"Whether you agree with them or not," Ichiro Tokugawa announces, turning a page in Blueprint For Action, "these are markedly bold words." To coincide with Thomas P.M. Barnett's appearance in Second Life-- now some 11 hours away-- we commissioned SL book publisher Falk Bergman to create a virtual edition of Barnett's latest book. Tom was kind enough to authorize, with his publisher's willing assistance, publication in SL of a substantial excerpt from Blueprint-- specifically, the Preface, Glossary, and the extended Afterword "Blogging the Future", where Barnett offers striking predictions about the world through the framework of his ideas. (Then again, that a major publisher like Putnam was more than happy to expedite the process of creating a Second Life edition of a book with their imprint on it-- that says something striking about our present.)
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FINAL PREPARATION AND LOGISTICS

Thomas P.M. Barnett will appear in Second Life today at approximately 11:30am Second Life Time (i.e., Pacific Standard), at the United Nations building located on Barnett Island, a 64 acre land mass comprised of four regions: Barnett Old Core, Barnett New Core, Barnett Seam, Barnett Gap.

For those who can't attend in-world, the event will also be simulcast on the Second Life homepage. Of course, I'll be running a cleaned-up transcript of the event on this blog starting (hopefully) tomorrow.

Attending live: Provided your computer has the techical specs listed here, a free SL account can be created and downloaded here.

Seating is limited; reserve a place at the event by joining the Barnett Readers group: from the Second Life interface, click "Find", then the "Groups" tab, then in Find enter "Barnett Readers", then "Join Now".