Becoming Bradesco

Machinima video by Draxtor Despres featuring Eureka Dejavu in discussion on June 27 on Ilha Bradesco (SLURL) with Simplesmentenuma Boa (Gilson Schwartz) about the Imagination Age, philosophy and cultural dialog in Second Life.

Hamlet recently expressed interest in learning what was going on on the Brazilian sims in the virtual world of Second Life. The answer is...a lot! Coincidentally, Eureka and I were invited to speak last week at a regular event at Ilha Bradesco by my friend Gilson Schwartz. I've spoken at a few of his events over the past years. Gilson is one of the many Brazilians leading the charge toward a major Brazilian presence in Second Life. (Note to readers: Many of these links lead to articles and posts written in Portuguese.)

I've been tracking Brazil's population growth in Second Life for a few years now since I first entered joined Second Life in 2005. As I mentioned a few days ago, Brazil has a special place in my heart.

When I first entered Second Life there were very few Brazilians – heck, there were very few Americans compared to today. I knew it was only a matter of time before Brazilians would be in Second Life in massive numbers. I'd seen it happen twice before on the web, first with the fledgling self-publishing tool called Blogger and then a social networking site called Orkut. When blogger first launched in the early 2000s, Portuguese rapidly became one of the more used languages there. Next I watched Brazilian take over Orkut, which was Google's early (arguably, futile) effort to compete with Friendster, then the social networking meme of the day. Visit the main Orkut site today and you might wonder if it is a US social networking site or a Brazilian one. The main page routinely has a large number of notes in Portuguese. In fact, Salon ran an article in January about a forthcoming book by Georgetown University professor, Bryan McCann who posits "The Orkut Rule.” McCann, who shared an advance manuscript with Salon argues:

"[W]herever possible, Brazilians will avail themselves of the possibilities of digital media to create subcultural niches and cross cultural networks in ways that defy traditional social hierarchies and the existing national cultural canon."

Sound familiar?

In July of 2006 I presented an idea to the Brazilian Ministry of Culture (headed by famed Brazilian rock star Gilberto Gil) that they needed to pay close attention to Second Life as a tool for them to both reach out to the world and to the people of Brazil. There were only a few thousand Brazilians in Second Life at that time. But in that time I'd discovered a full-scale replica of Brasilia (now deleted) among others; Brazilian creativity and investment in the space was growing. The government, while interested in my suggestion, felt that the numbers didn't add up – the relative population of Brazilians was just not enough to draw their interest. Secondly, they felt that the broadband requirements of Second Life would make it prohibitive for the average Brazilian to access Second Life. Finally, the government was keenly interested in helping the disenfranchised poor of Brazil get access to technology and Second Life seemed well beyond the scope of what they could access. They had limited success with an effort called Pontos de Cultura (literally, “Culture Points) that created outposts for the poor of Brazil to produce art through film, video and new media.

Fast forward to today. One of the lead researchers on ways to maximize the Pontos de Cultura movement, Gilson Schwartz, also happens to be leading one of the major Brazilian cultural Second Life movements. Gilson is the main organizer of a two major Second Life efforts in Brazil – Cidade de Conhecimento and Centro Cultural Bradesco. In his life as an academic at the University of São Paulo he does innovative research on Brazil's Motoboys culture. Motoboys is the term used to describe the mostly young delivery men who zip precariously down Brazil's busy urban streets on motorcycles. Last year he directed a project that equipped them with cameraphones.

In his capacity running the Centro Cultural Bradesco (Bradesco Cultural Center – a Second Life venue owned by Brazil's largest privately held bank) Gilson has been hosting an amazing cross-section of regular in world events.

Each month has a theme. This past month, the weekly events have been on Asia. Guests have spoken about issues ranging from “Collaboration and Competition: Lessons from Japanese History,” to “Buddhist Sculpture.” In May the theme was “The Year that Never Ended.” Events covered throughout May included debates and speeches from seminal figures in Brazil's arts and music history including Sergio Dias, leader of the band “Os Mutantes,” whose music was popularized in the US by David Byrne's label Luaka Bop, and Renato Borghi, creative director of the Brazilian Theater during the tumultous 1960s.

Details on these an upcoming events can be found on the Centro Cultural Bradesco website.