Saturday, March 19, 2011

Failed Corporate Development Cuts Island in Half, on a full moon weekend

After a really long time, I found myself in Second Life Again

at first I thought the teleport took me to the wrong place
Could this really be the same lazy suburban island I left a few years ago?
And where was everybody? The place felf like the day after an invisible bomb

I guess this was not a regular bomb, it was just an explosion of development, 
it made me think of all the hype that surrounded Second Life a few years back.
Obviously it made invertors place their money here. I guess they lost it,
and most probably because they promoted Second Life as a "digital revolution",
and not as the niche geekfest it really is.
another failed capitalist expansion, that took everybody to nowhere.
I peeked at vacant spaces inside generic corporate salary-buildings

flew up to the sky, and decided to leave
I saw a bridge and another, uninhabited island, strangely cut in half. 
I assumed it was the graphics setting on my pc, 
and as I flew closer the rest of the island would come into view
but no, the island was indeed cut off.
The development ended abrupty at sea.
I examined the cut, it was clean
the topography sliced by the programmer who ran out of space on his server? 
Was this the real City of Bits? Cloud Computing Urbanisim?

hovering above the sea, 
I appreciated the new graphics settings, 
where the sea soflty glistens under the moonlight, 
as it would any other full moon weekend

4 comments:

John M said...

The only difference, however, between this and the real world, is that in the real world people /have/ to live in the messes created by architects and developers. We can't fly elsewhere or create a new world.

2Life was a niche geekfest, but so is architecture and so in fact is finance, but the only difference is that architects and financiers have the enshrined power to push their fetishes upon us.

John Manoochehri

Andreas Angelidakis said...

well yes and no. That city is all finance and no architecture, as are perhaps the places you are reffering to. Not all buildings are architecture. Architects can still escape to theory and criticism.

ivanmariavele said...

andreas this post is pure poetry. thank you for this amazing gift!

Andreas Angelidakis said...

:) grazie for reading