All for Love

For quite some time, I've noticed a smallness of character inside Philip Rosedale.  A flaw, if you will, in the great work.  This does not negate my past opinion that the man has real genius.  He does, but like all of us, he is at the mercy of the subconscious.  Each of us labors under the aspirations of who we hope to be and just as surely hampered in these aspirations by desires that work against them.

Rosedale wants so much to be an influential cultural pundit.  He sincerely wants to make the world a better place through technology.  But each time he creates, he plants a seed of destruction.  In Rosedale's case, he has a need to set opposing forces in motion.  Which doesn't have to be as catastrophic as it sounds, but Rosedale sets them up in such a way that there must be a victor.  And the more bloody the victory, the more legitimate the winner.  He presided over these blood battles at Linden Lab when he set up the policy of the JIRA(Malaby - Making Virtual Worlds - Ch 2, pg. 76)

The JIRA had a horrific effect on the company and employee spirit.  It encouraged the formation of employee gangs that would kill or vote up specific issues that these gangs favored.  Not only that, it completely marginalized departments that were not glamorous.  Frankly it was ridiculous that a department such as accounting should have to compete against the technology division in a JIRA policy war.  Did Rosedale even notice this deformation in the company character created by the JIRA?

Apparently not, because he then instituted the JIRA for residents as well.  So the warfare metastasized outside company walls into Second Life itself.  It pitted resident against resident and resident versus Linden Lab employee.  The gangs enlarged creating a cutthroat atmosphere that completely disenfranchised minority voices.  Simply because they did not have the numbers to combat the gangs.  Linden Lab employees so used to working the JIRA inequities in house, used the public JIRA to force their own interests or bury ones they did not favor.  Some residents who voted consistently against popularity were banned from the JIRA boards.

But none of this ruffled Rosedale's feathers because he was under the impression that, ultimately, crowds would vote for their best interests.

He is once again working on a project that uses psychological warfare, a company called Love Machine.  In essence it works on the JIRA type of spirit.  A company with the Lovemachine in place enables employees to send "love" to other employees.  These "love messages" (commendations) are then posted on computer screens around the office for all to see.  At the end of each quarter, management can then count how many love messages an employee received or did not receive and base promotions upon this horrific system.  It doesn't take even a dunderhead to realize the problems in this system.  The fact that it would once again inspire employees to form gangs in order to give a thumbs up to certain employees or lynch mob employees they would like to jettison.  What is even worse is that it doesn't factor in malfeasance from management that could skew the love results.  Just as it did with the JIRA at Linden Lab.  Like the JIRA, the Love Machine would and will create balkanized groups voting for their own interests, their own people.

Somewhere along the line, Philip Rosedale conceived the notion that he could change people psychologically for the better.  That through his technology he could institute cultural experiments that would inspire people to be more communal or selfless.  That he would be able to short circuit the motivation for individuals to be self serving.  But each time he attempts this grand experiment it blows up in his face.  I don't understand why he keeps banging his head against this particular wall.  It only leads me to believe that he enjoys the wars he causes and legitimizing the notion of might makes right.  Despite his genius, he doesn't recognize the fascistic motivations swimming deep down inside his own mind.  He uses these policies to convince himself that he is selfless in his love for his fellow man but works in such a way that is anything but selfless.  I don't believe that he respects people outside of the technology business.  Because if he did, he wouldn't have the need to change us.  The sooner he recognizes this fault in himself, the sooner he will create something truly groundbreaking.  Unless he truly enjoys being a Marquise de Merteuil, then all bets are off or more likely voting up love messages.