Introduction
Second Life was a popular three dimensional chat room in the early 2000s, following in the footsteps of several programs and applications. What sets these chatrooms apart is the fact that they are fully modeled 3 dimensional spaces you can explore and interact with, much like in a first or third person video game. These environments are more often than not the creations of the users of the program themselves, often aided by tools created by the developers of the platform. Many of these areas, due to their technical limitations, as well as the varying artist skills of their users, often exhibit an alien, or surreal quality to them.
The creators of Second Life, Linden Labs envisioned, as the title of the program entails, that people would live two lives, one in real life, and one in Second Life. Businesses, relationships and educational endeavors were all things that were envisioned to, and still do to this day. Second life does indeed still have a very vibrant and colorful population, and the platform is far from abandoned. It is on the other hand not these areas that we are going to explore in this text, but rather we are going to use second life as a vehicle to explain creation, entropy and decay in the digital spaces.
Creation and destruction in digital spaces
The act of creation in a digital space as Second Life must by its very nature be an active act. Even if this creation is made by a program, or random algorithm is it something that needs to be started. What this means is that every single surface, regardless of how naturally created it seemed, is always willed into existence in one way or another. When it comes to the lands, the sea and the sky of Second Life is this created by Linden Labs, the self professed gods of the world. A topic worthy of its own essay, as well as the supposed roles of these gods.
Destruction is a more complicated topic to discuss. I will label destruction in two ways, intended and unintended. This distinction related to whether or not the program in question, here being Second Life, accommodated for this destruction to happen or not. In other words is intended destruction any form of deletion that happened in the similar way that creation happens, ultimately intentional and user created. Unintended destruction pertains to things not planned for by the program or its creator, such as glitches, power outages or hardware and software malfunctions. I would argue that the first category can be said to exist within the context of the digital world, while the second form pertains to destruction of the very world itself.
Degradation and entropy
The concept of degradation will here be defined as the slow and natural degradation of al mater and energy into its base components. everything breaks down, melts and crumbles, before it can be reformed into something else.
How can we tackle and quantify entropy and degradation in a world that, ideally never rots, breaks down or slows down. These examples would all fall under what I earlier described as external destruction. As we discussed before can these forces only enter the world of second life via external forces outside of the program itself. Outdated drives, invalid i.p addresses and the inevitable shutdown of a server. I would not argue that this is not to be seen as entropy in the world itself as the change of organic matter within an ecosystem or the reshaping of the planet itself. This would rather be a slow and inevitable degradation of the very framework of the world itself, the slow heat death of the universe.
Intentional destruction, as discussed before, pertains to the deletion or alteration of certain aspects of the worlds, either by the creators themselves, the creators of the program, or in some cases, by mellitus third parties such as hackers. These acts, are as the title implies, direct and intended acts of destruction, and can as a result not fall under our standard definition of entropy.
Abandoned lands
For a space to be considered abandoned in this text, must it still be available in the game world itself, but no longer in use by any of the original inhabitants or creators of the space. The space must also have fallen out of regular use and awareness of the population of Second Life in general. As long as these spaces are not actively removed, they will continue to exist in this state, in theory forever.
An area that has not been used, but not been deleted, will still exist within the world, unchanged, in status, until the server one day fails. While abandoned and left to their own devices, will their digital nature keep them from ever degrading or changing in any way, not unless any form of external or internal destruction occurs.
I have spent much time in these abandoned areas of second life in my travels of the program. It is an utterly serene, and horrifying notion to go through these still intact ruins, many of which will not be visited again for years, and will most likely never see use again. This state of affairs will however not last forever. As technology changes, code is rewritten, and new hardware is invented, these will become more and more out of sync with the rest of its reality. Visual objects will fail to load, links will break and, if care is not taken to renew these areas, will users eventually be unable to visit these areas altogether. And so, death comes to a digital land.
Reappropriation and renewal
Just as with the degradation and abandonment of an area, the appropriation and renewal of an area be made with even more of a direkt and active effort then any sort of real life area would need. Linden Labs as discussed earlier have the power to change, remove or regain control of any area or item in the game at any moment. This fact is not unique to Second life, and is indeed a basis to any website or internet product controlled by a single company. What sets Second life, and similar three dimensional chat rooms apart, is the visual aspects. Being able to control your character moving around a statue, and interact with it in real life, makes its disappearance, or replacement different, more tactile then if the same thing happened to say an image on a message board.
The size and scope of the current Second life servers makes it unlikely that many areas need to be removed, though lands on what is known as the mainland is regularly bought, sold and confiscated as it is, as Linden Labs put it “under their direct control”. Other lands are known as Estates, and are, in theory, under the direct control of whoever leases the land, though they are as well, truly under the control of Linden Labs, if they would choose to enact their powers. These estates will, just as land on the mainland, assuredly be taken back by Linden Labs if the users are found to be in breach of the companies terms of service. It is very likely that, due to the economic and popular demand of Second Life, that no region or item in under Linden Labs care will ever become so obsolete that it will become inaccessible, but this too, is also temporary in the grand scale of time.
Conclusions
It is very likely that, due to the economic and popular demand of Second Life, that no region or item in Linden Labs care will ever become so obsolete that it will become inaccessible, but even I have, in my short travels through the lands, found a fair share of unavailable modules, addresses that no longer exist, and textures replaced with error messages.
Second Life has reached its peak, and though their number of users seem stable, it is unlikely that it will make much of a resurgence in the future. So far the denizens of Second Life, and their worlds are safe from the slow breaking of their world, and if you stay within the populated areas, you would most likely not even notice it was happening.
But I implore you, if you ever visit Second Life, veer off the beaten paths, wander off into the never changing wilds, and behold the slow heat death of a universe with your own eyes.
Pictures taken from https://pixabay.com and used with their promition,
An Unused Frequency 