Ancient SL History: Or, Where Have the Years Gone?

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

The Man is 20

Natoma region's famous The Man statue has just had it's twentieth rez day.

A party, attended by Residents, Lindens and Moles was held in Natoma on Tuesday 19th July 2022 at 12 noon SLT to commemorate the occasion.

The Man Statue, originally created by oldJohn Linden at 12:08:25 SLT on 19th July 2002, was one of the test objects and buildings created for a Linden test town in 2002, a town which was located on the former Alpha test grid of Linden World, the precursor of Second Life.  The Man statue was originally placed behind a large civic building, possibly the town hall.

The test town, known as either Linden Town or Linden City was created in an unnamed Alpha test region to test out the feasibilty and practibility of creating such a town for a later public release version of Linden World which would become Second Life.

After the Alpha testing was completed, the entire town was removed from the grid and presumably deleted - except for The Man Statue, which was saved, transferred and preserved for the next stage, a closed Beta testing grid of Second Life. This transfer took place sometime in the autumn of 2002. No other pieces of the Linden World town are known to have survived.

The Man statue was placed into Natoma, one of sixteen "San Francisco" alley and street named regions.  The Man was  placed on top its own hill especially created by Philip Linden (Philip Rosedale) and it has remained there ever since, never moving and has become Second Life's longest continually rezzed object.

Natoma and it's fifteen other sister regions first opened on 1st November 2002 for closed Beta testing. Public Beta testing began in April 2003, then the full release version of Second Life opened on 23rd June 2003.

Edited July 20, 2022 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[Garnet Psaltery]

hehehe

 

[Brightstar7777]

(2005) Turning SL into an web image publishing system with the help of an external gateway protocol.

A 8x8 matrix of "pixels" each individually respond to touch events (e.g.: mouse clicks). When touched a lit pixel becomes unlit, and vice versa. In this way, patterns and simple drawings may be created. When 'published' with the green button on the Sprite object, each row of pixels is encoded as an integer between 0 and 255. The ordered bits in the byte that this integer number represents are a direct representation of the on an off patterns the pixels in any given horizontal row form.

This means that 

255 189 90 255 255 195 231 255

are equivalent

 

 

Edited August 8, 2022 by Brightstar7777
cleaned for web

[MadameGloom Ravenwood]

I was thinking that today.

I was approaching 46 when I joined SL, and now I am 61.  SL is growing old with me but staying young at the same time if that makes sense.

[Andred Darwin]

Agni, 2002!

[Aethelwine]

If I recall correctly the beach ball in our libraries predates the Man statue by a few months. 

[Seicher Rae]

At 13 in SL I feel jaded and old, but next to you guys I'm just a kid. I bought a history/overview of SL 3D book when I started (forget the title) and it was clear from reading it that I missed out on some fabulous  times.   The photos here are a hoot, thanks for posting all of this stuff.

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

I'm still looking for a map or plan of the original Linden World Alpha Test grid of early 2002. I'm not even certain if one was ever created or still exists!

But I do know that this earlier Linden World grid had up to nine regions and they didn't have sim names. This earlier Linden World grid is very important to SL history as these places were where The Man Statue, The Governor's Mansion and Steller's Beanstalk were all created. And that 25 closed Alpha Test volunteers including Steller Sunshine, along with the earliest Linden's were involved in this closed Alpha Test era

After Linden World Alpha testing was completed, the Beta testing grid (Agni) took over in November 2002 under the new name of "Second Life", along with more volunteers in a closed Beta Testing era. Some elements of Linden World were thankfully saved and transferred into sixteen new sim regions with San Francisco street names, such as Da Boom and Natoma. SL opened to public Beta testing in April 2003, then went to full public release on 23rd June 2003.

Edited August 10, 2022 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[Love Zhaoying]

I remember seeing a "first prim" memorial in-world, years ago. I wonder if it's still there? (I reviewed the thread but did not see it mentioned.)

