Fig Newtons of the Imagination,

I am guessing you have probably heard the saying; "There are three kinds of people; those that make things happen, those that watch things happen and those wonder what happened." I am thinking it is the third kind that don't last in Second Life. Obviously it is the first kind that is building SL and the second kind that is sustaining it. We are still learning about virtual worlds. Some learn faster than others. Some learn without words. Virtual worlds are only limited by technology and imagination. In the end it is just imagination that is the limiting factor in Virtual worlds. It is also imagination that solves the technology limits.

Looking at a problem with fresh eyes. Some of the things I learned working on Clemson University Graduate School weren't just about building. I learned about about perception as it relates to imagination. Simulat is a wonderful builder to work with he could do the math to make wonderful large shapes by piecing the parts together from smaller prims. At the same time he was going to give up on scluptie stairs because he couldn't figure out how to make them work in SL. A sculpltie object is larger than what you see. Which why all the pillars in Twilight are phantom. Stairs are just a big cube so they have to be phantom too. Walking up phantom stairs is challenging to say the least. The solution is to put an invisible but solid ramp inside them. I fixed his stairs in five seconds. We both looked at the same problems and saw different solutions. Sim found it amusing that he had overlooked such a simple solution. Second Life is both restricting and unlimited.

When I came to SL to build I was shocked by the limited tools I was given to build with. I had come from the 3D world of 3ds Max and Maya. It was like having used PhotoShop and then being limited to a 16 color paint program. It was exploring and seeing other peoples work that pulled my out of my own 16 color view of SL. I had to shed my RL views and found my SL brain. It was only then that I was able to see that possibilities were infinite. These restricted and unlimited paradoxes are not limited to building. They are repeated all through Ssecond Life. Relationships and Art are two others that come to mind.

At first glance SL relationships seem like Instant Messaging with graphics but over time bonds form our avatar's develop self consciousness. We extend ourselves to each other. We also find how unlimited and beautiful the world is as we make friends and partnerships from all over the world.

Art begins by mirroring two dimensional and 3 dimensional RL art. To those with imagination it eventually finds in own unlimited life. As it takes form in virtual worlds it can become n-dimensional immersion art. It doesn't take long to find the "real" limitations in all of Second Life but it is our imagination that takes us to the infinite possibilities. The ones that will shape the virtual worlds of our future are the ones that can see a "Fig Newton" when others only see "figments".