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ZERO MAGAZINE, INC.
P.O. Box 7598
Fremont, CA 94537
TEL : 408-717-4125
FAX: 510-573-2641
www.zeromag.com

"Zero Magazine is we are now 16 years old and counting~!"

Columnist: Nick Veronin

Hey boys and girls! My name is Nick and I’ll be substituting for Mr. Foreman today. He is home with the flu. Now, I must warn you, I am well aware of your school’s policy concerning substitutes and I will not hesitate to send you straight to the office, should you give me any flak.

Do we have an understanding?

Good. With that said, today I will be using this forum much as Mr. Foreman has in months past: as an avenue through which to express my outrage in a one-sided and utterly inconsiderate diatribe pertaining to some facet of Web-based popular culture. Ready? Go!

This is a message to any of you crazy sandwich-board wielding maniacs out there spending your days warning passersby of their immanent doom. Stop wasting your time! We are currently living — even at this very moment — within the end times.

That’s right. I don’t know how we missed the four horsemen and the seven plagues, but they must have already come and gone, because the apocalypse is upon us. Perhaps St. John could have saved some parchment when he scrawled down his revelation all those years ago. In fact, it is my firm belief that two words would have sufficed: "Second Life."

And lo! It came to pass that in the year of our Lord, two-thousand and eight, the people no longer left their houses, but instead attended class, commuted to the office and even, um, ordered pizza (?) from the comfort of their richly upholstered, ergonomically sound desk chairs.

For those of you who are scratching your heads, let me make this abundantly clear.

There now exists a computer program (world?) accessible to those with Internet access, which connects the user with a synthetic universe, or "metaverse," of paved streets, storefronts and office spaces. By logging on to the server, the program’s users, called "residents," (shivers audibly) can interact with other users in the virtual world in nearly every way imaginable and can even sell each other virtual items (get this!) for real money.

This is the part where you say: "What the fuck?"

Yeah. It would seem that e-mail, AIM, Blackberry’s and social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are just not enough to satiate our photophobic populace. Soon we will become pasty white vampires, sucking up electricity instead of blood and living in complete isolation from the warmth of the sun. Where is Neo when you need him?

Now, if you will forgive yet another Biblical reference, I must say that there is certainly some wisdom to the axiom, "Let he who hath no sin cast the first stone." I check MySpace with fervor — often more than 10 times a day if I’m having trouble keeping myself occupied. However, I like to believe I would stop short of signing up for a virtual universe, where vicious Internet pimps can try to sell me fragments of light (virtual clothes for one’s virtual self are among the things for sale in the metaverse of Second Life). I like to think if my boredom edged near enough to this terrifying electronic precipice that I would be able to wrest myself free from its clutches and go for a bike ride or play hacky sack or something.

I mean, is this is the future? Whatever happened to George Jetson’s land of tomorrow? Strange though it may be, I find myself nostalgically pining for the future I was promised. Where is the future with flying cars and pills that turn into four-course meals with a drop of water — a future where people still drive — well, fly — to the office?

Proponents of Second Life argue that it opens the door for unprecedented global interconnectivity and the exchange of ideas. Indeed, positive results have been reported by businesses using the network to hold transcontinental meetings and universities doing the same with seminars.

But I remain skeptical.

Perhaps my skepticism is fueled by a genuine fear that this program brings us one step closer to merging with machines and stripping us of that which makes us human; or perhaps it due to my smug, childish and schoolyard-bully sensibilities: the name given to the virtual user vessels, "Avatar," sounds to me like a ridiculous amalgamation of some Magic: The Gathering-meets-J.R.R. Tolkien character.

Through heavily rubber-banded teeth with plenty of lispy tongue: "My Glissa Sunseeker takes your Mangara of Corondor with Wrath of God."

At any rate, you can all see exactly where I stand. What do you think about Second Life?