THOUGHT (aka Centric's Blog)

10. Your hair arrives after you do.
9. At least one attendee is naked or invisible.
8. You have to move the meeting to another location because they’re restarting the world.
7. You can hear yourself talking, but you can’t see your lips moving.
6. Your prospects, stone-faced, are unusually hard to read.
5. In the middle of a product demo, someone accidentally deletes the floor.
4. Someone loses an arm, and nobody thinks it’s odd.
3. There is at least one flying penis sighting.
2. There’s heated debate about the merits of prim ties and wings.
1. The meeting ends with beer guns, tear gas, and random jailings—and nobody thinks its unusual.

I don’t normally comment on recent news, but a new report on the state of the internet circa 2020 has come out. You can read it here: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/188/report_display.asp

In short, not a lot of surprises. More technology, virtual worlds, but us humans are still in control of the mess and no giant brain-eating aliens have shown up to take over the world. But sometimes I wonder what a “Future of Office Applications” would have looked like in 1988, or a “Future of the IBM Selectric” would have looked like in 1968.

The point being, it’s easy to miss the big changes.

Why do I mention this? Well, in my spare time, I’m a professional science fiction writer. I was a finalist for both the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award and the Sidewise Award for Alternate History last year, both of which have less than 12 finalists from all fiction published during the year. So maybe I have something going on there.

And recently, I’ve decided to refocus on realistic near-future fiction. The first piece in this new series, Monetized, is set in 2024. It’s the closest I think I can get to a true, honest depiction of what the world might be like then.

Here’s a taste (warning, bad language follows):

—

Monetized
By Jason Stoddard

My Saturday started with Antonio Moreno, screaming at me through my eyeset.

“Mike! Hey, Mike! Damn it, wake up! The money’s gone!” he yelled.

I groaned. I sat up. Full sun streamed through the grimy windows of my Silver Lake crackerbox, slashing the bedsheets white and hitting one absinthe-soaked retina like a billion photonic bullets. My other eye saw Antonio’s avatar, realistically wide-eyed and hyperventilating.

Nana mumbled and rolled over, taking the covers with her. Probably something about how stupid it was to sleep with your eyeset on. Or something about letting her sleep.

“Hold on,” I said. I made myself get out of bed. I stumbled into the hall and leaned against the wall, head down to stop the jackhammers.

“Come on, man! What’d you do with the money?” Antonio yelled.

“What money?”

“Whaddya mean, what money, you dicksmoker, if you’re tryin to say you never . . .”

Ah. Fragments of thought pierced alcohol-stunned neurons. The money I’d given him to start his WeRU franchise.

Mom’s money.

I eyeballed my account, and sure enough the money’d come back like a boomerang kid after college. It had a big red animated tag stuck to it: FAILED TRANSACTION STIPULATIONS. The happy bankbot started reading the fine print to me: The source of these funds, Ms. Mary Palmetto, has placed restrictions on their use, which include an implicit noncompete–

I eyeballed the MUTE icon. Antonio was still ranting about what real friends were and how you treated them and our time back at VirtUCLA.

“Antonio–”

Still ranting, this time about how much time and effort he’d put into getting his Attention Index up for franchise approval. I closed my eyes and waited for him to finish.

“Antonio, you screwed up. Broke the stipulations. I told you, you can’t do certain things–”

“I know, I know, but I did nothin!”

I finished reading through the bankbot’s note. It showed a transaction where Antonio’s WeRU franchise had thumbed a contract with a social propagation agency that was in direct competition with my mom’s. I shot a cap of it to Antonio’s eyeset. He stared at it for a moment, then his face screwed up in a big o-fuck expression.

“Kim,” he said.

Stuff clicked. Kim was his high-Attention Index talent, daughter of a last-of-the-real-moviestars mother and first-of-the-MySpace-rockstars father. She was so massively dumb she made you think that all those parties the celebs went to were really a secret breeding program, designed to make them stupid enough to sign any contract after a few generations.

The bankbot fed me video: Kim and some saleshunk from PropPotential, full of silicone muscle and painted in PermaTan. I shot it off to Antonio.

