So why am I all gunning to try to get this journal entry written and finished as soon as I can today? Why, because I've become the newest member of Second Life (SL), that's why! I was just writing quite a bit about them here yesterday, in fact, about how I recently saw a video from the founders at a tech talk at the Google campus about it all, making me realize for the first time just what the game is all about, and making me want to join even more than I wanted to before (and I already wanted to quite a bit before).

You'll need to read that original entry to see what I said about it all, because it's too long to reprint here; but the main point that I want to make about it is that one part of it is wrong - that you don't necessarily have to own land to be a member. In fact, I spent some time yesterday evening reading through the extensive documentation at their website, and realized in fact something really cool; that there are completely free versions of membership there as well, ones that you literally just sign up for and start playing. And even cooler, they don't require a credit card to prove who you are; you can do it through your cellphone's SMS if you want as well. And even cooler, it turns out that there are ways to even start making money as a free member, right from the first day, so that in theory you can move up to being a Premium member and landowner without spending a single cent of real money from the physical world. If you're interested, read on; and if not, maybe you'll just want to go to Nerve today or something.

I explained before how SL has its own currency, called Lindens (L$), and its own free-market economy. And this gives Lindens its own weight, its own security...hell, even its own stock market within SL, fueled by a dozen external websites actually buying and selling the currency, as well as a fluctuating exchange rate against real currency like dollars and euros. (Right now, for example, L$250 equals approximately US$1.) So everyone in SL has a bank account, of course; and even cooler, the creators actually endow you with a certain amount of free money, even if you're a free member, just as an enticement for playing. I mean, sure, it's only L$250, or a buck in real currency, but that's enough to let you buy some trinkets, pay the cover to a couple of live events, tip a virtual stripper, etc. And then even cooler than that, SL pays you a weekly stipend of L$50 as well (again, only 20 cents in the real world, so not worth joining for scam-artist reasons), just for playing one day that week, to encourage people to be regulars if nothing else.

So this is extremely cool, I think; that for my first month or two, I can simply be a homeless, wandering visitor, getting paid by SL merely to be there, very slowly getting the lay of the land, and an understanding of how things work. But then, see, this money is building up as I teach myself all I need to know about SL; not just from being a player, but from any additional jobs I want to pick up as well. Oh yes, in fact, there's an entire job market in SL, which is yet another fascinating thing about it all, and that gives SL so many weird-ass real-world similarities. And even weirder, turns out there's a whole variety of job classes for new players as well, some noble and some seamy, again just like the real world. Like, one of the things to understand about SL is that its creators reward those who construct positive, fun, popular social events, because that encourages people to be regular players; so if you throw a fun, popular one yourself, for example, Second Life's owners will actually pay you, albeit in Lindens. So how many of these people do it, apparently, is by throwing X-rated adult parties, that everyone wants to come to. And these parties need strippers and hookers, just like physical parties like this need (perfectly legal in Second Life; they run under a six-point ethical guide, in fact ["no violence," "no outing anyone's real name," etc], and then it's complete anarchy after that).

So that's an easy way to get a quick job as a newbie; become a stripper or hooker, or a bouncer for these parties, just like in the real world, just as much requiring you to be there on certain days and certain times of the day. Or you can be a street musician, this really cool option, which lets you marry a Shoutcast streaming audio feed to your avatar, so that a musician really can sit at home that evening, play their guitar in their apartment while logged on, and collect tips as other members listen on their own earphones, "conversing" via text within the game interface. (And this of course is another way to attract more people to your live events as well; streaming famous DJs, streaming famous speakers, etc.) Or, you can go to one of the many sandboxes around SL, spend all your time learning how to code, how to build objects in SL's proprietary yet open-source scripting language. Even the homeless have an infinitely large handbag, where they can hold as many things in at once as they want; that's one of the beauties of a virtual world, of course. So you can actually start building objects from the beginning as well, even as a free member, start carrying them around, selling them to stores and the like.

