Dinner with the boys

One way to learn the cool stuff is to go to dinner with your homeys...ok, really your programmers. This is what I learned:

There is this thing called Second Life,"a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents." According to its website it is inhabited by 340,141 people from around the globe. People actually put up hard cash to "build" what they want and at some point sell it -- like thousands of dollars worth of property and digitally created possessions -- which they then some how sell on eBay (still unclear about this, but it seems their virtual currency, the linden dollar can somehow be exchanged for real currency).

The fact that people are shelling out a whole lot of money to live in an imaginary place, and buy imaginary things is blowing my mind. Apparently there was even a case of one avatar creating gangs to go rob the other virtual peeps...and when Second Life deleted their account they sued them...in the REAL WORLD. Confused? Yea, me too.

Second learned thing:
There are people who create a virtual airport in their living room and help fly in other virtual people...who are virtually flying planes. They go home and literally help others get to their "airport"...or go home and spend hours flying to...say..Denver.

Not sure where all this time comes from, but are you kidding? Sitting in your living room telling someone else that airstrip 2 is ready for landing....and not referring to porn? Don't follow. Are we that jaded by the real world that we need to create such elaborate fantasies?? And who in their right mind would WANT to be a traffic controller on their downtime!

Still nothing but love for the boys.