I am including a link to this page in the Linden Prize application. Max is wagging his tail in eager anticipation of guiding people into a truly new frontier: Second Life.

And there are a lot of people waiting for him! According to the American Federation of the Blind, “The exact figure from the 2006 National Health Interview Survey was 21.2 million Americans who reported experiencing vision loss”(see afb.org). The report from the World Health Organization is even darker: “An estimated 180 million people world-wide are visually disabled. Of those, between 40 and 45 million persons are blind. Due to growing populations and ageing, these numbers are expected to double by the year 2020 making a colossal human tragedy even worse, stalling development and denying a basic human right . . . Every five seconds one person in the world goes blind. One child goes blind every minute. It is estimated that over seven million people become blind every year.” (see http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/pr79/en/)

But as Helen Keller said, “Many people have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained though self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”

Making the Immersive Internet accessible to all is indeed a “worthy purpose.” If Helen were alive today, I KNOW she would have an avatar in Second Life™

Have a great SL day, everyone!