Well I think that the time has come for us to go into the real estate business in cyberspace. I want to build a place that’s accessible from the network, and let the hackers homestead there. Let’s see what they create. I want to do this as a real estate deal and get somebody to fund it on the grounds that they’ll just own a lot of the real estate there. And these hackers will make it valuable in exchange for getting some plots of land. I’m a believer that this ought to be done commercially. For a while you support the economy by hiring them to do useful things in the universe, like, touring people around, building the library, or some of the basic community facilities for accessing data and seeing what’s going on. But then you allow them to set up their own businesses of creating tools or creating personas, and so on. At first you’d probably have to have a few draws, like some entertainment. — (danny hillis, wired 2.01, january 1994)

i quoted the first sentence of that paragraph in the summer of 1995, when writing my phd thesis. today i did my first two real estate transactions in cyberspace!

since monday i’m the proud owner of two secondlife avatars, dr scofield (my IBM work avatar) and bit moody (my private avatar) (both look alike due to some unfortunate mishap during the incarnation of bit moody: the linux secondlife client is still labeled alpha …and crashed shortly after registration, somehow resulting in bit moody having rather quite a bit of facial hair and a black head — not quite fetching for a female character…i ended up just copying dr scofield over to bit moody).

so, today i decided to take the next step and buy some property — the idea being to hook up our photo gallery on our web site to a gallery in secondlife (eventually).

the first plot of land (a rocking 512qm of first land) was nicely located view-wise, but suffered somewhat from the drawback of having rather noisy german neighbors who apparently had had aspiration on the plot of land i had just bought but were too slow figuring out how this land buying business works (tough luck or pech!). to my immense surprise a lady called modesta heying from modland inc —

We specialize in providing unique lots to meet the needs of our special clientele. Whether it be lots on the edges of a volcanic crater, cliff-side lots overlooking the horizon, or special oasis within a garden, we will do our best to satisfy your purchase.

— contacted me and offered me almost ten times as much as i had paid for the plot of land in the first place! well, i accepted i guess she was buying on behalf of a client…

that, though, threw me back to square one: find a plot of land for my photo gallery. after some looking around i’ve found a nice plot on Rosyth (sorry, currently not open to the general public, access only after prior arrangement).

in addition to the photo gallery, i’ve got a couple of work related ideas (which i can’t disclose here at the moment) and as IBM is really going into secondlife big time, we might have a chance of actually pulling off a couple of them

exciting times ahead again!

excited.