Triviality
Chessie and I were standing in the garden outside our Second Life house, deeply engrossed in putting the final touches to our new 'Jack In The Box' product (availability Q4/06, POA), when our new neighbour strolled over to say hello. As is normal in SL, we had been made aware of his arrival by the fact that an enormous three-storey house had appeared on our doorstep the day before, blocking out what had previously been a pleasant view from our front porch of green and rolling hills, fading away blurrily into the pixellated horizon.
We got out of the box, and exchanged the customary greetings. These initial formalities are more important in SL than in real life, since one has no a priori contextual clues as to a person's identity, role, or character. The avatar you are talking to might be a man, or a woman, or a child, or a pensioner, and might also come from anywhere in the world, there is no way of telling. Instead you have to rely on subtle clues, such as them saying "Que?" in response to your greeting, or immediately attacking you with an enormous particle emitter weapon.
Anyway, it turned out that this new neighbour was a grown-up, from the UK, and that what we had assumed to be his house was not actually a house, but instead an 'online presence' for his real-world marketing company. "We have all sorts of plans, but I can't tell you what they are" he informed us. "Essentially we are going to focus on relationship management consultancy and loyalty-scheme based cooperative branding initiatives".
This sort of thing is happening more and more in SL, now that the commercial world has started to wake up to the fact that they have a captive audience of a million people there, all of whom clearly have nothing better to do than mill about in search of things to buy. Hilton have an SL site where they prototype hotel lobby designs, watching how visiting avatars negotiate their way around in search of rooms, or dinner reservations, and one of the big US clothing stores has an SL outlet where people can dress up their avatars in the latest fashions, to see how they look, then order the real clothes from a web site. In fact, the SL economy is growing at such a rate that Reuters have now assigned a full-time journalist avatar just to wander about and report on it.
Anyway, having let us know that we were now going to be living in an industrial estate, our new neighbour asked what we were doing with the box. Sheepishly, we demonstrated how you could get into the box, and hide, then pop out in a scary way, waving your arms in the air, when someone opened the lid. After a short pause, during which he was presumably waiting for us to reveal the real purpose of the box, he eventually said "Oh, yes, very good. Haha."
"It's a very clever script Jigsaw has written to make it do that" said Chessie.
"Yes, yes, I'm sure it is" he agreed, politely. "OK, I must be off now, things to do."
We sat forlornly on our box and watched him fly away. "It really is an excellent box, people will love it" said Chessie, consolingly.
"Yes, it is." I agreed. I thought it was an excellent box as well, and would bring hours of pleasure and entertainment to those enlightened enough to purchase it. Plus I knew that it was professionally constructed, and that all its textures and animations and scripts were carefully and painstakingly put together, and attractive, and robust. I had no doubts about the quality of the box. What I was aware of, though, was how familiar this felt, this sudden glimpse of how things appear from the outside, which leaves you feeling strangely disquieted, and slightly foolish. It happens to me a lot, mostly, I think, because it never occurs to me to judge anything apart from on its own merits.
"It is because you are so self-confident, you just don't care what people think" says my sister. She is only partly right, I am sure that I am self-confident, but that doesn't automatically translate into not caring what people think. Everyone has a little picture of themselves that they try to show to the world, and we all like this picture to be as flattering as possible, within the constraints of believability. We do not like it when we are suddenly shown a snapshot of ourselves looking stupid, making Jack In The Boxes while other people are busy setting up global online distribution channels.
I suspect that the problem is more to do with my having too much confidence in other people, rather than in myself. I assume that because it is evident to me that our Jack In The Box is quite a clever and innovative application of synchronised rotations and animations, all wrapped up in a pleasing package, for the sole purpose of amusing people, then everyone else will see that too. It never occurs to me that someone might view it just as a 'trivial' thing to be doing, and consequently not worthy of serious attention.
To me, there is a natural sequence of accomplishment in life, whereby you start out incompetent, with no skills, then after a great deal of effort you become marginally competent, and are not quite such a complete waste of space. At this point it is perfectly natural to focus on doing Important things, since you are still not quite able to stand on your own two feet, and need a bit of backup and moral support when presenting yourself to the world. Eventually, though, you get to the stage of having enough competence, and enough experience under your belt, to be able to do as you please, without the danger of anyone suggesting that you are useless.
Well, that is how it should work, anyway. In practice, you just have to deal with being judged by appearances. As I found out, to my cost, a few months ago.
