Thinking through a post on Forrester’s Social Media blog, I was struck by historical similarities between:
The westward expansion of the United States during the 19th century and the colonization of Second Life by marketers.
"Manifest destiny" was the term coined in the 1840’s to justify the viewpoint that Americans had a self-evident right to take over the continent. That philosophy can be updated to reflect the way marketers feel about virtual worlds two centuries later:
"And that claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to market
and advertise to the whole of the virtual world which Linden Lab has given us
for the development of the great experiments of social computing and driving sales entrusted to us."
Awkward but compelling, no?
UPDATE: poking around, I found this article from Wired 10/2006. I see the concept of manifest destiny as a RL/SL issue.