The inestimable Mitch Wagner reports on his recent interview with Philip, where they spoke on topics such as identity, anonymity, and compliance with the law. I love interviews like this because they get me thinking (as opposed to the simple stimulus/response behavior that I, as a single-celled organism, typically exhibit). In the spirit of this, then, I'd like to offer my thoughts on the printed exchange between Mitch and Philip.

"The ability to increase communication between people and so improve the world is what motivates us as. It's why we all come to work," says Philip. And yet, the best intercommunication comes either in the form of Forum debates, which typically take the form of a user's rant or screed, and then another user's response to that; or, the Town Hall Meetings, which amount to "Here's what we're doing. Questions?" and then a one question/one answer event occurs.

And on top of that, many residents feel that their concerns aren't being met or even acknowledged at all. This is very much a top-down system, where LL lets some knowledge drop, the residents get it, speculate wildly for a while, then in the absence of any firm confirm/denials, eventually give up and get on with their lives, hoping for better times.

"Our mission is to get this technology to everyone in the world as fast as we can, and we'll make sacrifices in marginal revenue to maximize that goal. We don't want to limit anyone's access to Second Life."

Well, sure, this was made evident once they opened SL up to free accounts. They reached 6 million plus accounts, but how many of those stay? Very little. Is it enough to get the tech out to everyone in its current, slightly broken form? Perhaps LL should take a cue from Blizzard, the company that makes World of Warcraft: release nothing until it's done, regardless of how long it may take, or how much pressure you feel the fans are putting on you. Blizzard is, without a doubt, one of the most envied, beloved, and successful game companies in the world -- and its active userbase is vastly greater than SL's. They take the time to get their products right the first time, their UI is pretty easy to understand, and in the months and months that I've been playing it, I haven't once experienced a single crash or enforced downtime after an update has been released.

"I'm learning more about you than if I was meeting you in the InformationWeek offices," Philip tells Mitch. Well, great, but so what? Does the fact that I like to play as a werewolf tell you something about me, something substantial? Does it affect your attitude toward me? It shouldn't; very few people are wholly the character they play. We are all complex individuals. All my appearance should tell you is that right at that moment, I'm being a werewolf, and not necessarily even roleplaying a werewolf. What about when I change into a human form? Or a tiny dinosaur? How many personality mappings can you juggle in determining what a person's like? Shouldn't you go more by what they say and do? Does the fact that Philip's avatar sports a jaunty, multicolored codpiece tell me anything about Philip? Mightn't I be wrong regardless?

From the article: Would Linden Lab cooperate with an official directive from, for example, China, ordering the company to turn over information on residents who'd used Second Life for dissident action? "Honestly, I don't have an answer to that ... We would have to balance growing Second Life to have the broadest access to people around the world, against preserving those freedoms in a way that maximized the value of the whole community."

Kind of a vague answer that doesn't really answer the question. I appreciate the complexity of the question, but given that LL is complying with the German authorities on what's considered illegal activity in Germany, I'd think the obvious answer here is that, yes, LL would turn over any resident guilty of activity that's considered illegal in China, end of story. Whether or not dissidence is illegal in China is, of course, another consideration; I'm not up on international politics enough to answer that question.

"That's why we have Linden Dollars," he said. You could pay people in real currency now, but paying in Linden Dollars is more efficient. "You have to analyze the efficiency of systems, the system with greater efficiency will always win."

I don't know how to respond to this, as my understanding of economics is sketchy at best. How is it more efficient to have a system in which RL currency (regardless of culture) must be translated into a fictional currency, with its own rate of exchange that we can only assume holds a one-to-one value, and then re-translated back out to the original currency? Isn't adding steps like this a needlessly complicating system? It's one thing to send American dollars to someone in the UK, where the rate of exchange is based on the RL economy and is a known factor. How do I know that I'm getting actual value for my money in Lindens? And what are these other systems of efficiency against which (presumably) the LL economy is 'winning'?

I'm glad we have Philip at the helm, as he's definitely a visionary thinker, and we need evangelists like that to promote SL, but I have to say that listening to him speak is at the same time inspiring and befuddling. He's really good at speaking in utopian terms, but that comes at the price of potential misunderstanding and the added benefit (for him, anyway) of being able to return to previous statements to say "Well, sorry you misunderstood; this is what I really meant".

Thank you for reading this; as always this is just my opinion, and your mileage may vary. I welcome your comments and thoughts.