Week 4 
So it's week four in Second Life and I'm headed to meet Arianna in the brand-spanking-new ivillage loft where the ever evolving "where women connect" website is hosting their first Girls Night Out. By the time I meet up with Arianna, she's had a complete virtual makeover. Unlke the first incarnation of her avatar - wearing too tight black leather pants and a cleavage revealing tank top - she looks as close to her first life self -- with a Second Life flair.
While working with the ever-talented designer Kasi Lewis at the Electric Sheep Company, Arianna told me she definitely wanted her avatar to represent what she looked like in real life -- so she sent over photographs, and they worked their digital magic. And if you take a look, pay special attention to her great hair.
While all this was going on, I wondered: Is it wrong that my avatar is a seven-foot tall blonde with gray eyes and a disaffected disposition when in real life I'm a brown-eyed brunette and, truth be told, not nearly seven feet tall? Hair and eyes aside, I started to tinker with my narrow, upturned nose, my impressive décolletage (what could it hurt to leave well enough alone? Did I really need to minimize the zing of my Second Life silhouette?), and the shape of my cheekbones and jaw line. In the end, from a safe distance, my avatar started to bear an eerie resemblance to me.
Our interview started at the iVillage Loft, where 60 avatars had gathered, and ended at my house with Second Life CEO Philip Linden (the avatar of SL founder and creator Philip Rosedale) and my Huffington Post editor Phoebe Wunderland (avatar of Romi Lassally), affectionately known to me as "boxhead," a term for Second Life newbies who, like myself and Phoebe, wind up with boxes attached to our heads and bodies because it seems impossible to figure out how to open them and removed newly purchased outfits, hair and furniture.
"Here comes Arianna!" said Phoebe excitedly at the iVillage Loft on Sheep Island. "But she's flying!"
Phoebe, who had been struggling with her hair, clothes and body in recent days, was sporting a hot new look (also courtesy of ElectricSheep) As soon as Arianna teleported into the iVillage Loft, the two of them stood together, just as they might in a real room full of real strangers. Second Life is funny that way. Even though it doesn't matter, really, if your avatar stands while you chat, somehow sitting is preferable. Virtual fires don't exude warmth, and yet I have a fire roaring in my living room for the cozy effect.
In real life, Arianna has been busy running The Huffington Post and promoting her new book, On Becoming Fearless, which refreshingly condones "an epidemic of fearlessness" to counter the intrepid challenges of modern life on an individual and collective basis. It was not surprising, then, when she asked me right away if "fearlessness plays a big role in Second Life."
Eureka Dejavu: Many people have issues in real life that prevent them from truly connecting with people. In Second Life they can thrive. This includes burn victims, people who have been disfigured in accidents and others with an array of debilitating conditions.
Arianna Hera: And here they can gain the confidence to act without fear in their first lives perhaps...
Eureka Dejavu: Second Life seems like cave paintings to me in a way, you don't start off with a Picasso
Arianna Hera: But the cave paintings today are still thought of as great art, in their own, unadulterated, raw way
Eureka Dejavu: in SL, avatars are limited only by their respective ability to express themselves creatively, which eliminates the prejudice that grows from perceptions of race, gender, age, etc. Second Life has deepened my perceptions of real life, and the ability of people to create their own realities, which is what you really talk about when you discuss fearlessness
Arianna Hera: It is really empowering. This is a time when fearlessness is essential to face so many challenging issues. It's interesting that people might be able to use this virtual world to tackle these questions that seem so foreboding in the real world
Eureka Dejavu: What are the most challenging issues you feel are facing society collectively?
Arianna Hera: I hate to say it, but fear, fear to act
Eureka Dejavu: And how can society act to overcome the conditioning of fear we've been forced to accept?
Arianna Hera: At least here, society is ours to shape ... it will be interesting to see how things develop...
The crowd at the loft was beginning to disperse so we teleported to my house, a cavernous place on the water with a small holiday tree covered in white lights, a stained glass wall panel of a tree with shimmering leaves, a knight's armor just like the one in my real-life living room and a scroll with a symbol that means "dream" hanging from the ceiling. The head architect at IBM, a pioneer in the new paradigm of virtual social systems, built it for me.
