My blogpost for this Mix’n Match Game was about ‘Creator vs. Consumer‘ and appeared on Her Royal Princess Ivory’s Blog, whilst the topic suggested by me ‘The evolution of SLex‘ was blogged well by Teagan Blackthorne on Crap Mariner’s blog. ‘Non-profits’ in Second Life was suggested by Rik Riel from Rikomatic. On Tiessa’s blog, Cat Magellan is writing a first hand report on ‘Mixing RL and SL – The dynamics and pitfalls of living and playing in SL with your RL significant other’. And so the circle is round. ;)

Non-profits in Second Life

By Tiessa Montgolfier

Through the mix and match blogger challenge, I received the challenge of writing about non-profits and Second Life for Vint’s blog. A topic I know little about and about which my usual irreverent writing style is probably out of place. I contemplated writing about “The Home For Wayward Subs” or some other imaginary non-profit and making a cutesy, joking blog post, as is usual for me.

However, something compels me to be serious about this because non-profits are almost all designed to help people in some way or another. In my simple, black and white world, helping people is serious business and when this post is seen, I want people to be
educated about the subject, rather than entertained.

So, my own internal challenge is to educate about non-profits in SecondLife, a subject I know nothing about, on Vint’s blog, one of the more highly read SecondLife blogs, and say something profound that will move everyone to be more aware of non-profits in SecondLife. Yeah. No pressure.

Oh, and add in some photos. To Vint’s blog. Let that thought sink in for a moment. Double the pressure. Or triple.

Let’s begin, then, where all good stories begin… with me.

Okay, I couldn’t even do one sentence of serious. But all good articles or stories begin with a problem or a conflict and through the
course, bring the reader to a conclusion or a resolution.

Thus, let’s begin with me…

Because I am the problem.

I know nothing about non-profits in SecondLife and when I was thinking about what to write in this article - an interview, an overview of non-profts, or a whirlwind tour of resources for non-profits. All of those have been done, and done much better than I could ever hope to achieve. Just type “nonprofit second life” into Google and you will have links to everything you ever needed. Knowing one’s limitations is the first step in overcoming them.

Why do I know nearly nothing about non-profits in SecondLife? Have I been living under a rock? I’ve run into the Relay For Life signs and other worthy charities; I’ve even donated to a few in world. In Real Life, I volunteer for many things, donate to many causes, and participate in numerous activities involving charities. Why am I so divorced from that activity in SecondLife?

It goes back to the “education versus entertainment” dichotomy I mentioned earlier, I still see SecondLife as a place for
entertainment, a place to go, to be an alternate me, to have fun, but not a place that is actually a true part of my life. At least not how some people use it.

Let me tell you about a few of the people I’ve met in SecondLife and how they use it. Right next door to my plot of First Land was a very nice person, we talked, we had fun, it was all very neighborly. One evening we talked more about Real Life. I discovered she was in a wheel-chair in Real Life. It was like I hit a brick wall. She told me about walking, dancing, and just being. She was able to do things she was not able to do in Real Life, but even more importantly, she was free to be “normal”. She wasn’t seen as “that girl in a wheelchair.” A person to be helped or pitied; not an “other” at all. I won’t moralize about this, it is sufficient to know that it occurs.

One man I know is a “shut-in” in Real Life, he is nearly unable to travel outside of his home because of his illnesses and their
challenges. However, he plays in Second Life all the time. He too is free to just be himself, forget all of his problems, and have fun in a way he is unable to in Real Life.

Someone else I know is deaf, but in SecondLife, she can socialize completely normally with everyone else because of the chat interface.

There are many more like that, people I’ve met in world that I never knew had Real Life disabilities. Many more in my friend’s list are probably disabled as well and I don’t even know it.

THE WILDE COLLECTIVE ON CRIMES AND INJUSTICES - MORE THAN OUR SHARE
[”Written by all the members of wilde, but namelessly for their protection and greater transparency”]
most of us, if not all of us,
have had things stolen from us, because we were disabled
many of us, if not all of us,
have been slapped or abused physically, and several times
all of us have been verbally abused - a lot!
which hurts by the way!!
we’ve had our money taken from us
perhaps the greatest pain when our dignity has been taken, stolen.
our humanity, feelings, kicked around and abused control.
people take control.
they take control of our things, our decisions.
they force their will and preferences upon us.
no we cant buy that. no we cant eat that.
no we have to watch this. no i dont have time now.
no you cant go anywhere.
no you will be unable to move for awhile.
no…
- Wilde Cunningham, 05/12/2004

That was written by sufferers of cerebral palsy and found in the wonderful post, Second Life Is My WheelChair. I told you others say it much more eloquently than I.

At least one non-profit is dedicated to enable the disabled to enter Second Life.

All change begins with an intent followed by a single, simple action.

The challenge in the title of this blog-post has nothing to do with the challenge of writing this post, it has everything to do with the challenge I am about to give to everyone, not a simple meme where you list a few things people don’t know about you, but a real challenge…

Anyone can donate money, the real challenge is to donate time.

I want to see blog posts about how people volunteered their time to help others.

A very simple challenge and the action doesn’t need to be major, every little bit helps. If all you can do is donate and not provide time, do so, make a difference in someone’s life.

If you are looking for ideas, the picture shows the Path
Of Support on HealthInfo Island, where a large number of non-profit organizations have provided easy links and information about what they do. Talk a walk down it.

Maybe I didn’t educate very much in this blog post, maybe I didn’t entertain you much either, but I did one thing, I spoke from my heart.

Sabre & Mace, virtual death row

The service works as follows:

Having discovered the Sabre & Mace site on-line (the website had to be taken down after the show) or through one of the virtual adverts in Second Life, the prospective customer teleports to the company headquarters. There, the client meets a manager who explains the full process and guides him or her through the signing of two contacts. Contract 1 - states that at some point (completely random) in their second life the avatar will be collected by a Sabre & Mace officer and taken back to the headquarters for termination.

