Fears

The fear that has swooped in on leathery wings this morning is that Second Life, which is a place, a vision, a new paradigm, will sag into that most undesirable (to me) entity: an ordinary business. In a comment on Reuters someone said, "A more business minded CEO can only increase the monetary value of second life. In the past I feel sometimes the company was run by its heart not its head.”

Oh, right. I'm sure all the business-minded residents out there will be happy, but what they want, to me, has a million downsides and just one possible upside - if Linden Lab feels that their survival depends upon strengthening their business element. Of course, I can't know if that's what they need to do to survive, any more than I can say what will happen when the shoe drops and the new CEO marches in - nothing? making vast changes to put his stamp on things? - but certainly Philip has been a wonderful leader and it's natural that his movement unbalances things at least for a time.

Commerce, business, consuming, making money are mere aspects of what goes on inworld and those who are concentrated in those directions do not seem to understand or wish to allow room for aspects not wholly concerned with money.* Vision is unusual in the world, and those who value "head" over "heart" have 99% of the choice in places to go. I hope a nozzle isn't inserted into Second Life that silently sucks out all the uniqueness and vision, leaving a jaunty and economically sound but meaningless program.

* To clarify: stability, predictability, perpetuation of the status quo are what is desired by the people seeking a platform upon which to build a business (i.e. boring sameness the demand for which one may read in highpitched screeches in the Linden Lab blog comments going back a long way). Unpredictability, surprises, irregularities, experimentation, backtracking, bushwhacking, brainstorming, trial-and-error, blazing new trails - all desirable to me - are regarded as poisons by that faction.