Reality has changed! Extended Reality includes mixing physical world and virtual world spaces. For the celebration of Second Life’s 17th Birthday Party, my friend and colleague Renne Brock built a giant Polaroid Camera set up on an oversized desk for avatars to tour, sit, and share memories of meeting both physically and virtually. Playing with the “size” of our world is an interesting phenomenon.

My avatar looks tiny sitting on the yellow beanbag. The memory of my librarian colleagues meeting in San Francisco at a conference can be viewed on the Polaroid picture. Many other “real world” meetups were shared as the pictures scrolled by on the giant desk.

Meeting folks in the “real world” after working together virtually is always a pleasure, yet virtual environments like Second Life ARE real. The Assistant Director of the Community Virtual Library (center of photo) has worked with me on numerous projects on a plethora of virtual platforms: Skype, Google Hangouts, Discord, Zoom, SineSpace, Virbella, AltspaceVR, Kitely, Second Life, Mozilla Hubs and more!

The “X” in XR can stand for any type of reality: AR (augmented), VR (virtual), or MR (mixed). Notice the little colored buttons on the desk? Renne gives out a button each time she meets a colleague in the physical world. I have quite a collection of them. Yes…reality has changed for sure!