The Juggernaut Club

Making a Living in the Metaverse

We have moved from an era when the dominant form of labor was physical to one where intellectual labor will receive the lion’s share of economic opportunities and rewards.

During the lives of today’s youth, most of the world’s activities will be conducted over the Internet. Some will just use the Internet as infrastructure, e.g., communications, entertainment, and finance industries. But an aspect of tomorrow’s life will involve the “metaverse” - an online world where a person’s avatar (digital representation) interacts with other avatars in a 3D world.

Today, the secondlife.com best exemplifies the metaverse to come. In secondlife, people have social and business lives. In addition to wearing clothes and participating in events, they design and sell jewelry, clothes, cars, and homes for consumption in secondlife or as models for construction and sale in RL (real life). Real jobs are available.

To enable local youth to participate in the metaverse, a Juggernaut Club is being formed as a community economic development effort.

The Juggernaut Club will introduce area youth in northwest Queens to life in secondlife: the social customs, tools, and techniques that enable one to live and possibly prosper in this new world. The Juggernaut will initially do so in conjunction with a Landing Lights Improvement Project, a project under review by New York City’s Queens Community Board 3 to enable residents to better plan a section of the community adjacent to LaGuardia Airport.

A model of the Landing Lights Park area has been construction on New York Law School’s Democracy Island in secondlife. Information on that development is available from this web page. The learning environment of the Juggernaut Club will be Landing Lights where members will learn while contributing to a local civics projects.

Schedule

• March 23, 2006 – Recruitment at a Business-Youth Conference to be held at I.S. 227. The Juggernaut will sponsor a recruiting table at which it will explore ways local youth can start businesses and find work in the metaverse.
• April 19 – First meeting at Vaughn College.
• June 10 – Create temporary page on CB 3 site for Juggernaut Club.
• September 1, 2006 – Send recruitment letters to local high schools and colleges.
• October 2006 – Second organizational meeting of Club.  

Meetings

Meetings will take place at LaGuardia Community College.

Speakers / Mentors

Jerry Paffendorf

Ron Blechner

Additional speakers from NYLS & Linden Labs.

Partners

The Kiwanis or similar organization.

Additional info: Thomas Lowenhaupt, TomL@communisphere.com, 718 639 4222.