“Shit, shite, sorry man,” Antonio said. “Fuck, PropPo. No wonder your mom shat a toaster oven. I know you’re just tryin to help, but–”

“Kill the contract. I’ll send the money back. Then, for fuck’s sake, take Kim off anything having to do with money.”

Antonio nodded. “It’s done.”

You missed the chance to earn 10 goldendollars by referring your friend to Durian Bank, where your money works harder, MakeMoMoola whispered. This has been–

“Shut up!” I said. Fucking bot. I left it on because I liked to ignore it. But it was damn irritating sometimes.

“What?” Antonio said.

“MakeMoMoola, whispering helpful hints.”

Antonio laughed. “I swear, you must have the worst ME on the planet.”

Yeah, and Monetization Effectiveness times Attention Index is Your Total Value. I remembered the post-Big Dump vids. We’re saving the country, Mom said, when she got up in front of the bloggers and press and talked about the brilliant potential of being a vector in the new propagation economy.

—

Want to read the rest? Email me at jason.stoddard@centric.com or IM Fallon Winnfield in Second Life and I’ll be happy to provide a complete PDF.

Then you can let me know just how wrong I am.

The press coverage of Second Life has reached a fever pitch. You’ve probably heard about it. You’ve heard about the high-profile brands entering the world, and you may even have attended some of the big-name events.

And you’re probably wondering, “How do I get in on this, too?”

It’s a good question. Do you sit back, like the first web boom, and say, “Well, nobody’s making money in Second Life?” Oh, wait, there’s Anshe Chung and her million. And all those big names. Including your competitors. So that’s out.

Or do you go in, buy as many islands as your marketing budget will allow, and start building grandiose structures? Oh, but wait, a sim will only support so many people. And beyond the initial press conference (and possible griefing), will anyone bother to show up? Many corporate builds are virtual ghost towns, while the nightclubs on the mainland do brisk business. And will your employees really use this virtual world as a collaboration space, without deep training in the nuances of controlling avatars, parcel media streaming options, object permissions, and even kludging together voice communication? The possibilities are endless, but the learning curve is steep.

Well, here’s an idea about how you can discover the world, learn the nuances, and make a lot of friends in the process. We call it the Region Reserve program, and it automatically allies your brand name with worthy causes in Second Life.

One of the problems with Second Life is, well, almost anyone can do almost anything. Including putting up fields of ugly banner ads, leaving half-built junk lying around, and in general fragmenting the landscape. This isn’t just an aesthetic issue—adfields can also cause performance problems and region crashing. Needless to say, they are one of the most-hated features of Second Life.

So here’s the idea:

• Pick a region to sponsor
• Buy up the adfields and trash land and clean them up
• Describe the land with your corporate name and charter
• Explain what you’re doing with the land on a simple monument
• Build forests, parks, beaches and other areas of natural beauty
• Repeat for as many sims as you would like

For Second Life residents, this means a more beautiful, better-performing world. For your brand, it means broad exposure, both in Second Life and in real world PR.

“Wait a minute,” you’re saying. “Not a dang thing here has a logo on it. How does anyone know what we’re doing in Second Life?” Well, in Second Life, every piece of land and every object is tagged with the owner, a name, and a description. So if an adfield dissappears overnight and is replaced by a lush forest, residents will look at the land description to see something like:

• Name: BigBrand Second Life Region Reserve
• Description: Beautifying Second Life, see www.BigBrandSL.com or visit Region (134, 22)
• Owner: Avatar Name (link to complete profile)

Also, once you own a significant amount of land, you can donate parts of it to worthy in-world causes, further enhancing your profile in Second Life.

Most importantly, Region Reserve gives you a home base in Second Life that integrates seamlessly with the world, and allows you to learn its nuances. You’ll make a lot of friends–people who have been in-world two or three years–friends who not only know the ropes, but have the answers many people are still looking for.

Want to learn more about Region Reserve? Talk to us–IM Fallon Winnfield in-world, or contact us here via email or phone.