This SL machinima video illustrates just how digitally strange the global economy has become-- chiefly because it wasn't made for that purpose at all. "The main objective," promoter Luis Sotillos (SL name: Luis Aldrich) tells me, "is to support the real Spain-Vietnam Investment and Business Cooperation Forum held in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam." That event was put together by the Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade (ICEX) via the Economic and Trade Office based in Spain's Embassy in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, he explains. While the event took place in Vietnam, ICEX created a presence in Second Life for 29 Spanish companies, thereby giving "interested parties the opportunity to attend this event in a remote form, without need to move physically to Vietnam."
In other words, the Spanish government produced a site in the metaverse to promote business in a nominally Communist country in Asia.
In Second Life, the companies are represented by installations built alongside a modern railway line, where visitors around the world can interact with staff-- then hop aboard to get a tour of ICEX island, "one of the
biggest and more complex mobile objects never programmed before in SL." (Direct SLURL teleport to the site at this link.)
Photo courtesy Luis Aldrich
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