I admit I'm experimenting. I've joined Facebook. I'm bobreb -- join me if you like and we can check this thing out...

In recent months I've been studying social "spaces". Because it's an aspect of my, for what it's worth, "creative" approach -- and I still owe part three of that story -- I've been comparing and contrasting fictional synthetic worlds (through fictional works such as the Culture novels of Iain M. Banks) with online synthetic worlds (ala WOW and Second Life), and the Internet interaction model as we currently know it.

I say part of my creative approach because interesting things happen when we make connections across disciplines. More interesting yet when we force our minds to keep  a hold on two or more apparently inconsistent concepts. The temptation is to label them inconsistent, and drop the whole thing. However, if you're persistent, sometimes your mind reconciles the differences. Sometimes the reconciliation is, well, interesting.

For instance, have you ever considered that the dominant Internet navigation paradigm might as well be Second Life-like? There is no reason to assume the impersonal document-search metaphor will continue in it's present form for ever and that so called synthetic worlds will be only "somewhere you go" on the net. Yes, I'm making intemperate statements again -- my apologies.

An expanse

Within a boundless space

Surrounded by a vastness