The other day—the trigger was a New York Times story about real money spent on virtual good (11/7/09)—Brigitte and I had a lots of fun and laughter talking about Second Life, a subscription based virtual reality program that, by happenstance, was not mentioned in the Times article. The Wikipedia article on this game is awesome. It runs to 25 pages in which the tone is dead seriousness throughout, and the article ends with (count them) 140 footnotes.
In the midst of our joking and laughter, a serious idea suddenly crossed our minds. Immediately we sobered. And now we’re eager to share it with the wider public in the hope of furthering World Peace.
It struck us that President Obama ought to acquire a major landmass in Second Life. Fortunately U.S. dollars are exchangeable for Linden dollars (issued by Linden Research, Inc., creator of Second Life). The costs would be (in contrast to expenditures on bailing out the Too-Big-To-Fails) peanuts. The land mass could be carefully configured to be identical to Afghanistan. Google-maps, in its Terrain incarnation, would undoubtedly gladly participate. Mr. Obama could then begin the process of creating Avatars for every inhabitant of Afghanistan and then, by setting the rules just right, offering exactly the right incentives—to be market-tested by a panel of U.S. citizens with names like Abdul and Mohammed, Nizan, and Maryam—begin a greatly speeded up virtual nation building process entirely funded by Linden dollars by means of which those avatars could purchase such invaluable virtual products for fun or profit as benefit the aim, rapidly learn the arts of business, consumption, western forms of entertainment, and even of pleasure in special Adult Caves set up for that purpose in Afghanistan Two. Once the virtual nation has been created and debugged to the President’s, the cabinet’s, and the Congress’ satisfaction, the expenditure of a few billion dollars more could then be deployed.
What for you ask? Well, for a geostationary satellite to beam Second Afghanistan down to the first one. The program would also involve parachute-aided airdrops of approximately 20 million modern Vista-equipped laptops by means of which the population could be induced to learn (and naturally to fall in love with) Second Life on Second Afghanistan. Since our grade and high schools and universities already use Second Life as a platform for that sacred task, Education, why can’t our President use it for the even more exalted task of Nation Building?
And the rest, blissfully, we could leave to the magical workings of the hidden hand of the Market.
Filed under: National Policy | Tagged: Afghanistan, Gaming, Obama, Second Life, Virtual Reality
Well, it is an idea. Now, you clearly know more about Second Life than I do. However, I suspect that the appeal of Second Life is greater for those whose First Life is safe, sound and secure. This leads me to believe that, as so much else we try in Afghanistan, the spread of Second Life may not go smoothly… either.
But you never know whece the next great idea will come, so… keep them coming!