Contract 2 is in fact the client’s ‘Last will and Testament’ where he or she outlines how they wish their virtual moneys, land and assests to be distributed once they have been terminated. The client continues to live their second life until one day, a Sabre & Mace officer appears and informs them that the final proceedings are about to begin. The client is collected and taken to the Sabre & Mace HQ. The client meets again with the client manager, to discuss the final process. At this point the client reveals their ‘account password’, which is the means by which the avatar is terminated.

The client is led through the cryogenic chamber, where the virtual physical forms of past clients are stored. Upon arrival at the ‘Termination Room’, the client is instructed to walk through the ‘white noise’ door. Once he crosses the threshold of the door his Second Life game crashes, giving a Sabre & Mace member of staff time to change the clients password - effectively terminating the character.

The client’s former avatar is immortalised as a golden statue. Information about the avatar can be read on the plaque which sits on the monument. Should the client visit the Sabre & Mace memorial gardens he would see his own statue as well as the monuments of previous clients.

Would you have put your avatar up for ‘death row’, just for the sake of art? ;)

More ‘Game’ related content by Marc Owens

Virtual Transgender Suit

Also ‘inspired by Second Life’ is Marc Owens’ ‘Virtual Transgender Suit’. As a study by psychologists at Nottingham Trent University has found that 54 percent of all males and 68 percent of all females “gender swap”–or create online personas of their opposite sex, this became Marc Owens’ next project after the Avatar Machine listed below. A real life manifestation of that practice, the Virtual Transgender Suit replicates the aesthetics of the typical virtual female form and catapults them within a real world context. The piece was specifically designed for men to wear in the real world, creating a bridge between real (where cross-dressing is not really socially accepted) and virtual.

Translated: OMG! Look at that mesh! (S)he’s hot!

Avatar Machine

The virtual communities created by online games have provided us with a new medium for social interaction and communication. Avatar Machine is a system which replicates the aesthetics and visuals of third person gaming, allowing the user to view themselves as a virtual character in real space via a head mounted interface. The system potentially allows for a diminished sense of social responsibility, and could lead the user to demonstrate behaviors normally reserved for the gaming environment.

Translated: will we act just as silly as we do in virtual worlds, when we see ourselves as avatars, and through an ‘avatar perspective’?. I think not. Number 1 reason why not? Real life is damage enabled! ;)

More on this ‘Avatar Machine’ at We Make Money Not Art dot Com.
Marc Owens’ website is marcowens.co.uk
Also interesting is Mourning and digital culture.

Know of any more artists that create ‘real life’ works based on Second Life? (And no, the ‘texture missing’ tshirt does not count. We’ve seen that already enough.)

If Linden Lab were to run First Life

1. Healthcare would only be available to Premium Residents. Others will continue to keep filing support request to no avail.
2. Priority and government funding is given to the development of Augmented Life Cocoons, where as finding cures for existing diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis , … are left to the residents. If the cure is found, Linden Government make no hurry to dispense medicines or vaccinations.
3. Birth rates go up, which is proof of good government. Independent news sources report however, that lack of decent care causes more than 80% of the newborns to die during their first 24 hours.
4. Stress is not on climate changes or preserving natural resources but on trying to increase the maximum amount of humans earth can sustain at this moment in time.
5. Kids are separated from there parents at birth, to live on different continents until the age of 18. A communications & trade embargo with the ‘Teens Continent’ is kept in place.
6. First travellers arrived on Mars, sadly enough without supplies.
7. World®, Earth® and Global® became registered trademarks to Linden Lab®.
8. Life slows down to 10 to 30fps, according to your budget.
9. There is no more fear of rising sea levels, as Linden Lab officials can adjust that at will.
10. Your social network is limited to 25 groups.

Full size via Flickr

Segregation according to Encarta: The practice of keeping ethnic, racial, religious, or gender groups separate especially by enforcing the use of separate schools, transportation, housing, and other facilities, and usually discriminating against a minority group. Guess humans - or at least non-Second Life related contacts - are the suppressed minority here? Where as the SL residents can TP, the humans must make do with normal transportation? ;)

For those who just wondered where the hell I was, not blogging anything for almost a week, well, I’m in Londen. (For the American residents: London is a rather big city on an windy island close to Europe. About 20 hours of swimming, I assume.)

Surprisingly London is way better equiped for avatars: I brought my own poseballs, but this deemed to be unnessecary. At Rezzable HQ for instance, I just use Lokum’s pink poseball. Neat, no? It’s even programmed to take me up to the roof for smoking breaks once in a while. ;)

So, I’m safe, sound, on information OD, have met Shockwave Plasma and Rob Danton and of course RaR. And Second Life turns out to be even more fun, challenging and bigger than I ever could imagine. More later, from a Belgian PC with azerty keyboard and a crappy video card. =)

The adapted PlayMobil house is in fact part of an experimental platform to explore new ways to bridge the gap between virtual and real worlds. A range of sensors and gadgets inside the house allow it to be monitored and controlled through an exact digital replica inside the virtual world Second Life.

If the front door has been left open or a light left on in the doll’s house it will show in the virtual version. It works both ways, too. You can control the real house — for example by cranking up the thermostat — via its virtual doppelganger.

The point of this elaborate set-up is to demonstrate a new way to monitor and manage buildings from afar, says Goh, a business design executive for Swiss building management company Implenia. “We have created a virtual gateway that allows you to link real buildings to virtual worlds.”

I’m guessing that the virtual PlayMobil house is located on the Eolus sim, but not sure. Anybody knows where it’s at?

via The Guardian