Bought my first house in Second Life today. Bought my first bit of land too. For the past year of using this avatar, I’ve been reluctant to invest in static property because I’ve had no good reason to foot the monthly fees associated with land use.

There is also a sense of freedom I associate with being itinerant and untethered. Second Life, and most online worlds, invoke a sense of being at home in oneself. You don’t require shelter or food, your posessions are stored in a magic bag and only come out when needed. You leave no trace in your passing.

However, owning land is a prerequisite for leaving static objects behind when you leave the world. One of my goals in the metaverse paradigm is establishing persistent and useful tools for presenting data. Not so much that I’ll be looking to dump megabytes of raw data into SL for processing – which is probably not practical or possible or considerate anyway – but taking multiple discrete data sources and establishing spatial or familiar objective references within the 3D realm. The goal is to employ parts of the brain which are instinctively suited for filtering information before it reaches the conciousness and thereby making us more aware of event data without consuming thought cycles needlessly.

I met a gentleman last Friday who was already doing much of this, and certainly inspired me to consider the possibilities further. As I’ve said before, it is really good to be able to talk to people about these topics on a peer level.

So I bought a cheap cottage that fit my little 1024 square meter plot. I felt it was better to have a place to sit down that was enclosed rather than just plopping myself down on the grass and looking as though I was meditating in an empty field.

Home is where the persistent prims are. :)