SL contra RL

Today’s article is my reaction to thecontribution of Pavel Stransky at the www.secondlife.cz blog (Author’s note: This contribution is in Czech.). Pavle, you are my soul mate. You described aptly and exactly something, what I am already convinced for long time. More or less, I understood this shortly after my entrance into Second Life. Identity of an avatar is given by someone, who is sitting in front of PC screen and are using of her/his own keyboard. The brain cannot be cheated. We bring from RL to SL everything, what the nature give us. Our own mind, our own habits, our own spleens, our own depressions, etc. For sure, it can be enumerate lots of them. Then we influence due to this our surroundings and first of all ourselves due to communication with others. And we may not forget that this feedback works also into opposite direction to RL. You find new friends and then you meet them also in RL.

SL is just this in sense of definition of word “sociology. Sociological experiment.

„ Sociology is the scientific or systematic study of society, including patterns of social relations, social stratification, social interaction, and culture. Areas studied in sociology can range from the analysis of brief contacts between anonymous individuals on the street to the study of global social interaction. Numerous fields within the discipline concentrate on how and why people are organized in society, either as individuals or as members of associations, groups, and institutions. Sociology is considered a branch of social science. “ (Zdroj Wikipedia)

Yes, SL is also addiction. I know this from my experience. However, one can only switch off PC and set out somewhere in RL. It is only a decision of anyone. SL is also about help. I think such help that everybody of us needed at our beginnings. I speak about selfless help. I would wish everybody to meet somebody here as it happened me at my beginning. Your own sermonizer or teacher. It was he, who helped me so much, who taught me about SL. We worked together and then each of us went one’s way, but our friendship never finished. And today, I myself help others. SL is finally a space for the learning. I tell an obligatory example – languages. This place is the best for learning or for the improving your own language knowledge. This opens gates to others sims, where avatars speak other language then mother tongue. Just language barrier between avatars can keep from communication and finally can lead to misunderstanding. I witnessed such one, but it is other story. Next time.

Library

The word ”knihovna” in Czech, in general, may indicate different things. First, it is a piece of , where books are stored. Everybody certainly has got such a bookcase in various forms at home. It may be also a room, e.g. in the castle or in the monastery. Absolutely unique combination of both meanings of the words can be found in the library of the Premonstratensian monastery at Strahov in Prague. Native Dobšice and artistic woodcarver Jan Lahofer made the monastery bookcases originally for the monastery Louka by Znojmo, South Moravia. He worked on them 10 years. The monastery, however, fell victim to the reforms of Austrian Emperor Joseph II and in 1784 it was cancelled. It is very ravaged; there were military quarters here till 1993. Nowadays only 1/25 of monastery area is commercial used. The company Znovín Znojmo place its seat. It deposits bottles here. The small wine shop offers wines from own production and you can find here also small wine museum. Lahofer personally moved the monastery library to Strahov and the visitors can admire it till now.





The other meaning of the word library comes from computer terminology. Library is a binary file that is attached to the executable program. The last meaning is library as institution for the preservation of books. And this is exactly the meaning for which I decided to write this post. Enter of new institution to Bohemia – Karviná Regional Library – was my inspiration. Its virtual branch is in Bohemia second sim (Czechoslovakia 2) immediately after the building of the sections of the Czech Police and close to Villa Tugendhat here. The building is interesting and with impressive design. It offers on the ground floor, the floor and on the open terrace classic library services and through the weblinks one can enter to te webpages of the library. If you climb up to the terrace, you can see a nice view of the Bohemia or try another view from the opposite side from the terrace of Villa Tugendhat. Appearance and shape of the building bears witness to the great creativity of builder (Zuza Ritt) and offers visitors a turn something new interesting than only a copy of reality.