I can draw a strong case here for Second Life; sure, the popularity of people at tradeshows and conventions going, "Wouldn't it be cool to have a virtual Earth overlayed on top of the real one?" by means of access terminals, data nodes, and essentially going to the Eiffel Tower, putting on a special visor, and being able to see an info-rich display mapped to the actual structure, being able to tell you its rich cultural history without delving into a book. Now, as bountiful as it sounds, it leaves out some key pieces, and that irks me for (at least) two reasons: 1) I hope kids still learn to read books, because paper is good when electricity's down and 2) visions often get rutted into the same cul-de-sac and utterly don't explore the even more wild, ecclesiastical Signs & Wonders of it all.

There's a song by Delerium, "Euphoria (Firefly)" with the following lyrics:

This is our new congregation.

Some Residents often talk about greater export features, like being able to backup their creations onto their hard drive to ensure no content loss will harm them. That's wonderful, but what about assets that aren't so easily quantized? Or ones that are, and not considered enough? Think about good health and well-being. Think about Second life as positive, holistic healing.

If you're reading this and have never been to Second Life before—and moreso if that sounds outright jarring and farfetched—know that I'm writing it because I lived through it. Call me a guinea pig for this jaunt, as I continue to be.

When I started this journey at the beginning of September 2004, I had some theories I wanted to test. One of them being, I wanted to bring my very heavy personal baggage into Second Life, but not dump it on others. Rather, I wanted to use Second Life to convert the depression, the hate, the fear, and other negativity inside the "suitcases of my mind's eye" into triamonds—an imaginary material better than diamonds! (Some will draw parallels to "lumps of coal under pressure", but this goes further.) Triamonds represent success, positive energy flow, getting along well, the ability to fly (as avatars can do in SL), and more. I think luggage like that, no matter how heavy it is, "magically" doesn't feel so heavy when you're carrying it. I think, in large part, as with anything of value, it's because others will want to carry it too, and there's never enough to go around.

Of course, in the path of it all, I found it really difficult to visualize how much shinier these triamonds would be than diamonds, not to mention I didn't even know how to turn the Shiny option on during the first few weeks of my Second Life. So, what happened? What became the best way for me to convey this joy to others, visually?

Watermelons.