[Love Zhaoying]

On 7/19/2022 at 7:49 PM, SarahKB7 Koskinen said:

The Man is 20

Natoma region's famous The Man statue has just had it's twentieth rez day.

Hard to believe that's who's been holding us down all these years, "the man", hiding in plain sight.

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

There is a little mystery surrounding The Man statue. Specifically, it's head!

Although the majority of The Man statue was created on 19th July 2002, not all of him was! You may not know, but the head was created several months later on 9th October 2002!

Which raises various questions, such as did The Man even originally have a head? There are NO known photos of The Man statue in the Linden World test sims of 2002 to prove it either!

But if The Man did have a head back then, was it somehow lost during the statue's transfer from Linden World to Second Life grids? Perhaps the statue's creator forgot to link the original head to the rest of the statue and so created a replacement head for the lost one later on 9th October 2002?

That is just my own theory, but it would seem to fit, as Natoma (The Man's home sim) and the other 15 sims opened to Beta Testing on 1st November 2002, only a couple of weeks after the creation of the statues present head.

Edited August 10, 2022 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[Prokofy Neva]

On 4/28/2022 at 5:48 PM, Silent Mistwalker said:

SL was attacked in November of 2006 by a worm that created self-replicating rings, similar to the ones from Sonic games. When users touched them, the rings multiplied, filling the grid with what LL called "grey goo." The service was closed briefly to clean up the rings and their nefarious code.

https://www.theregister.com/2006/11/24/secondlife_greygoo_attack/

https://www.wired.com/2006/11/sonicstyle-grey/

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Grey_Goo

Nefarious. Hmmm. *looks at @Madelaine McMasters and wonders* 😊

 

I don't recall it as a "worm" at all. It was a function in fact permitted by the code at that time.

Starax's wand, which enabled you to rez out dozens of cows on physics who wandered around making funny scenes, and other odd things, was very popular and was a script permitted by the Lindens.

There was also an "artificial life" came which was featured even on one sim.

But these all led to self-replication that didn't stop and wasn't always controlled by the user and was then exploited by griefers -- it was the conscious exploit of the function, not some "worm" in the code itself that was at issue.

So the Lindens built the "grey goo fences" and that disabled Starax's wand. He left the world in protest. Everyone complained. Lindens hastened to say his wand would still work, but apparently with some timer or built in limitation of their fence. No matter, he still left, until he came back under another name and worked for one of the "Big Six" developers for a time, then left *again*.

 

[Aethelwine]

2 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

the "Big Six" developers for a time, then left *again*.

 

Who were the "Big Six" ? I am not sure I have heard of them before.

[Prokofy Neva]

1 hour ago, Aethelwine said:

Who were the "Big Six" ? I am not sure I have heard of them before.

These were resident-run developers including Electric Sheep Company (not to be confused with the later robotics company by that name), which now features in lists of closed Internet companies; Rivers Run Red; Amy Weber Studios;  Rezzable; and others who handled the contracts for all the big RL companies like IBM, Sears, Reuters, etc. who came into SL. Imagine, Reuters once had an actual reporter stationed in RL for a time (who later went on to report from "Silicon Alley" in NYC.)

They came in and either collaborated with LL for example in "Collaborative Workspaces" or else they built islands or chains of islands for the RL companies and then began to lay off staff and leave when the "Virtual Worlds Winter" began in 2007.

None of them are in SL any more and some of them have been sold or have gone out of business. 

The Lindens made a special developers' group of several hundred people (they may still have a version of this) and at one point, they created a special store available only to these big companies in the "Nebraska" program for enterprise which LL didn't keep going for long. (I likened it to the Soviet-era "Beriozka" hard-currency store for diplomats which has now returned in Putin's Russia.)

