It's a whole new world!

I feel like I have entered a whole new world. Of course I could have just started a little blog and left it at that. But in my usual obsessive style I have to get in to the whole experience. I have my ads (just for fun) and now I have registered the blogs on other sites and am madly encouraging other keen writers and techno friends in to this virtual world as well.

It really reminds of me of the days when I was totally addicted to Geocities. Back in the 'old' days when it had just started up, I was one of the early members there and also had an ICQ number that was only four digits long!!! This was an important distinction in that community! I was a keen member of Bourban St (and visited a couple of others for fun) and the whole community that was set up there. I met so many people and got so many ideas about worlds outside my own because of those interactions. I still wonder sometimes about Playful Jack, Teddy, Horns, Misty, Dionysus, and others I have lost contact with. I also got seriously addicted to the experience and tried all sorts of new and wonderful experiences because of it ... and I feel like that is happening again with web logs.

The 'whole new world' feeling comes from the fact that it feels like an adventure (if you define adventure as taking part in something you aren't quite sure how it will turn out). It is unknown territory with its own set of languages and many different tracks and ways to experience the new world. It is as personal as your own experience, yet it allows you to communicate with others and learn from their experiences if you wish as well. As a community development practitioner and academic it appeals to the community building side of me. Yet I know people who don't embark in this virtual world have trouble imagining that.

That is the crux of it I think. Imagination. You need imagination to embark fully in the virtual world. A certain kind of imagination. The kind that supports you to explore a whole new brave world ... and throw yourself into it with all your preconceptions willingly suspended.