A quick and interesting article about abandoned digital spaces like Second Life.
Removed from organic decaying processes, the only ruins in this world, including simulacrum of piles of dirt and construction vehicles, are ones that have been deliberately built and placed there by a designer. But despite its empty spaces, the world still feels full of possibility, perhaps specifically because it’s all still standing strong, so many years on. It’s not abandoned; it’s simply waiting.
In the real world, we can at least imagine that we are creating permanence; in the digital world, that pretense is impossible for a reasonably rational mind and possible only for the delusional. What always amazed me was that folks put so much faith in the meaning of those spaces– invested so much of their lives and energy into building virtual spaces whose effects are even more temporary than those structures that we build in the real world.
Kind of like blogging.