I felt our world was significantly diminished when the RL companies drew away these creatives who no longer had time for their own sims or building "inworld" and went over to building (of course for much higher wages, so who could blame them!) RL replica campuses for companies that all then deserted SL when it didn't deliver the bank for the buck they thought it would. It's hard to even find the remnants of these builds now except in online resumes, which was the whole point. Few of them built anything inworld for avatars here. Even when they had 2.5 million visitors to sites they created, they couldn't make a profit from content sales. They had some of the best known artists of SL of the area including Starax Statosky and Foolish Frost, who built for me on commission the Ravenglass tower, Free Tibet pavillion and space ship across from Magellan's crash before going over to the big companies.

There are people who make a living in SL as we know, or at least offset their costs. But this "making a living" comes with sweat equity and willing to work long hours with unstable conditions, not something these big RL companies could justify.

The other day I asked, "Where is Amy Weber today?" since she seems to have dropped off the Internet, after being famous not only for lingerie in the early days of SL but building for American Apparel which had a store in SL for a time. A former Linden clicked "like".

 

Edited August 10, 2022 by Prokofy Neva

[NevaehHeartstrings]

21 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

These were resident-run developers including Electric Sheep Company (not to be confused with the later robotics company by that name), which now features in lists of closed Internet companies; Rivers Run Red; Amy Weber Studios;  Rezzable; and others who handled the contracts for all the big RL companies like IBM, Sears, Reuters, etc. who came into SL. Imagine, Reuters once had an actual reporter stationed in RL for a time (who later went on to report from "Silicon Alley" in NYC.)

They came in and either collaborated with LL for example in "Collaborative Workspaces" or else they built islands or chains of islands for the RL companies and then began to lay off staff and leave when the "Virtual Worlds Winter" began in 2007.

None of them are in SL any more and some of them have been sold or have gone out of business. 

The Lindens made a special developers' group of several hundred people (they may still have a version of this) and at one point, they created a special store available only to these big companies in the "Nebraska" program for enterprise which LL didn't keep going for long. (I likened it to the Soviet-era "Beriozka" hard-currency store for diplomats which has now returned in Putin's Russia.)

I felt our world was significantly diminished when the RL companies drew away these creatives who no longer had time for their own sims or building "inworld" and went over to building (of course for much higher wages, so who could blame them!) RL replica campuses for companies that all then deserted SL when it didn't deliver the bank for the buck they thought it would. It's hard to even find the remnants of these builds now except in online resumes, which was the whole point. Few of them built anything inworld for avatars here. Even when they had 2.5 million visitors to sites they created, they couldn't make a profit from content sales. They had some of the best known artists of SL of the area including Starax Statosky and Foolish Frost, who built for me on commission the Ravenglass tower, Free Tibet pavillion and space ship across from Magellan's crash before going over to the big companies.

There are people who make a living in SL as we know, or at least offset their costs. But this "making a living" comes with sweat equity and willing to work long hours with unstable conditions, not something these big RL companies could justify.

The other day I asked, "Where is Amy Weber today?" since she seems to have dropped off the Internet, after being famous not only for lingerie in the early days of SL but building for American Apparel which had a store in SL for a time. A former Linden clicked "like".

 

I know your very observant from reading the above but missing a lot of inbetween context about Rezzable as Starax /Lightwaves was only one of several owners, he left not out of what you pointed out, he left like many others did long ago on the promise of Opensim , he tried to create a grid over there while offering residents here a way to transfer viewer inventory/regions into peoples own personal grids over there. this caused LL to update the terms of service while also restricting more access to server side features that disabled his service. not long afterwards he left for good(maybe) Rezzable fell into the trap many thousands of residents did at the time on the promise Opensim was the future and after so many education people moved over, it was reasonable to see why such an action was taken, but it was mistaken.

