Welcome to the Future

As I was logging on to Second Life today I decided that I wanted to go take a trip into the future – or whatever type of future those who design these second life worlds believe the future to be. While doing a search to find future lands, I didn’t see many good options. Most were marketplaces to buy futuristic or fantasy sci-fi themed clothes and hair. There were two places that were more destinations to explore and see what the future would be like, so I decided to go to the one that was more popular in hopes to talk to some interesting people who might have something interesting to say about these worlds. I decided to go to a place aptly named, “Future City.” When I arrived I was met with the tagline, “Future City – Together building a promising future” – a message which had classic sci-fi future state written all over it.

As I walked around the city to see what there was to do, it looked like a very fully imagined and well-done vision of the future. There were cars and what could be a road or a race-track, a mall to buy hair and clothes, an area to purchase real estate in the city, an ocean, something that I could only describe as a sky-island hovering over a dance floor called “Elektronic Club,” and an open space where different avatars just were hanging out and talking. 

Sunset Behind Sky Island

While there was nothing too strange about this universe to make it futuristic like aliens or robots, there were a lot of neon and bright colors, electronic patterns and edgy stiles that made me imagine a world that is not too far from our own today.

The Creator

I ended up finding someone who was hanging out near the center of the open area space and started talking to him. His name was Shab and it turned out that he was the creator of this entire area. He told me that it has been open and active for almost a year, and that he has been running and perfecting it since. Once I told him that I was interested in getting a glimpse into the future, he told me about all of the things that he has tried to do to make this a good representation of his vision for what the future will look like. 

Hovering Above the Dancefloor

He said that there are a lot of people who come to this city looking for the same things, and that when he talks to them, they usually compliment its “very fantastic design.” He had an air of overconfidence maybe, but he was very proud of his design, and having spent over two months and a lot of Second Life money on it, I think he has all the right to be proud of his creation that is so popular among Second Lifers.

While those visiting this area might not be identity tourists in the way that they are manipulating the vision of who they are in an explicit manner, as I did not see many people pretending to be from the future, there is a big aspect of tourism in this land. By being involved in something which you have little to no conception of what it is really like, one has to try to blend in while they are visiting Shab’s vision of the future, for it would be no fun if they stuck out like a sore thumb. Like Nakamura states about the virtual realm she visited, much like Second Life, it “represents a…phantasmatic imperial space…which supplies a stage upon which the ‘grand dream of a successful quest’ can be enacted.”

Sources:

Nakamura, Lisa. "Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on

the Internet." University of California, Irvine Department of Humanities. Web. 11 May 2011.