The Metaverse and 3D Web, as blogged by Mark Wallace and friends

A last-minute trip sees 3pointD out of the country this week. Given the limited Internet access I have here in Amman, Jordan, posting looks like it will drop down to anywhere from slow to non-existent until at least the weekend, when I fly back. Since slow posting always earns me inquiries from kindly readers concerned that I may have broken my posting finger, I thought I’d drop a line here to let you know I’m on an unexpected hiatus. What am I doing here in Jordan? Well, it’s nothing very 3pointD, in fact, but I’ll give you the short version of what’s a much longer story after the jump in case you’re curious.

I’m in Jordan mostly to accompany my father. Three years ago, at the start of the Iraq war, my father, then a high school teacher, wanted to cook up a way to teach his students about the effects of war on civilian populations. (A veteran peacenik, is my dad.) So he launched a program in which his students began corresponding with high school students in Baghdad via email. It’s been running now for almost three years. (You can read some of the emails if you like.) In the course of that time, my father has become good friends with the woman on the other end of things, who teaches at a girls’ school in Baghdad. Her emails describe some really shocking scenes of day-to-day life in Iraq, and she’s become more or less part of our family (albeit a distant one). She was due to come to the States to speak at a conference, and the US Embassy in Jordan told her that her visa was ready, but when she got to Amman — after a fairly treacherous drive through Iraq — she was given only a run-around by the embassy. She’s been in Jordan for three weeks now, and is itching to get back to her family in Baghdad. So my father and I have come to see her before she leaves. Though they’ve been corresponding for three years and have become good friends, this is the first time they’ve met.

This is not a story I’ll be updating here on 3pointD, since it’s not very metaversal, but I’ve written about it before, and probably will again. Actually, there is a slightly metaversal element: my dad hangs out in Second Life, where he has extended his “peace work.” (Contact me if you want to be in touch with him about it.) Just thought I’d post about it while I have window in which the Internet is chugging away here, since I know at least a few readers will be interested — and it makes better reading than just saying, “I’ll be away this week, sorry, folks.”