The Staggering Ineptitude of Linden Labs

Albert Einstein once said "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." I think the staggering ineptitude of Linden Labs is giving human stupidity a run for its money. Yes, I am beginning a rant, if you haven't figured that out already. To paraphrase another quote that I have no idea who to attribute to, Second Life has enormous potential and always will. That is to say, that the prospects of Linden Labs actually exploiting the potential of Second Light grow dimmer every day. It will remain, forever, a promising technology with unexploited potential. Why? Because of the staggering ineptitude of Linden Labs.

If I sound a little angry, I suppose I am. I came to Second Life just a little over two years ago and was astonished, as many people were, with the future potential of this amazing technology. Over the past two years I have invested an enormous amount of time believing that when this technology catches on, playing catch up would not be an option. And now it looks like this technology might never catch on the way I thought it would. And that is because Linden Labs has just dropped the ball. They simply do not know what they were doing. They created a gold mine and had no idea how to mine the gold.

In my early days on Second Life, I added some pages to my website to discuss my experiences. Way back then, I wrote "I am fully aware of the fact that by the time this technology becomes mainstream the name of Second Life might be little more than a historical footnote like the name of the first PC operating system (CP/M) or the first electronic spreadsheet (Visicalc)." As I was writing that, I had no idea how prophetic that might become. So, I thought it might be worth while to digress on a new thread to explore just how they managed to screw up so badly. What did they get right? What did the do wrong? What should they have done instead? Stay tuned.