For anyone reading this blog, if you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend the movie Inception, starring Leonardo Decaprio. It's a film where the creators assume the audience is intelligent and requires the audience take a few points as givens--that high-powered business leaders have secrets that others are willing to do anything to get, that these corporations are willing to hire individuals, called 'extractors', who can invade your dreams and steal your secrets, and that these same high-powered business leaders will spend serious amounts of money to be trained in how to spot extractors and defend themselves in the dream world. For those of us who are Residents of Second Life, it also has some deeper meanings than I think it would for those who've never heard of our little garden spot in the Metaverse.
In the story, Decaprio is an extractor, but instead of being hired to steal an idea, he has actually been hired to plant one, and to do it so deeply in the mind of the person he must think of it as his own idea. To achieve this goal, extractors have to have a world created that is mutually shared in the dream world between the extractor, the extraction team, and their target. This creator is called an 'architect', and Leo's architect is a young college student named Ariadne. While she exceeds expectations in her initial tryout, she refuses to take part at first. But then she reconsiders and decides to join the team, because, as she says, "It's pure creation."
(as a quick note, I don't feel it's necessary to place a SPOILER ALERT!! warning, because this decision happens so early in the movie that if Ariadne had actually refused, Christopher Nolan would be looking at a sure-fire Oscar nominee for Best Live Action Short Film instead of a sure-fire Oscar nominee for Best Picture, not to mention Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor, etc., etc. etc. But I digress.)
Ariadne's statement to me is the very core of the reason I know I love Second Life. It is the very idea that anything is possible in our own minds, and we are limited only by our imagination. Never mind the very pesky and bothersome limits such as lag, prims, and tier fees, not to mention possessing the actual talent and ability to terraform and script and build. If you can dream it, you can make it.
Frankly, I'm in complete awe of any Resident in Second Life who can build and create places. I am not one of them. I may be the only SL Resident to flunk the basic building class. I couldn't even grasp the basic concept of building a snowman. So I am left to simply admire the creativity of others in that area. However, SL is full of other forms of creators--from musicians to sculptors to clothing designers, and it takes every bit the creativity to make a skirt using a water texture print as it is to create a waterfall using the same water texture. Some of us see a tree and make it, while some of us see the same tree and write a song about it. Some see the leaves on the tree and think the pattern would look good on a pair of shoes. Some of us buy the tree, and/or the shoes, and place it in our skybox, or tell our friends where they can buy such a cool pair of shoes to wear themselves.
Maybe that is what is the most mind-blowing concept to Second Life--that creation of a Metaverse comes through the very act of existence within it. Pure Creation, as Ariadne would say.
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