I was at dinner, with one of my aunts, and a few of her friends. We hadn't seen each other for ages, in fact the last time she heard of me I was probably still at college, so she was full of questions as to what I was doing now. Cheerfully, I told her I wasn't doing anything, since I had given up working. "Oh dear" she said. I explained that I had done this on purpose, rather than for health reasons, or due to having been sacked, which reassured her. "So what have you done with your time off then? Have you been travelling?"
"He has made a door" said my sister, helpfully.
"A door?" My aunt looked a bit confused.
"Yes, I have been scripting in this VR world, I wrote a script which you can use to make doors, and windows, basically anything that needs to rotate, or slide."
They all looked totally baffled by this. "In a what world, was that?"
I explained about Second Life, and gave them a short introduction to large-scale multi-user immersive 3D environments. They continued to look totally baffled.
"So this is a game?"
"Well, its not really a game, its more like being on the web, but with lots of other people there too, and you can see them, and talk to them. Plus you can make things there, and sell them."
"Sell them? For money?"
"Yes, there is a currency exchange, you can exchange SL money for real money. Lots of people have businesses there."
By this point, everyone had stopped eating their dinner, and were staring at me incredulously. I decided that possibly a more concrete example was needed.
"Clothes are very popular there, there are loads of clothes shops."
"Clothes?"
"Yes, you have an avatar, which is like a little 3D cartoon person, and you have to buy clothes to put on it. Clothes, and accessories, and shoes."
"Shoes?"
"Yes, in fact I was given a pair of shoes as a gift the other day." I tried to think of some way of conveying the sheer delight and novelty of SL existence. "I was confused at first, because there appeared to be three shoes in the box, instead of two. But it turned out one of them was a foot."
"A foot?"
"Yes, that's how it works there. To save having to make loads of shoes all in different sizes, they just make a foot to go with the shoe, then you put the foot on, so the shoes fit."
This explanation was greeted with total silence. My aunt was clearly trying to think of something to say, but nothing in her previous experience had prepared her to deal with this level of lunacy. Her friends were all gazing at me with mingled pity and concern.
"He really is quite involved with the technical side of things, he doesn't just play in it" said my mother crossly, making a valiant effort to retrieve my reputation from the garbage can where I had so carelessly deposited it.
"Right, of course, yes" said my aunt, still staring at me with her mouth open.
The conversation moved on to other topics, but later on that evening I overheard my aunt talking to my mother in the kitchen. "Jigsaw used to be such a clever boy, didn't he? Still, he sounds quite happy now."
We got out of the box, and exchanged the customary greetings. These initial formalities are more important in SL than in real life, since one has no a priori contextual clues as to a person's identity, role, or character. The avatar you are talking to might be a man, or a woman, or a child, or a pensioner, and might also come from anywhere in the world, there is no way of telling. Instead you have to rely on subtle clues, such as them saying "Que?" in response to your greeting, or immediately attacking you with an enormous particle emitter weapon.
Anyway, it turned out that this new neighbour was a grown-up, from the UK, and that what we had assumed to be his house was not actually a house, but instead an 'online presence' for his real-world marketing company. "We have all sorts of plans, but I can't tell you what they are" he informed us. "Essentially we are going to focus on relationship management consultancy and loyalty-scheme based cooperative branding initiatives".
This sort of thing is happening more and more in SL, now that the commercial world has started to wake up to the fact that they have a captive audience of a million people there, all of whom clearly have nothing better to do than mill about in search of things to buy. Hilton have an SL site where they prototype hotel lobby designs, watching how visiting avatars negotiate their way around in search of rooms, or dinner reservations, and one of the big US clothing stores has an SL outlet where people can dress up their avatars in the latest fashions, to see how they look, then order the real clothes from a web site. In fact, the SL economy is growing at such a rate that Reuters have now assigned a full-time journalist avatar just to wander about and report on it.
Anyway, having let us know that we were now going to be living in an industrial estate, our new neighbour asked what we were doing with the box. Sheepishly, we demonstrated how you could get into the box, and hide, then pop out in a scary way, waving your arms in the air, when someone opened the lid. After a short pause, during which he was presumably waiting for us to reveal the real purpose of the box, he eventually said "Oh, yes, very good. Haha."
"It's a very clever script Jigsaw has written to make it do that" said Chessie.
"Yes, yes, I'm sure it is" he agreed, politely. "OK, I must be off now, things to do."
We sat forlornly on our box and watched him fly away. "It really is an excellent box, people will love it" said Chessie, consolingly.
