Matters of State

This day started with the Washington Post reporting (registration required) this incident in Second Life:

...protesters attacked the cyberspace headquarters of extremist French presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen... Protesters fought back with pig grenades, firing fat pink porkers that exploded in neon pink

Apparently all four major candidates in France's presidential election have offices in Second Life.   Mark Wallace also reports that the US State Department is vaguely considering a Second Life project.

Both of these stories, in their ways, harken to the ambitions behind USDS's Internet Freedom Task Force ( 1. , 2. ):  a vibrant global community best serves everyone.  If cyberspace is a useful medium to facilitate information freedom, power to it.  While on this tack I must mention the efforts of Joshua Fouts and Douglas Thomas and USC's Annenberg's Center for Public Diplomacy (e.g. ref here).

I'm not sure why game-y worlds don't seem as favored for organizing these sort of liasons as Second Life - sure, one needs to get beyond the game world misunderstandings and frictions.  Probably some of it has to do with the occasional developer missteps in segregating player groups.  Yet let's be optimistic.  Power - err pwn! - on everyone!

Comments

[BJ]

1.

> Apparently all four major candidates in France's
> presidential election have offices in Second Life.

I'd be more interested in meeting their Warcraft Personas. Being a young person, it's the only way they could win my respect. :-)

[Michael Chui]

2.

I'm not convinced I could possibly contribute anything more than a word that BJ's comment seems more important the OP. Suddenly, I feel old.

[Trevor F. Smith]

3.

> I'm not sure why game-y worlds don't seem as favored for organizing these sort of liasons as Second Life.

I might be going out on a limb, but perhaps government employees feel uncomfortable representing themselves professionally as Orcs?

[patrick]

4.

I wonder how Le Pen feels about alternative (furry?) lifestyles.

More seriously, we could ask a similar question to the one asked concerning the entry of Caldwell Banker. Do candidates participate in SL because they expect direct returns (votes/contributions) from SL or because of the signal it sends (I'm cool.)? One possible test is to see how much they campaign there-- Do they accept contributions in L$? Are there rallies, signs, etc? Do candidates spend more time/money on SL campaigns if a greater % of their citizens have SL accounts?

Looks like we need some data!

[Mikyo]

5.

Any readers from D.C? Is it true that the place is filling up with heavily armed 'civilian contractors?' Do the Neocons still plan to hold another election? Will that have to be delayed in order to protect us from, well, uhhh, whoever.

[nate_combs]

6.

Also, from earlier this year, the case of Sweden:

Sweden plans Second Life embassy