 

[Prokofy Neva]

11 hours ago, NevaehHeartstrings said:

I know your very observant from reading the above but missing a lot of inbetween context about Rezzable as Starax /Lightwaves was only one of several owners, he left not out of what you pointed out, he left like many others did long ago on the promise of Opensim , he tried to create a grid over there while offering residents here a way to transfer viewer inventory/regions into peoples own personal grids over there. this caused LL to update the terms of service while also restricting more access to server side features that disabled his service. not long afterwards he left for good(maybe) Rezzable fell into the trap many thousands of residents did at the time on the promise Opensim was the future and after so many education people moved over, it was reasonable to see why such an action was taken, but it was mistaken.

 

Yes, I didn't mention those who ranted and raved about what they viewed as LL's failure to protect IP in one of the iterations of their TOS (and on the other hand, not provide enough flexibility for porting of content to Open Sim) but by that time, they had failed to make bank. I think interpretations of history can certainly vary. I think losing what was a relatively high-paid job in the Greenies build was more of an impetus to make people leave, than Open Sim was a draw.  You didn't have to Copybot everybody's great content to make Open Sim work, fellow creators least of all. You could have made your own. It didn't work.

Of course transferring people's content off the grid violated the TOS of those individuals and I have to wonder why creators would want to harm other creators, who AFAIK charged money for some of their own creations and put some of them on permissions (while others with full-perm with a built-in demand for a donation). If the claim was "but we're only doing this for legitimate owners of the content under the "first buyer's" doctrines of US law" well, it didn't fly because people didn't all consent to their creations being doubled through porting.

Only some SL creators made the jump to Open Sim, which was always overrated and underpopulated -- and recently became even more so. It's too bad because a viable alternative to SL is badly needed.

Rezzable didn't last long at Open Sim at all and I wouldn't even consider that so important as LL was the main game, the Rezzable grew very disenchanted as such developers often do and didn't want to continue with LL or its knock-offs.

There's this, too: not everyone wanted to buy or even take for free various aliens from outer space with bigged-up items like irons or tables. It was a whimsical idea premised on the idea that everyone in SL likes whimsy and sci-fi and weirdness.

But they don't. They mainly want verisimilitude with RL. Had they shrunk their tables etc to normal size they might have sold more of them.

Edited August 11, 2022 by Prokofy Neva

[Akane Nacht]

On 8/9/2022 at 9:36 PM, Love Zhaoying said:

I remember seeing a "first prim" memorial in-world, years ago. I wonder if it's still there? (I reviewed the thread but did not see it mentioned.)

this one? yep it's still there

(this was next to my first homebase as a newborn noob)

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

1 hour ago, Akane Nacht said:

this one? yep it's still there

(this was next to my first homebase as a newborn noob)

This particular prim was only the first public prim rezzed in the Nova Albion sims, on 26 March 2004. I know of prims that are well over two years older than that elsewhere.

Edited August 11, 2022 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[Akane Nacht]

1 hour ago, SarahKB7 Koskinen said:

This particular prim was only the first public prim rezzed in the Nova Albion sims, on 26 March 2004. I know of prims that are well over two years older than that elsewhere.

certainly. This is the only 'memorial prim' I've come across so far. 

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

Duplicates of the actual oldest First Prim can be found in the oldest original sixteen sims of SL, the "San Francisco" regions. But I'm not telling you exactly where!

These historic prims are actually older than the lucky avatars that own and closely guard them, they're also older than the sims they're found in, and are even older than Second Life itself! Should you actually find one, please keep it a secret. 

These special prims all have the exact same time and date of creation,  20:46:40 SLT on 25th January 2002. The original First Prim was created before Second Life even existed, as it originated in an earlier Alpha Test incarnation of SL that was called Linden World, which was superceded by the Beta Test version of Second Life on 1st November 2002.

Interestingly, the oldest prim has no creator name, as no such creator database existed at the time of the first prim's creation.  It's highly likely that the very first prim was created by the man who invented primatives, an Avi Bar-Zeev, a colleague and friend of Philip Rosedale.

And if you look around Sansara continent carefully enough, you might also find duplicates of the very first textured object ever created, a replica of a US five cent "Nickel" coin, that was also created in Linden World, not long after the First Prim was.