"Yes, it is." I agreed. I thought it was an excellent box as well, and would bring hours of pleasure and entertainment to those enlightened enough to purchase it. Plus I knew that it was professionally constructed, and that all its textures and animations and scripts were carefully and painstakingly put together, and attractive, and robust. I had no doubts about the quality of the box. What I was aware of, though, was how familiar this felt, this sudden glimpse of how things appear from the outside, which leaves you feeling strangely disquieted, and slightly foolish. It happens to me a lot, mostly, I think, because it never occurs to me to judge anything apart from on its own merits.
"It is because you are so self-confident, you just don't care what people think" says my sister. She is only partly right, I am sure that I am self-confident, but that doesn't automatically translate into not caring what people think. Everyone has a little picture of themselves that they try to show to the world, and we all like this picture to be as flattering as possible, within the constraints of believability. We do not like it when we are suddenly shown a snapshot of ourselves looking stupid, making Jack In The Boxes while other people are busy setting up global online distribution channels.
I suspect that the problem is more to do with my having too much confidence in other people, rather than in myself. I assume that because it is evident to me that our Jack In The Box is quite a clever and innovative application of synchronised rotations and animations, all wrapped up in a pleasing package, for the sole purpose of amusing people, then everyone else will see that too. It never occurs to me that someone might view it just as a 'trivial' thing to be doing, and consequently not worthy of serious attention.
To me, there is a natural sequence of accomplishment in life, whereby you start out incompetent, with no skills, then after a great deal of effort you become marginally competent, and are not quite such a complete waste of space. At this point it is perfectly natural to focus on doing Important things, since you are still not quite able to stand on your own two feet, and need a bit of backup and moral support when presenting yourself to the world. Eventually, though, you get to the stage of having enough competence, and enough experience under your belt, to be able to do as you please, without the danger of anyone suggesting that you are useless.
Well, that is how it should work, anyway. In practice, you just have to deal with being judged by appearances. As I found out, to my cost, a few months ago.
I was at dinner, with one of my aunts, and a few of her friends. We hadn't seen each other for ages, in fact the last time she heard of me I was probably still at college, so she was full of questions as to what I was doing now. Cheerfully, I told her I wasn't doing anything, since I had given up working. "Oh dear" she said. I explained that I had done this on purpose, rather than for health reasons, or due to having been sacked, which reassured her. "So what have you done with your time off then? Have you been travelling?"
"He has made a door" said my sister, helpfully.
"A door?" My aunt looked a bit confused.
"Yes, I have been scripting in this VR world, I wrote a script which you can use to make doors, and windows, basically anything that needs to rotate, or slide."
They all looked totally baffled by this. "In a what world, was that?"
I explained about Second Life, and gave them a short introduction to large-scale multi-user immersive 3D environments. They continued to look totally baffled.
"So this is a game?"
"Well, its not really a game, its more like being on the web, but with lots of other people there too, and you can see them, and talk to them. Plus you can make things there, and sell them."
"Sell them? For money?"
"Yes, there is a currency exchange, you can exchange SL money for real money. Lots of people have businesses there."
By this point, everyone had stopped eating their dinner, and were staring at me incredulously. I decided that possibly a more concrete example was needed.
"Clothes are very popular there, there are loads of clothes shops."
"Clothes?"
"Yes, you have an avatar, which is like a little 3D cartoon person, and you have to buy clothes to put on it. Clothes, and accessories, and shoes."
"Shoes?"
"Yes, in fact I was given a pair of shoes as a gift the other day." I tried to think of some way of conveying the sheer delight and novelty of SL existence. "I was confused at first, because there appeared to be three shoes in the box, instead of two. But it turned out one of them was a foot."
"A foot?"
"Yes, that's how it works there. To save having to make loads of shoes all in different sizes, they just make a foot to go with the shoe, then you put the foot on, so the shoes fit."
This explanation was greeted with total silence. My aunt was clearly trying to think of something to say, but nothing in her previous experience had prepared her to deal with this level of lunacy. Her friends were all gazing at me with mingled pity and concern.
"He really is quite involved with the technical side of things, he doesn't just play in it" said my mother crossly, making a valiant effort to retrieve my reputation from the garbage can where I had so carelessly deposited it.
"Right, of course, yes" said my aunt, still staring at me with her mouth open.
The conversation moved on to other topics, but later on that evening I overheard my aunt talking to my mother in the kitchen. "Jigsaw used to be such a clever boy, didn't he? Still, he sounds quite happy now."