SecondLife RootsCamp: Real World Politics In A Virtual World.

Here I am checking out what the politicos are up to- I'd written that politics would be the next thing to hit SL in a big way, so here I am. This is all related to the recent 2006 Election in the United States, which affects me in a way as an American citizen (I'm dual citizen). I'd found out about RootsCamp not from anything in SecondLife, but through the blogosphere. It's - naturally - not a very geopolitically diverse group. US citizens only, something I briefly explained to a Brazilian newbie in Spanish via chat and IM, in the hope that she understood.

Still, the potential for meetings in SecondLife, regardless of what they are about, is interesting in the context of the real world. As a virtual world, SecondLife can allow people from geographically separated areas to communicate and meet a little more effectively than Web 2.0, and as far as I can see the only limitations right now are human.

I'm not big on political activism in it's present incarnations, so I hope that not too much of the 'gaming of systems' is brought into this forum - but I realize it can't be helped. It would be much nicer if people simply talked to each other. I suppose if one cannot communicate in the real world, maybe a virtual world is worth exploring. The event system in SecondLife has captured some traffic even as I write this (only one foreign national so far, which is noteworthy for quite a few reasons). It got more crowded after I took the picture. :-)

You can read about [t:RootsCamp]'s schedule for today here, and the report from Day 1 is here. Of course, that is all dated information - you should check out the Rootscamp Wiki if you are interested.

On a Caribbean note - this is probably something that member states of CARICOM and the greater Caribbean should be looking at - using the internet and virtual world to transcend the Caribbean Sea. But I don't think that the region is ready for it. And I don't think the region will be ready for the next 10 years.