For those unfamiliar with Second Life and the original SL Integral project, you can read up on the original thread here
http://multiplex.integralinstitute.org/Public/cs/forums/thread/7463.aspx.Integral Island, and the whole SL-Integral project has definitely been on a low simmer lately (okay, tepid [
]). Our lease on the Better World Island sim has expired, and we have been offered a place on In Kenzo's new sim. For those of you who don't know In, she is the mastermind behind such projects as Camp Darfur and ManorMeta.
I've decided to take her up on the offer, and consider this to be an opportunity to re-imagine the project. A central idea in the previous efort was to create a series of notecard stations and 3-D graphical explanations of Integral theory. Unfortunately, no one really felt either motivated/inclined or comfortable doing this - including me. I wrote a half dozen notecards - and then my effort fizzled. The medium requires a level of brevity that is crippling to any attempt at explaining Integral theory. Doing so with any efficacy would require that I write a book - others have already done so, and much better than I could.
I think that we should focus on the strengths of SL, rather than try to do what is already done competently with books and the web. There are two particular areas I have in mind, which were part of the original idea for the SL project.
The first, and perhaps most obvious, is the ability to chat with others, "avatar to avatar." While you can chat through a website, those of you who have used the SL chat function know how superior it is. Emoticons are pale comparisons to avatars for enhancing communication - although both pale in comparison to face to face communication. To give the uninitiated an idea, imagine if, when you open up a website, you were automatically in a chat channel with everyone else on that website? I know websites that have chat functions, but they always seem to be glommed on as an after-thought, and rarely used. And in SL, there can be no lurking. If you are there, everyone knows it.
So, obviously, a piece of virtual real estate devoted to integral ideas would provide us all with a meeting place or touchstone - a sort of portal between SL, the web, and RL. This was pursued with some success, as evidenced by the 16 persons who have joined our SL group, as well as those who haven't with whom some of us have formed new friendships.
This leads into the second area of focus, an area whose surface was barely scratched. SL allows for the placement of web links in objects, so that when "touched" by an avatar, the option to go to a web page appears. If accepted, the users' preferred browser launches and opens the page (SL is planning an integrated browser sometime in the next year). SL has its' own equivalent of web links - the "teleport." Teleports allow an avatar to move instantly from one area of SL to another, thus functioning like hyperlinks. The primary difference is that you can only be in one place at once in SL (currently).
I would like to create a collection of web links and teleports for our SL space, organized by altitude and quadrant. I am looking for exemplars - the very purest and best expressions of specific cosmic addresses. Obviously, every place on the web and every place in SL is coming from at least one cosmic address - so we have to winnow it down to the best, the most interesting, or even the most pathological (keeping a balance is key, of course, so as not to misrepresent the healthy versions of cosmic addresses).
Holons will provide an obvious source of web links - but the more suggestions the better. I will be depending on my fellow SL Aqalistas to help track down good teleports. I see the collection itself as changing over time, particularly in regards to the lower altitudes, as there is naturally going to be a larger selection to move through.
reply here, or on the sister threads on Integral Naked and zaadz, or contact me in SL.
Big smiles spiraling out into the interstellar void of rapidly emerging socially augmenting technology,
Enkidu Fanwood
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