Arianna Hera: Very zen, I loooove your place. And your dress too, by the way, is fabulous.
My silvery dress moved when I did, and it was a complete change for me after weeks spent in cutoff shirts, tight jeans and a rose-colored corset and miniskirt. It was the kind of dress I would wear in real life. My posture was starting to improve to resemble that of my avatar and my avatar was evolving to mimic me.
Philip Linden - Mr. Second Life himself - dropped in, literally, through the ceiling.
Philip Linden: Hello!
Eureka Dejavu: We were discussing the ways in which SL can be used to tackle intrepid RL challenges. Care to weigh in?
Philip Linden: Well... lots to talk about. I guess one topic would be that SL provides a strong sense of presence...of being with someone else, but without a lot of the hesitancy to communicate that we so often feel in the real world.
Eureka Dejavu: Do you feel that way in the real world, Philip?
Philip Linden: Yes, I do. Though I am quite comfortable nowadays, given that I do lots of meeting and speaking, I am inherently introverted, and as a kid was fairly shy. So I am sensitive to this topic.
I told him about Arianna's concept of fearlessness, the idea that as peaceful warriors, people can go out and change the world by changing themselves and their respective reactions to external circumstance.
Arianna Hera: There is really great joy in being fearless
Philip Linden: Yep. SL rapidly seems to strip away some of the shallower bits of real life...
To prove his point, he played a beautiful piece of music on a flute that he'd brought in with him. Strangely, in that instant, the textured walls of the house seemed alive with the echoes of each note.
Phoebe Wunderland: Eureka and I have talked about feeling much freer and more confident in RL thanks to SL
Arianna Hera: Did you always have an idea that this kind of second world was possible?
Philip Linden: Yes Arianna, I did think, since I was a teenager. I was a creative kid who really liked to make stuff... electronics, computers, etc. And I also liked to show what I made to other people. So as computers became more powerful, I was struck by the thought that it would be so much easier...
Arianna Hera: It's so interesting how one's personal experiences shape one's professional life in the most unexpected way
Philip Linden: ...to make everything inside them. To just go inside.
Eureka Dejavu: It is impossible to divide work from life at a certain point, when you're doing what you love
Arianna Hera: that is a wonderful feeling
Philip Linden: I was deeply moved by some of the experiments in simulating very complex worlds within computers...things like fractals, and cellular automata. It seemed that with enough power, things would be more interesting in here than in outer space.
Eureka Dejavu: Things that, from a simple form, develop into a beautiful complexity
Philip Linden: Exactly!
Eureka Dejavu: A new paradigm is well underway here
Arianna Hera: Do you think that the same social constructs, the ones that we are escaping from, will eventually develop here?
Philip Linden: I think that the basic rules here are somewhat different than those in RL, and therefore that the constructs are likely to be different. For one thing there is less of an ability to hide things. SL is inherently more transparent.
Eureka Dejavu: How so?
Philip Linden: If you think about it, the power we have to move and fly, and change where we are looking...and to rapidly move around, and call out to friends with IM.
Arianna Hera: Really allows you to be free from a singular perspective
Philip Linden: That all means that we are more likely to see things that are going on here.
So SL is a bit less private. Which may of course be sometimes a frustration, but overall I think it is a huge positive thing. When we can see each other, we are less likely to hurt or hate each other, right?
Eureka Dejavu: We are cultivating greater empathy for the right of others to CREATE their lives
Arianna Hera: It's only my first time here, but it's like traveling to a new place ..there's such anonymity, you're not anyone's mother or friend, no one knows you, so I imagine you can really be yourself because you're not defined by anyone else's idea of you.
And yet...there we were, created deliberately to be an accurate reflection of reality, or at least some part of ourselves that we wanted to convey to one another. When I was alone in my house again, I decided to stay brunette and keep my brown eyes while I belly-danced my way across the vast expanse of my virtual home. The golden sun set on another Second Life encounter. Time, it turns out, passes the same way in parallel worlds.
Until next time...