Second Life avatar attends presentation by White House OSTP analyst Kumar Garg
The Onion: Obama Trying Out Social Policies In 'Second Life'
Everyone's favorite satirical news source just released this cute parody, purporting that President Obama is "testing out parts of his executive agenda on the 15 million [sic] citizens of the online world known as Second Life." This time, however, the joke's on The Onion: As it happens, the Obama Administration has been testing out citizen engagement of its policies in Second Life, at least since last August. That's when Beth Noveck, President Obama's deputy chief technology officer for open government (and an early SL advocate), helped connect FCC officials with myself and members of the Global Kids and the MacArthur Foundation non-profits, to stream the FCC's Workshop on Open Government and Civic Engagement into SL. "Extending these FCC Workshops to the virtual world enables a wider community to participate than those who can attend in Washington," Beth explained to me then, with an FCC spokesperson adding, "We are delighted that this first workshop will have an aperture into Second Life and that staff is experimenting in such ways to reach all stakeholders.” There's been two of these events so far, with the last one packed to capacity, so we're likely to see even more such government-to-SL activities.
Usually, The Onion's writers are so canny, a version of their parody stories ends up actually happening afterward. I.E., Real life imitates The Onion. In this case, however, The Onion imitates Second Life.
Image credit: Betterverse.org. Update, 9/28: Bumped up.