I dropped in on a public conversation between the MacArthur Foundation‘s President Jonathan Fanton and Linden Labs‘s CEO Philip Rosedale, hosted by the USC Center on Public Diplomacy. I think the discussion mainly focused on MacArthur’s interest in virtual worlds, including their hope that these spaces would become vibrant, parallel civic spaces (Fanton gave examples of using SL to raise awareness of the need for the US to join the international criminal court, or to point the way to redo American education) — as part of a larger view that civil society is becoming more important than governments.
Unfortunately, I found the environment really distracting, there were so many attendees that we heavily overloaded the server. My program even crashed at one point. Of course, a discussion about virtual worlds should be held in one, and I applaud MacArthur for making that extra effort. While this illustrated how immature virtual worlds are, that immaturity also points to the tremendous opportunities that are now available to make an impact on a world still waiting to be born.
