Planning
At some point in the evolution of society, the way the land is developed started to get out of control. Cities grew outwards at an increasingly rapid rate, as developers became attracted to out-of-city sites which had more land available at cheaper prices than the “Brownfield” sites.. run down industrial estates inside the congested cities.
So there was born the concept of planning permission.
Now planning permission is a very intricate and professional business. You have to produce 600 page documents to develop 24 square feet of land, and you have to buy the planning official a dinner, some Cuban cigars and a gold necklace for his wife. Heaven help you if you’ve ever said a bad word against the planning official.. you can kiss your chance of developing the land goodbye.
And so Second Life has finally laid down the law and said “No!” to Ad-Farms on the SL mainland. Gone shall be the blighted sights of rotating adverts offering the finest in webcam girls, cheap land and, for some odd reason, marketing techniques.
Jack Linden makes the interesting statement that ad farms will still be allowed, albeit in a limited and monitored capacity. The start of planning control in Second Life, perhaps? How long before Linden Labs decide to restrict skyboxes to 500m and above to give us back the skies? Or go one step further and restrict snow covered land to Alpine architecture and tropical land to Tiki themed buildings?
Now let me be clear - I don’t like ad farms at all, and I’m glad they’re going. But I ask if this is the start of something.. Yes, the residents have been crying out for a solution to the ad farms problem for a long time. But the SL residents are a fickle bunch, and will just move onto the next problem.. and then the next.. and so forth..
Feel that pang, there? That could well be a little piece of your SL freedom withering away..
I despair. First, thanks for posting this, I was interested in your earlier post relating to this matter, and found this post also interesting and sad. I won’t repeat all my arguments from earlier, though the fundamental point bares repeating - the beauty of SecondLife rests so much in the freedom it grants us, freedom you can’t readily find in RL because of people imposing their ideas of what is “appropriate and acceptable” on other people’s actions and ideas. “Little” things like this latest decision erodes into that precious and rare freedom - a freedom that was essentially only fettered by legitimate basic rights of do no harm to others and the right to do with your own property as you see fit. I understand that the decision applies to SL mainland, but it unambiguously reflects an attitude that is shifting more towards intervention and red-tape. Will be interesting (and I suspect, also sad) to see what comes next *sigh*
Landscape Architecture, Zonning, Planning… are we talking about the same game?… I agree with Landsend about the freedom of using your space (for which you pay), but planning isn’t that bad, even with the most freely ways to do things. I refuse a lot of times about mainland for this kind of issues, but encourage the use of linden servers for zoning development, architectural landscaping and urban planning could be a pandora’s box…
Leave your response!
Business »
SL. FL. RL. Stealz.
Content Theft. Again.
Jeez.. even I’m sick of this now. Someone hand me God Tools already, and let us begin the era of “cleansing” so we can put this damn thing to bed. Content theft hasn’t …
Creative »
Machinima: You & Me
This would be my seventh machinima, I believe. I am enjoying working on a new medium, and videos are a cool way of expressing Second Life to new users.. and it’s a relatively unexplored creative …
Humour »
Resolutions
1. Stop looking at the Second Life Registration page and thinking about all the funny names that could be registered. Just accept that I’m slow, and someone’s already nabbed the good ones. And I have …
Musings »
I’m THAT relative…
You know that relative who’s never talked about? The one your grandmother or aunties lean over and whisper their names when the topic comes up in conversation. I’m THAT relative. In your case, THAT relative …
Tutorial »
That nasty four letter F-word
When it comes to things which stop us from creating, building, designing, taking pictures, writing blog entries, and the other countless things we do in this metaverse of ours, there are many different factors which …
Calendar
Archives
Categories
*Also Seen At*
*Prad Prathivi*
Bloggers of the Crown and Pearl
Second Life Blogs
Second Life Fashion
The Flickr Stream
Prad Prathivi's Last.fm Station
Legally Speaking
"Second Life Grid™, SL™, Linden™, LindeX™, Eye-in-Hand logo®, Hexagon logo™, inSL Cube logo™, Linden Lab Hexagon logo™, Second Life®, Second Life Eye-in-Hand logo®, Second Life Grid logo™, SL Grid™, SLurl™, TSL™, WindLight® and Linden Lab® are trademarks or registered trademarks of Linden Research, Inc. All rights reserved. No infringement is intended. Second Life and the inSL™ logo are trademarks of Linden Research®, Inc. This site is not owned or operated by Second Life® or Linden Lab®. Metaversally Speaking is not affiliated with or sponsored by Linden Research®.. because they hate me.
These articles represent the opinions of the author alone and are not necessarily those of any organisations or individuals.
Metaversally Speaking by Prad Prathivi is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at http://www.pradprathivi.com.