Mr. Gingrich goes to Second Life
By Eric Reuters
SECOND LIFE, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Pundits and political junkies will have their eyes on Second Life when former Speaker of the House and potential presidential candidate Newt Gingrich rezzes into the virtual world on Thursday.
“I’ve been intrigued with the evolution of alternative, virtual worlds,” said Gingrich in a telephone interview.
The veteran Republican, who is flirting with a White House run, first got interested in virtual worlds when he saw his friends’ children use the online site Webkinz, and was later briefed on the potential of Second Life by executives at IBM and diplomats at the U.S. State Department.
He told reporters earlier this month that “the odds are very high that I won’t run” but did not rule it out.
“People are bonded together in electronic communities,” the former Speaker said. “Most people’s best friends don’t live next door, they’re people they call or they email, and yet they maintain their relationships over distance.”
The increasing visibility of Second Life on the political radar screen comes as the virtual world struggles to adapt to real-life laws on gambling, pornography, and taxation.
“It’s a cutting-edge concept,” Gingrich said when asked about government regulation of virtual worlds. “It will be a very interesting pattern to see how we have conversations about appropriate behavior.”
“Anytime you have human beings interact in significant numbers you have to have rules,” he added. “Rules ultimately have to have enforcement. You’re going to have fraud in Second Life. So you’ve got to have a method for stopping the fraud.”
The former Speaker logged into Second Life for the first time last week to practice the user interface. Unlike most celebrities who have made appearances in the virtual world, Gingrich will be controlling his own avatar.
Gingrich sees the entrance into Second Life as a chance for the Republican Party to make inroads into new media, an area in which he feels Democrats have taken the lead in recent years.
“The Republicans led the way with direct mail, with talk radio, and ultimately came to dominate cable news,” he said. But Democrats infuriated with the war in Iraq have leapfrogged ahead of the GOP in utilizing the Internet for political organization, he said.
“But my hunch is that won’t last very long, and you’ll see relative parity in the next three or four years,” said Gingrich.
The event will take place Thursday at 11 AM Pacific Time at a reproduction of the U.S. Capitol run by Clear Ink. To prevent disruptions that have plagued other high-profile in-world appearances, the event will be invite-only.
“We have good security here based on Second Life permissions and invitation control,” said Clear Ink’s Steve Nelson (Second Life: Kiwini Oe).
But the event won’t be politically one-sided. A group of Second Life-based left-wing activists have been invited to the event to hold a counter-demonstration. “We will be peaceful and non-disruptive,” said Ruby Sinreich (Second Life: Ruby Glitter), an organizer of the protest.
The activists still aren’t sure how best to get their message out in a way that allows the event to proceed. “It will probably involve waiving virtual protest signs and asking lots of embarrassing questions,” said Eric Ahlberg (Second Life: Errcheck Hicks). “It’s an issue we’ve run into a number of times in Second Life, when does free speech become griefing?”
Gingrich’s appearance is part of an event billed as “Solutions Day,” a series of workshops to commemorate the 13th anniversary of the “Contract With America,” a policy platform closely associated with Gingrich that prefaced the Republicans’ sweeping victory in the 1994 U.S. congressional elections. Solutions Day events will take place in a variety of media, including satellite television, Internet webcasts, and in Second Life.
Second Life residents can request invites to the event here.
“I have a personal avatar who has white hair so I’ll be fairly obvious,” Gingrich said.
(Photo courtesy of Clear Ink)
