Tateru Nino of Massively has sad and surprising news: the woman behind the avatar known as Kendra Bancroft has died at the far too young age of 49. In real life a voiceover actress (she eerily sounded like Susan Sontag), Kendra was one of Second Life's earliest adopters, joining in June of 2004; a talented metaverse builder, she created the cityscape of Neualtenburg, an experimental and ultimately contentious experiment in collectivist democracy. (That's her hoisting an ale with me in te Bavarian-esque town square.) I met her at the first SLCC in New York City, close to where she lived, and found her warm, sharply intellgent, charming. She was among the first to innovate passionately in a new medium, and she will be missed.
Post a comment
Your Information
(Name is required. Email address will not be displayed with the comment.)
Why do the good die young?
Kendra's strength was in building things to entertain people. She was so good at that — both at building, of course, but als in organising things to have *fun* with. She was an impressively strong person — even more impressively so in the past two years, when her RL life broke apart with her losing most of her jobs. It must have been terrible times for her, but she didn't let that shake her confidence and her strength to continue to build and embrace the communities she was active in, doing cleverly witty things all the time.
Posted by: Gwyneth Llewelyn | Thursday, December 18, 2008 at 06:36 AM