of the "real" world.


For the businesspeople of sl the issue raised is one which will continue to challenge us all; even the l337 txt0r whose fractured and fragmented sentences often defy decryption is a customer. We must accept their interpretation of that distinction and profit from our understanding of it.

If the businesspeople of SL wish to shift the thinking of the masses, the means is ready to hand; as our words expose our thinking, the words in common parlance also shape that thinking, and bowing to the prevailing linguistic evolutionary trend is a sure way to connect with the market... already, simple txt phrases have become quite common, even among the literate.. lol, roflmao, brb.... etc. (etc.= et cetera, an example of similar linguistic evolution now taken as quite commonplace even by those who rail about txt.)

As in all such cases, we must be the change we wish to see, if you would promote the reality of the virtual, use the common parlance, but change the "R" in "RL" to "P" and "PL" becomes "Physical Life".

The verbal distinction between "RL" (real life) and "PL" (Physical life) is an important one because the words we use expose our thinking, those who think that the virtual world is somehow less real will, no doubt, persist in using the term "RL" and continue to deride those of us who embrace the reality of the virtual even as we continue to build the framework of a global society.

I've always found it hard to muster angst over "RL vs. SL." There are only a couple groups who use the terms in mocking opposition:

1) Contrarian tech journalists, out-of-it curmudgeons and right-wing family-values bloggers of the lower sort. And you can shut them up, easily enough, by noting that: "If it's real enough for 9000 IBM employees and 2500 Cisco employees, it's real enough for me." (grin)

2) People with intellectual myopia -- generally the same kind who persist in believing idiocy like "you can't really be productive if you work at home."

These first two groups will be ground under the iron wheels of history, either by being co-opted or by "aging out." Which leaves:

3) The pragmatic-but-unsure, who really don't know what they themselves think, but who fear the opinions of others, loss of custom and credibility, etc., as a result of getting involved with virtual worlds.

This last group -- the majority, certainly -- is easy enough to win over. You bring them inworld. You make them feel safe. You introduce them to some grown-ups. You show them a nice event ... done. Thereafter, the trick is propagating this newfound conviction to their colleagues, bosses, etc., and getting their institutions to commit.

Aside from these troubled groups, however -- and aside from marginal types who, as suggested, are using SL for identity-play, aren't the terms 'RL' and 'SL' used mostly as shorthand to specify location? (e.g., "Is the meeting in RL or SL?") That seems pretty values-neutral.

Ironically, I think that as things progress, viewpoints will shift to where 'RL,' rather than the virtual alternative, is viewed as the limited-but-necessary state (and may ultimate take on the pejorative connotation). RL is where you go to cook dinner for your kids, check homework, fix things on your house, work out, sail, garden, visit relatives and vacation. It's very, very important. And you'd be nuts to let it become a wasteland. But it can't be compared with the infinite skein of luminous connections that subtend your power in the virtual world, which will ultimately be the domain of all commerce and most intellectual life.

Jet, You're actually opening up an opportunity for a new blog post that I'll write later today. I agree with everything you've said. World2Worlds, and prior to this company, UBM/CMP/Think Services, paid myself and the subcontractors we hired fair rates. We asked for bids and generally paid what was requested. We have very strong feelings about paying people for their time for all professional work. In any event, this is the start of a new blog post, more on this later this evening.

Thanks, Jet! "meatspace" is an interesting term, in my mind it conjures images of a avatar based gamer who sees quite clearly, that the self is not the body.

The "self" (IMHO) is the non corporeal id which animates the avatar, whether that avatar is composed of pixels or flesh.

"I" can die thousands of horrible deaths in battle as a pixel based "gamer", "I" can kill without guilt or remorse of any kind, and "I" can fly, teleport, build..... etc. in digital worlds.

Avatars are resilient in ways that flesh is not.

Recalling that "meat" and "flesh" are often synonymous, and the body may be seen as a flesh based avatar, "Meatspace" is a brilliant choice if one wishes to delineate the physical when referencing from the virtual, especially if one wishes to put a negative connotation on the reference.

John, over on your zzomg blog you pointed out how Google decided what ads to provide, and that it made you uncomfortable.

Seems you find that 'oppressive' somehow. Is that word, or perhaps 'dirigist', or 'procrustean', or even 'Hobbesean', more appropriate than the one you chose to use as an "ultimate" (what modesty!) analysis (really, a simple deprecation) of transhumanism? Or should we just call your experience evidence of Google's 'fascism'?

I'll spare you the overused Eric Blair / George Orwell quote; I like one from Inigo Montoya (in Princess Bride) better.

"I do not think [that word] means what you think it does."

I'm not blind to the shortcomings of many people who call themselves transhumanists. But I think using the f-word is sloppy polemics.

Let's aim for more precision: there are some illiberal people at home with calling themselves transhumanists. There are also illiberal currents at play in both Google and Wikipedia. Do we call all those "fascist"? If so, what is accomplished by that?