Decoding Tomorrow:
Futurism and Foresights Today

Hi friends and blogsters,

Back on the sunny continent since a week. It has been a week filled with action and progress. I have dedicated this week to thought leadership, designing/planning and reading/reflecting. My newest ideas surround a program called Second Life - Your World. Your Imagination - a virtual world on the internet.

I will start off with thought leadership. This is an organisation run by one of Australia's premier presenters and keynote speakers, Matt Church, and is an innovative organisation, highly unique, and yet somewhat similar to ted.com, in my opinion. This summer's bootcamp was dedicated to thought leadership, recognising value on different conceptual levels, and how to be an innovative thought leader. There was some great content in this, and some great strategies useful in NLP, were demonstrated by speakers such as Peter Sheahan, Matt Church, Rick Otton, and David Penglase. An inspiring time for both me and Kimberly. We walked away with plenty of new insights and ideas for our monthly speaking forum, the details of which will be announced in the next few weeks.

The second major development in the last week has been the internet and the focus it is currently getting in the media. The trends that I am talking about refer to dual personalities and virtual realities.

While programs such as Second Life and Ebay are fantastic trendsetters and market leaders, I sometimes question the underlying demand for some of the products and services they offer. Take SL for example, a cutting-edge program by Linden Labs where avatars stroll around in a virtual world on the internet. It is free, anyone can play, yet it has become a multi-million dollar industry, with currently 2 million members. IBM and several other companies allegedly run company meetings in SL, the first SL real estate millionaire has just emerged, and people are spending countless dollars on improving their virtual characters. A new character strolling on a beach in SL seeking friends, may be met with a friendly 'F#$@ off!' if they are not deemed cool enough, prompting creative directors, lawyers, and hundreds of thousands of Gen Y:ers to spend up big on their 'self'-improvement. Jewellery, night club tickets, hair cuts, insurance, cars etc are items and services for which SL members pay real dollars, so as to improve themselves in the meritocracy that is SL. So far, so good - I believe in the free choice of individuals to make their own minds up as to what they want to spend their money on.

My concern is with how fulfilling a kick-ar@$ life in SL really can be for the individual sitting in front of the screen. I mean at the end of the day, they still have a real life, a real job, and a real setting to go back to. Knowing that you are 'someone' in a virtual reality among your faceless internet buddies, may not be satisfying when you are sitting in your rocking-chair at age 90 reflecting back on your real life.

I congratulate the founders of SL on their ability to create a setting where people can live out their dreams, because I believe in the virtue of creating spaces in which this can occur. It may also provide further richness and spice to the members' dreams, yet at the end of the day, when all comes around, wouldn't these people be better off trying to improve their real lives, by attending the gym, taking an evening course, following their passions, or going for that dream holiday?

While I am an avid supporter of multimedia as a communication tool that provides experiences for its recipients, in relation to the pursuit of happiness in a virtual world, I am not sure whether success in a parellel life provides sustainable fulfilment in real life. I am keeping an open-mind about this and I would love to hear your opinions about this!

On a related note, a Wollongong philosophy student has just sold his life on ebay. He received close to $ 8 K Australian for his life, and it seems that the bid came from the UK. Once again, my belief systems tells me - what would be so interesting about someone else's life that we would fork out this amount of money in order to take a crash course about this person's pick-up techniques, ex-girlfriend's, and skirmishes with philosophy lecturers? Or is it that the bidders are so unhappy with their own lives and once again want to step into a parallel universe where they can pretend to be someone else?

We have had reality tv shows, is the next era one for 'virtual reality tv shows'? I don't know, but I would love to hear back from those of you with an opinion on this. The mind works best like a para-chute, when its open, and I reserve my right to final opinion for another life, and another day. :)

Anders

Second Life Character: Amoz Wunderlich