THE PRESENT DEATH OF HAMLET

So it suits to suspend my tenure as Hamlet Linden while standing on the cliffs of Shipley, because this is where, more or less, it all began some 30 months ago. I interviewed Catherine Omega in May of 2003, in her mansion along the Shipley shore below, and though I'd been writing New World Notes for a couple weeks by then, it's pretty much where I decided that Second Life would be the place I'd devote myself to. Because when I wondered why she had such a palatial house, Catherine Omega explained that she built it while homeless in real life, squatting in an abandoned apartment building. That story set the tone of New World Notes for me, and some of the main themes I wanted to follow from then on: Real world status versus Second Life identity, and the interaction between the two. Emerging standards of wealth, value, and creativity in an online world that begins to look more and more like the next generation of the Internet itself. And above all, always, cool, fascinating people, doing cool, fascinating stuff.

So I got some land and eventually had an office built for me, on the cliff right above her estate. Here is what it looked like in August of 2003. The guy with the cross is doing a jig because the three of us there had just crossed the entire continent of Second Life on foot-- a trip that took, in its entirety, like, three whole hours. When I repeated that stunt with a party of lunatics seven months later, it took nine hours. If you were to try it today, it would literally be impossible-- like Zeno's paradox with Achilles, you could never reach the end of Second Life's continent, because in the day or two it took you to make even half the trip, vast new swathes of land would have sprouted up in every direction.

Since then, Shipley's seashore, which used to stretch out into endless horizon, has become a tributary, as a Southern isthmus of the continent grew in a circular direction to replace the sea. And Catherine Omega has moved on to other, newer places in Second Life. But as it happens, after I made the announcement that I'd be leaving Linden Lab for now, she was also the first person in the world to fly over and greet me, and wish me well.

So this is where I'll leave Hamlet Linden for an indefinite time. Word of a new Hamlet-- and a new New World Notes-- posted here soon.

Meantime, be sure to take the new survey that'll help determine NWN's future.