E- Ternity

A virtual extension of reality & a bridge to immortality.

Leonardo da Vinci believed that the perfect work of art is the one that is capable of creating a visual experience of reality. The Internet, is I believe a copy of realities, my reality your reality, his reality, in the form of a huge database, accessible to everyone, at all times. At the very beginning it was conceived as communications network for military purposes. After a couple of years, it became a communication exchange medium open to public. During the .com boom, people brought their reality into the virtual: they created online shops, online jobs, and online learning centers. The social side of the internet also developed with blogs, online dating, online chat and online entertainment (casinos, games, television).

The next step is naturally creating a copy of our world. In 2003 some folks decided that one life is not enough, so they created a second one - Secondlife.com, which according to the developers is "a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents." The future trend of online development is the one of the virtual. I believe that in 10 years form now, people are going to associate everything known to humanity to the web. This will happen due to a couple of the web's characteristics: the web is ubiquitous, a product of our creation, a means of expression, and most important a gateway to immortality. The information on the web unlike the information in books is more easily searchable, it does not require physical space, it can last forever, and it is less expensive, because it does not require raw materials. People can build websites, and make their product/information available to others without printing a copy for every person that wants access to it.

The Internet, has become a commodity for the usual user, a business for the advanced one, and a tool for the scholar. People's expectations of the web have increasingly grown, and will continue to grow. Individuals hope that the web is going to provide them with an answer for their math problem, for their business crisis situation, for their need for entertainment, or for their need to socialize. The question that the future holds is to what extent, and how fast will the net be able to substitute life. In this view I think it would be adequate to introduce the concept of the Virtual Graveyard, a gateway to immortality.

Not one individual has value alone, everyone gains value among other. People are defined not only through their own personalities, but also through their ancestors' personalities. Instances of such personalities are sometimes hard to record, and are easily forgotten. Time washes who they were and what they meant for the ones around them. Most of the times, they are remembered through a memorial plate, and a picture. But people are more than a picture and a couple of dates on a piece of stone. The virtual graveyard is the place where people can "net-burry" their thoughts, their memories, images and panegyrics. E-Ternity not a tag of someone's existence, E-Ternity is the story of someone's life. "A story is our way of making a journey and making it portable, so we can share it with others". (John Battelle, The Search).