Through the Looking Glass of the Past, We Are The Future
Communities like ours form out of opportunity. Specifically, they form due to the low cost of communication. In the age which we reenact, they wrote letters, they had balls, they had infrequent visits. Among the aristocracy there were legions of servants holding the whole thing aloft.
Today, most of us come from the pool of individuals who would have been those servants of gentry, our cheap labour comes in the form of dishwashers, robotic vacuum cleaners, impoverished child labourers overseas making shoes in workhouse conditions. In our virtual mansions and palaces and cottages we have autoreturn to serve as maids and devices when needed to serve as bouncers and henchmen.
Just as the British Empire waned in power post Victoria, still large, still relevant, but no longer the superpower, the world has been shaken again. Some of us have lost employment. Some I know have lost their homes. Even still, we still keep in touch even though the lines of communication are shaky, it's because the lines of communication are cheap, almost free.
Caledon has recently branched out to another virtual world, Blue Mars. This is nothing new or amazing. Caledon began branching out and subdividing years ago in the form of Nings, and mailing lists and forums, and the discovery that other Caledonians are within an hour's drive of your house or worth pursuing across the country or around the world for marriage.
Fear not a community splintering and shattering, as spread as we become, ironic, the more the opportunities to connect. Second Life is just a mode of sending a letter. It is a postage stamp. It is a letter carrier.
So scatter us across the internet and we will always find one another. Scatter us so our compatriots who have not yet found us may find us. Let there be dozens of meeting places, be they glory and colour and depth of dimension, be they lines of text on a screen, be they the feel and scent of a paper letter, be they meeting over tea.
Despite troubles and trials, at no time in history have we had the opportunities we have today to seek one another out, those of like minds. We will meet over tea. We will exchange letters. One way or another we will be together.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
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