Chance Meetings

One of the amazing things about Second Life is that you never know who you might bump into or see. Peter and I had been invited to a celebration at the World Trade Center sim. They got a new firetruck. In real life, as part of my town's fire department, I have attended many such parties except we call them wet-downs because the tradition is to pour water on the new truck from the fire hoses. And yes, everything and everyone else gets totally wet too! Hard to do in SL though so they held a dance.

But, we couldn't seem to find the people so we wandered and accidentally found a magificient new addition to the sim ---a lovely recreation of the Statue of Liberty! To make things more interesting, the builder happened to be there. He said hello to us and invited us to see more of his work, which was a 1920's baseball stadium! It even had a baseball program! We were fascinated and talked at length with him. Turns out he wasn't American at all, but an Englishman from London. You never know where people will be from in SL, even those respectfully building the recreation of NYC in a post 9/11 world.

We have heard the term "global village." In SL I think we are. The US Congress recently held hearings about the benefits and potential pitfalls of virtual reality. While many educators, scientists and others testified about the positive aspects and applications of SL, the government was still leery of boogeymen misusing it for terroristic missions. They worried it would be a haven for child predators and yes, a sexual den of who knows what...and they have a right to be worried--but not to the end of virtual reality's positive contributions to education, science, medicine and learning!

Every medium has its potential for abuse. We've seen that happen with everything from the radio to tv to film to the internet. Science brought us the atom bomb as well as wonderful scientific breakthroughs in medicine. We shouldn't throw out the baby with the bath water! Instead, we need to monitor what people are doing to taint our good work on every front and lead others to the wonders of what can be explored.

There is a plethora of choices in every nook and cranny of the internet, tv, film, books etc...let's make wise choices to better humankind and inspire minds to think, love and learn today and always.