Burning Life

I wanted to spend a little time talking about a project that Danger Ranger is involved in. It is called "Burning Life".

What is Burning Life?

"Burning Life is a festival of community, art and fire in the virtual world of Second Life. It was first held in 2003 when the Second Life grid was still in it's infancy, and it's inspired by the real life Art, Fire and Community festival known globally as Burning Man. Both Burning Man and Second Life began in San Francisco, California. But they have a lot more in common than their birthplace...."

Second Life is an immersive virtual world where players can create avatars and become whoever they want and meet new and interesting people. Sound familiar? The people at Linden Labs, the creators of Second Life, wanted to make a Burning Man event in this virtual world. After receiving the blessings from BMHQ, an effigy was burned. Burning Life is now in it's 7th year.

Why would someone want to play Burning Life instead of going to the real Burn? It could be logistics, economy or even disability. Burning Life now has over 25,000 participants that "attend" ever year. That is half of the population that actually goes to Black Rock City!

I met up with Danger Ranger and asked him what he is working on at the moment and he said Burning Life. "So how are you 'using' this?" Danger created the Black Rock City Rangers, a volunteer team of people that work as liaisons between participants and the authorities. They help diffuse situations, answer questions, assist people in need and more. Volunteers must attend training sessions to become a Ranger and that might require flying/driving to another state due to a Ranger contact not being in their geographic area. Burning Life could help solve this by hosting training sessions within Second Life. Burning Man staff/rangers could put would-be rangers in situations that they have to work through based on their training. Danger said that by the end of the training online, a person could actually go to Black Rock City or a regional event and successfully work as a Ranger.

As nerdy as this all sounds, I think it is amazing that people are doing this in a virtual environment. Maybe this will help bring about the Singularity, but for the time being, it is allowing more people to experience Burning Man.