So, you know, I figure I'll just hang back and take it easy for six weeks or so; there's just so fucking much to learn about it, after all, if you want to become a professional, money-making person in it. And meanwhile, I'll have money coming in just from being an active player, and will get to start programming, and making objects (and more importantly, learning what objects people most want that don't yet exist), start exchanging virtual money and the like. And yet another beautiful thing about SL is that, the very first time you buy land, they sell it to you for this insanely cheap rate, again just to encourage you to become a Premium member. So you can get the smallest portion, 512 square meters, for L$512 (US$2...well, plus $10 a month just to be a Premium member, or $6 a month if you buy an entire year at once), but that's only the first time you ever buy land; and then for any additional land after that, you start paying an additional "land usage fee" per month as well (Lindens or dollars), to cover the extra load on that particular server. But anyway, my point is that I can literally just work my way in SL towards owning my first piece of land; wouldn't cost me any money in the real world at all, if I didn't want it to. (That is, you can actually convert Lindens into cash, if you have enough to make it worth it, actually transfer it to a Paypal account. That way I could literally even earn the money within SL to pay my $72 for the yearly Premium fee.)

That, I think, constitutes a small parcel of land in SL, enough for a largish yard and cool building. (I need to actually start playing to learn more, of course.) So that would be enough at that point for me to open a cafe within SL myself; one that I make with all the scripting I've learned by then, that's cool and minimalist and ready to attract a hipster crowd. Because let's make no mistake, there is already a hipster crowd on SL; about 3,000 people a night, almost all of them American and British, including the editors of MAKE magazine, Lawrence Lessig, indie-rock musicians and all kinds of other intriguing people. Well, fuck, this is what my arts center CCLaP all ultimately boils down to as well; here in the physical world of Chicago, we'll be holding a series of fun live social events. So why not at least look into the possibility of doing an online version as well? Then both would be making money, I could make them actually complement each other, but still have two very different things I could do with each. Build my cafe, just like the hundreds of others now in SL, but rely on those unique skills I know I have, to make it a buzzworthy place; my ability to convince cool people to do talks, to gather up interesting and sexy people around me, to find good artists who will provide entertainment, etc.

It's a bit difficult to wrap one's head around, I know, this idea that an entire complex, multi-tiered virtual world could exist within this series of servers, where just the same complex way of functioning in society exists as does in our real society. It kind of blows my mind, to tell you the truth, which is why I'm so excited about becoming a member and getting to play with it for the first time. So, I downloaded the Mac software, booted it up once to make sure it will work (it does), shut it down again, will be optimizing it later (according to the website tutorial), and trying it out hopefully this afternoon for the first time.

Oh...and, you can take photos as you travel too. So needless to say, I'll take lots of photos while I'm a tourist there, just like I do on real international trips, post them here and at my Flickr account, to illustrate all the stories that will undoubtedly be coming your way soon. Yes, I know I'm a dork!

Okay, a technical question for all you mashup artists out there...

A lot of you know already about this cutting-edge area of the CCLaP website (coming this May) called the "Sandbox," where we convince local artists to release maybe 1 out of every 10 or 15 pieces under a broad Creative Commons license, so that others can take it as source code and mash it up into another medium. So I was thinking of creating something I call an ARPI, a tongue-in-cheek play on API (Application Programming Interface), only in our case "Artist Programming Interface." Basically, it'd be a set of very basic standards by which we ask artists to compile this particular work for website downloads. Like, we would release a poem as a plain .txt file, so that it's as easy as possible for others to manipulate, in whatever program or way they're doing things. Spoken-word source files released with no music or background noise, MP3 format. You see what I'm saying.

What do you think of this? Would it make your job as a mashup artist easier? What kinds of standards would be useful for you? Drop me a line if you have some thoughts, or post it at your own blog and share your thoughts with your readers at the same time; just don't forget to either link back here or tag it 'jasonpettus,' so that I and my readers will see it too.