I'm not a technophobe, but I've always been a fairly late adopter of gizmos and gadgets. The kids in the year below me were the first at my school to do Computer Studies, and I think that explains a lot. I don't own an iPod or a BlackBerry; my parents had mobile phones before I did; and I've never quite seen the point of computer games. It was a long time before I could get my head round what the essential attraction of Second Life was, and even now I like to think of it as something akin to the time Roy of the Rovers joined the England football team, and met Trevor Francis and Malcolm MacDonald. Or maybe that bit in the 'Take On Me' video when Morten Harket drags his girlfriend through the cafe table. Am I close? Or even close to close?But I know that, eventually, I'll succumb to all these things. Which is a long-winded way of saying that I've finally switched over to the new Blogger, before they make me do it at the point of a bayonet. And, apart from the fact that half of the commenters on my previous posts seem to have disappeared into a morass of anonymity, it's about as underwhelming as waking up on New Year's Day, 2000. You're all meant to be living in robot-controlled bachelor pads and travelling by jetpack!
20 comments:
You think you're slow off the mark. I've only just worked out how to forward an email. So there.
When you do join up to second life just wear a bowler hat and carry a rolled up umbrella so we can recognise you.
word ver=upreea a liberation movement for flightless South American birds.
I remember remarking to my friend that the Jewish year is 5767. He replied, "Aren't the robots supposed to have taken over by now?"
one of us, one of us...
Realdoc '... so we can recognise you...'
Oh no, is everyone over in Second Life having a big party without me?
What's second life?
Isn't Second Life populated solely by national newspaper journalists, wandering around ineptly and interviewing each other for their next five-page weekend supplement exposé on how sad Second Life is?
Unless you write for the Telegraph, in which case you can get a five-page weekend supplement exposé out of watching your teenage offspring hang out in Habbo Hotel, without even so much as setting foot in a virtual world yourself.
I was perusing the comments in one of those over-exuberant PR 2.0 blogs the other day, where some PR guru had been holding forth about the incredible money-making opportunities afforded by SL.
'SL sucks,' said a commenter. 'World of Warcraft is so much better'.
'Yes, but we can't do business inside World of Warcraft,' said the PR guy.
'Exactly,' said the commenter.
PS Welcome to the dark side, Tim!
The Millennium Bug sounds a long time ago now! At the time Bloggs was a name applied to crusty old characters in comics.
And what's a robot controlled bachelor? Sir Cliff?
"My parents had mobile phones before I did".
That's quite extreme.
Second Life is for saddoes who can't get a first life.
Alan Yentob is in Second Life or rather he did it for that "isn't the internets fab" programme he did a while back.
I rest my case.
Now can someone explain Twitter to me?
Twitter is brilliant if you want to be continually woken in the night by text messages informing you that your US-based chum is thinking about having another coffee.
If the overall effect of Web 2.0 is to fragment the human attention span, then Twitter represents some kind of terrible milestone.
Also Murph: Dave Winer started writing Scripting News - generally believed to be the first blog - in 1997. Which means that blogging is ten years old this year!
Is it possible to play Second Life within Second Life? Whether or not you're Alan Yentob?
You're probably thinking of Get A Life Tim....for people who've got bored with Real Life. Afterlife is the one I want to know about.
I've read about 400 newspaper articles on Second Life and I still don't get it.
I do still listen to cassettes.
Annie: I am not *in* second life and don't intend to be.
Twitter seems completely superfluous.
That Aha video gave me nightmares, you could have cut yourself on those cheekbones.
Twitter surely is for people who think their (first) lives are potentially more interesting to other people than Second Life ever could be.
Maybe Twitter can transcend the divide between Lives 1.0 and 2.0. People in real life can post Twitter updates to people in Second Life, and vice versa.
Or maybe you can post updates that can be read by your own alter ego.
It's like the end of the second series of new Dr Who, with Rose's dad being alive, and Mickey being a freedom fighter and all that.
Ooh, it's my favourite topic!
>>Twitter surely is for people who think their (first) lives are potentially more interesting to other people than Second Life ever could be.<<
So quite unlike Blogger, then.
>>Or maybe you can post updates that can be read by your own alter ego.<<
Yes. All you need is two Twitter profiles, and then you can keep yourself constantly updated with what your alter ego is doing. Not that I would ever do anything like that. Ahem.
Patroclus: Is your use of reverse guillemets (>><<) instead of quotation marks a sign that you are in both a) a parallel universe that's the same as this one, but backwards, like Looking-Glass Land and b) France?
Good question. I thought it was a sort of web convention, but perhaps I am in Le Pays des Glaces.
I was certainly in the Mirror just before Christmas, mind you.
God, I'm witty.
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