New Virtual Universe

Even bigger than Second Life - the Chinese are involved in plans for a virtual mega-universe.

Second Life

Here is the news article I mentioned.
Definitely very strange stuff.
This is a link to Second Life. They've got six million members, apparently, some of them with wings...

It's a place where people can act out their fantasy personas. The trouble is that some people's fantasy personas are not very nice.

Postmodernism

Postmodernism says that these days the typical sign does not have the pattern

Signifier --> signified

but

Signifier ---> another signifier

In other words, signs relate to each other, not to reality. Baudrillard extends this to say that what we experience as the world is a web of signs, not reality but a simulacrum of reality.

The movie The Matrix turns Baudrillard's idea into a sci-fi parable.

This video re-enacts The Matrix with Muppets.

But instead of being actual Muppets (in the cloth-flesh, as it were) they are computer animations.

So this is an animation representing Muppets representing a film representing a theory representing a relationship between signs.

And if you know anything more postmodern than that, please let me know.