Edited August 11, 2022 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[Akane Nacht]

40 minutes ago, SarahKB7 Koskinen said:

Duplicates of the oldest prim can be found in the oldest original sixteen sims of SL, the "San Francisco" regions. I know for certain that at least three of these sixteen sims contain duplicates of this very first prim ever created, and that these special prims are actually older than the avatars that own them, are older than the sims they live in and are even older than Second Life itself!

These special prims all have the exact same time and date of creation, at 20:46:40 SLT on 25th January 2002. This original prim was created before Second Life even existed, as it originated in an earlier Alpha Test incarnation of SL that was called Linden World. Interestingly, the oldest prim has no creator name, as no such creator database existed at the time of the first prim's creation.  It's highly likely that the very first prim was created by the man who invented primatives, an Avi Bar-Zeev.

And if you look around Sansara continent carefully enough, you might also find duplicates of the very first textured object ever created, a US five cent "Nickel" coin.

Cool! This sounds like a preamble to an epic quest tale - Search for the Elder Prims. 

[Seicher Rae]

To those of you imparting the lore and history:
 

[Prokofy Neva]

18 hours ago, SarahKB7 Koskinen said:

Duplicates of the actual oldest First Prim can be found in the oldest original sixteen sims of SL, the "San Francisco" regions. But I'm not telling you exactly where!

These historic prims are actually older than the lucky avatars that own and closely guard them, they're also older than the sims they're found in, and are even older than Second Life itself! Should you actually find one, please keep it a secret. 

These special prims all have the exact same time and date of creation,  20:46:40 SLT on 25th January 2002. The original First Prim was created before Second Life even existed, as it originated in an earlier Alpha Test incarnation of SL that was called Linden World, which was superceded by the Beta Test version of Second Life on 1st November 2002.

Interestingly, the oldest prim has no creator name, as no such creator database existed at the time of the first prim's creation.  It's highly likely that the very first prim was created by the man who invented primatives, an Avi Bar-Zeev, a colleague and friend of Philip Rosedale.

And if you look around Sansara continent carefully enough, you might also find duplicates of the very first textured object ever created, a replica of a US five cent "Nickel" coin, that was also created in Linden World, not long after the First Prim was.

@avibarzeev on Twitter is a lot of fun to follow and takes just the right attitude toward the Metaverse hype cycle. I wonder if he even realizes he rezzed the first prim or remembers where it is or even has an account in SL any more. 

 

BTW, I hadn't realized that among the things Philip Linden made is this Easter Island thing. I don't even remember where I got it from, in just one copy. His island after he left and then came back? He also made this Insanely Large Coin which I remember passed around in 2004, and it's very possible that it didn't start out as "insanely large" but got made that and re-named. I have that in a copyable version if anyone wants it

 

 

[Silent Mistwalker]

Here's some ancient SL history. I don't know why I keep Cory's old blog bookmarked; I just do. Maybe for occasions like this. He talks about the earliest days of SL before it was Linden World, circa 2001.

Cory's first metaverse memory, the birth of LSL

For those who have never heard of Cory:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Ondrejka

CORY ONDREJKA

Will the Flying Spaghetti Monster ever rise again?

And that's my contribution to the rest of the story. Good day. 🤐

[Prokofy Neva]

33 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

Here's some ancient SL history. I don't know why I keep Cory's old blog bookmarked; I just do. Maybe for occasions like this. He talks about the earliest days of SL before it was Linden World, circa 2001.

Cory's first metaverse memory, the birth of LSL

For those who have never heard of Cory:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Ondrejka

CORY ONDREJKA

Will the Flying Spaghetti Monster ever rise again?

And that's my contribution to the rest of the story. Good day. 🤐

I remember that blog from long ago. I wonder where these wind chimes are now he mentions:

Philip immediately combined LSL1 with the physics engine to build the wind chimes that graced the original starting area.