Hello everyone. Here I am again, writing because I have had an interesting experience. I met someone who constructs natural habitats and nature preserves in Second Life.
Her avatar's name is Delia Lake. I met her in her cabin in the Albaycin Preserve, one of the habitats she works on. The habitat is based upon the geography of the Pais Vasco, the Basque Country of northern Spain. What she has done is "to compress the geography [in order to] get a feel for a representation of the Euskadi/Basque natural landscape". I have never visited the region, but I must say I am impressed with the work she has done.
There is so much to write about that I will break it up into several blog entries. I feel that if I compiled it all in this one entry you, dear reader, would be bored, and the beauty and innovation (at least from my perspective) of Delia's work would be diminished.
In this entry I will share with you what Delia shared with me about herself in our initial conversation. In her 'real' life Delia has been on the board of the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Boston for 10 years, on the board of Extras for Education for 15 years, and has co-authored the book The Sustainable Enterprise Fieldbook. In Second Life she is a member of the Green Island Avatars group.
When I asked what spurred her to take action in Second Life she explained how two-and-a-half years ago she heard mention of Second Life at a web technologies presentation. She decided to try Second Life for a week (her son does some game programming for fun and she thought she could better understand his interests by visiting Second Life) and "very quickly realized that Second Life is not a game but a medium for co-creation and innovation". She got involved in developing 6 water related microhabitats for the Center for Water Studies and is now constructing the Albaycin Preserve.
All her spaces in Second Life are public access. She explained that one of the primary reasons for her presence and work in Second Life is "to raise awareness of the beauty and fragility of our world".
Once again someone has worked to create something in Second Life that, hopefully, will impact the 'real' world in a constructive way. She has recognized the opportunity this innovative technology offers and has taken action. To what effect I sincerely cannot say. In fact I have been pondering to what extent Second Life can affect 'change' in the 'real' world, and for whom. But regardless of my ponderings, she is doing it.
All right. I am tired. I will write more, and include images of the preserve, another time. Until then I thank you once again for reading my blog. All comments are appreciated.
Sincerely,
Pluton Karas
hello Pluton,
ReplyDeletethank you very much for featuring Delia :-)
i had not known of her more recent projects, so your entry was very useful :-)
when you are free, i think you would enjoy visiting Etopia Island (i don't own the region, so i am not trying to promote it for myself :-) ). there are several projects there which i think would give you sufficient material for more blog entries :-)