Want A SECOND LIFE?

SECOND LIFE is more even relevant to those interested in Cinemorphics than The Sims (see earlier post). You can check out the SECOND LIFE website HERE .



A VIRTUAL LIFE

A journey into a place in cyberspace where thousands of people have imaginary lives. Some even make a good living. Big advertisers are taking notice

As I step onto the polished wood floor of the peaceful Chinese country house, a fountain gurgles softly and a light breeze stirs the scarlet curtain in a doorway. Clad in a stylish blue-and-purple dress, Anshe Chung waves me to a low seat at a table set with bowls of white rice and cups of green tea. I'm here to ask her about her booming land development business, which she has built from nothing two years ago to an operation of 17 people around the world today. As we chat, her story sounds like a classic tale of entrepreneurship
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Except I've left out one small detail: Chung's land, her beautifully appointed home, the steam rising from the teacups -- they don't exist. Or rather, they exist only as pixels dancing on the computer screens of people who inhabit the online virtual world called Second Life. Anshe Chung is an avatar, or onscreen graphic character, created by a Chinese-born language teacher living near Frankfurt, Germany. And the sitting room in which Chung and my avatar exchange text messages is just one scene in a vast online diorama operated by Second Life's creator, Linden Lab of San Francisco. Participants launch Second Life's software on their personal computers, log in, and then use their mice and keyboards to roam endless landscapes and cityscapes, chat with friends, create virtual homes on plots of imaginary land, and conduct real business.

To read the rest of the Robert D. Hof article click HERE .

Robert Anton Wilson's QUANTUM PSYCHOLOGY

I recently re-read Robert Anton Wilson's QUANTUM PSYCHOLOGY. Wow! If the subject matter of this blog interests you at all, at all you must acquaint yourself (or re-acquaint yourself) with R.A.W. and his world. You can check out the book HERE and check out R.A.W. himself HERE. I have included some comments and a brief overview below.



Philip K. Dick, author of Blade Runner
Wilson managed to reverse every mental polarity in me, as if I had been pulled through infinity. I was astonished and delighted.

Publishers Weekly
Erudite, witty and genuinely scary

Tom Robbins
Dazzlingthe most thrilling tilt-a-whirls and daring loop-o-planes on the midway of higher consciousness.



Sounds, London
The mans either a genius or Jesus.

Ray Tuckman, Broadcaster, KPFK Radio
With his humorous rapier, Wilson pokes and prods our misconceptions, prejudices and ignorance. A quantum banquet.

John Gribbin, physicist
Does for quantum mechanics what Durrell's Alexandria Quartet did for Relativity, but Wilson is funnier.

New Scientist
What great physicist hides behind the mask of Wilson?

Book Description
Throughout human history, thoughts, values and behaviors have been colored by language and the prevailing view of the universe. With the advent of Quantum Mechanics, relativity, non-Euclidean geometries, non-Aristotelian logic and General Semantics, the scientific view of the world has changed dramatically from just a few decades ago. Nonetheless, human thinking is still deeply rooted in the cosmology of the middle ages. Quantum Psychology is the book to change your way of perceiving yourself --- and the universe. The book for the 21st Century, complete with exercises. Picks up where Prometheus Rising left off. Some say it's materialistic, others call it scientific and still others insist it's mystical. It is all of these --- and none.

About the Author
Robert Anton Wilson is the coauthor (with the late Robert Shea), of the underground classic The Illuminatus! Trilogy which won the 1986 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award. His other writings include Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy, called "the most scientific of all science fiction novels" by New Scientist, and many nonfiction works of Futurist psychology and guerilla ontology. Wilson, who sees himself as a Futurist, author, and stand-up comic, regularly gives seminars at Esalan and other New Age centers. Wilson has made both a comedy record (Secrets of Power), and a punk rock record (The Chocolate Biscuit Conspiracy), and his play, Wilhelm Reich in Hell, has been performed throughout the world. His novel Illuminatus! was adapted as a 10-hour science fiction rock epic and performed under the patronage of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at Great Britain's National Theatre, where Wilson appeared in a special cameo role. He is also a former editor at Playboy magazine.