Technological Revolutions

I am a nube. In Second Life, I spend a good deal of time standing in one place awkwardly moving my mouse and clicking, desperately spinning my scroll wheel trying to get my view back centered on myself. Somehow, I’m looking down from the clouds, and then in the next instant I’m zoomed in to the side of a bank examining the wood grain of digital shiplap from an inch away. When I’m inside buildings and I try to look around at the audience, somehow I end up outside, stuck staring at the party through tinted windows. Everything’s dim as I watch the other figures gyrate and flex with their programmatic perfect, looping dance moves (someone’s got the Chicken Noodle Soup dance activated in their inventory!) I am the watcher on the outside, frustrated and ashamed as my avatar stands as still as Chief Bromden.