Lounge Culture
Twitter's character cap can be a little limiting so I'm going to resurrect this old blogger account for a while. It's entirely likely that I'll be too busy to update it often but hey, we shall see. Just maybe the iPad will make updating on the move less painful.
I'm in the virgin lounge at Heathrow. It's a real cocoon of comfort and customer service. As a space it's a delight for people watchers; I especially love how often it relates to Second Life. Consider the situation with power outlets. There simply aren't enough power sockets in the lounge for the number of folks now tooled up with laptops and mobile devices, so, rather like virtual land, people very quickly begin to trade. An exchange of a better seat for power access, or a trade between two groups of travelers - several free magazines for an hour using the plug socket. Constrain a resource and the value rises, but only so long as the benefit outweighs the trade. Fascinating stuff.
Then there is spacing. I'm sure there is ample hard science to back this up but put X people in a confined space with uniform seating options and all things being equal they will sit as far from each other as possible. Watching this play out across the lounge area is hilarious. Travellers will even rearrange the furniture if it allows them to be more isolated from those around them. When it gets really tight, they will just stand rather than sit between two other people.
When you consider the compression evident in some areas of the inworld Mainland you can appreciate that contiguous parcelling is generally not a good thing. We've seen with Linden Homes the absolute appeal of even the most modest separation between properties. My Alt's SHO japanese home works so well because of the break along the side allowing me to walk the full perimeter of my little parcel. But bearing in mind the scale of the Mainland proper, some 5000 regions, how to then revisit that to renovate? Seems to me that only by involving residents themselves will it be feasible to really repair it. Perhaps giving over control of sizeable areas to groups for a period so that they can self organise and beautify. Hmm. Food for thought.
- Jack Linden.. half man, half keyboard, all iPad.
Location:Heathrow Terminal 3, United Kingdom