I joined Second Life on July 31, 2004, and I’m (mostly) a blogger, philosopher, activist, and entrepreneur in the Second Life® world.
My physical self was born in Lisbon, Portugal, in the same year the Internet was created, Unix was developed, and the first human being stepped on the Moon.
Unlike other famous and illustrious residents, I have a rather bleak curriculum in Second Life. I can’t build anything at all; and I’m definitely not famous for my scripting. I tell everybody that my own major scripting projects were outclassed by everyone else in Second Life. Two months before SL Exchange (later rebranded as XstreetSL and currently known as the Second Life Marketplace) launched, I had a working prototype — but I never opened the shop. I had a working low-lag animation overrider well before anyone knew what that was (neither did I — it was a device sold for L$50 that “made your walks sexier”) and I never managed to get rich (or famous) for that. I claim to have the most complex combination device for a pack of cigarettes that delivers cigarettes through XML-RPC calls instead of plain and simple llGiveInventory(), because of silly permission problems introduced in SL in 1.8. My dance bracelet is perhaps the only thing that works right (the bugs are too obscure for anyone to notice them).
My last attempt of building a house was in September 2004. I still keep a picture of it to remember never to do another attempt at building.
Even my blogging lags behind famous bloggers like Inara Pey, Hamlet Au, Tateru Nino, Prokofy Neva or even Torley Linden. Unlike what many people think, only about 4001 people read my blog. Sometimes. A few are even nice and post some comments here, so I believe they’re not bots but real human beings. Google is by far my best reader, faithfully devouring every single word I write. 🙂
I’m no land baroness, content queen, or event princess. I’m still a Premium user, but for no real reason (except for the L$500 weekly stipend); all my land is rented except for the complimentary Linden House, and I only have a few micro-shops anyway. I don’t belong to any large groups and have not founded any which are of notice (I joined Thinkers several months after it was created) — actually, I’m happy not to have too many groups against me (like the SCAG — Secret Conspirators Against Gwyn). So, I’m just a footnote on the Metaverse. Really.
In RL, I started to use the Second Life platform on my job to do educational & cultural projects in Second Life since December 2004, mostly for non-profits and charities who use computers to give young people/senior citizens/citizens with disabilities a better life. Since then, I thought that it would be nicer to work on my own and, well, make a living out of creating content for SL. Thus, Beta Technologies — the company that creates content for an environment which is ‘always in beta2‘ — was formed with my friends and partners Eggy Lippmann, Moon Adamant, and Jeff Bush. Since the Sheep abandoned Second Life, I believe we’re the largest Metaverse Development Company in the world. Well. After Rivers Run Red and Millions of Us. But both were drooling over Google’s Lively (which only existed for 7 months anyway), so I wonder if they’ll stay around here for much longer [edit: Millions of Us as well as Rivers Run Red seem to be both gone], and thus my own claims won’t be fought in court as libel or defamation or false advertising 😉
So… what does someone in SL that does not script, does not build, does no animations, does not engage in land sales, does not work as an escort, does not belong to any lifestyle, does not have any groups…? The answer is: networking 🙂 Second Life is about people — something most residents tend to forget. But we have the example of Torley Linden to follow. Keeping in touch, organising people, putting them together, launching new projects — that’s what I do. It’s certainly not so glamorous as being on top of the world, exploiting a market niche… but it is fun, nevertheless. 🙂
Also, it does give me a big advantage: I get a pretty good idea of what different people think. A scripter will see the world from inside LSL; a builder will worry about prims; a land baron will worry about group tools and how much the L$ is worth today. I, however, worry about everything.
I’m a meta-resident. And a loudmouth. And mostly harmless 🙂
Factoid: I’m most definitely not Welsh; I can’t even pronounce my own name (which sounds like this or like this: [
] — aye, that’s IPA for you!). I just happen to like Welsh names, especially the way they’re written (the more consonants and the fewer vowels, the better!) and how they sound (even if I can’t reproduce such sounds!). There is also a meaning attached to the name: according to popular lore, it sort of translates as white lion, although maiden queen (the colour ‘white’, figuratively used to represent ‘pure’, ‘maiden’, ‘virgin’; ‘lion’, figuratively used as ‘leader’, ‘chief’, ‘king/queen’) could also be an alternative rendition. I still haven’t talked very seriously about this with a native Welsh etymologist (although I’d certainly love to do that!). On the other hand, Gwyneth (often written as Gwynedd) was an ancient (historic) kingdom in Wales (the largest, if I remember my history correctly — there is still a region there bearing that name), while Llewelyn (very likely with a different spelling) was its most powerful king (Llewelyn the Great). The two names go somehow together in my mind.
There is a much subtler reason for one of the names, but I won’t tell you what it is 😉
If you’re looking at this page to send me an email complaining about how boring my blog is, you can spam me at Gwyneth [dot] Llewelyn [at] gwynethllewelyn [dot] net. Really, don’t be shy to write me; I love spam!
And if you’re looking for my Google Profile, it’s back. On Facebook I also have a page, and I’m also on X/Twitter as well as the ever-popular Discord; none of which I sign in regularly (or even irregularly); in fact, besides Second Life (of course!), the only ‘social thingy’ I’m ever connected to is Keybase, which nobody uses 🙂
Oh, who am I kidding? I believe that I’ve listed every social thingy I can think of on about.me. There you have 40 services (aye, forty) to choose from!
For sending encrypted email to me, my OpenPGP public key can be downloaded from: CE8A6006B611850F127572BAD93EAA3DC4B3E1CB
Now, here is how ChatGPT summarises my bio in early 2026:
Gwyneth Llewelyn is a technologist, educator, and writer whose work lives at the intersection of code, culture, and curiosity. Trained as a Unix systems administrator and fluent in a small constellation of programming languages, she approaches computing not merely as engineering, but as a profoundly human craft: a way of modelling thought, shaping communities, and building worlds—sometimes quite literally.
An early advocate and academic voice in immersive 3D virtual environments such as Second Life® and OpenSimulator, she has lectured and published on the social, technical, and philosophical implications of shared digital spaces. Her interests range widely—from distributed systems to combinatorics, from governance and global economics to theories of mind—guided by a conviction that no discipline exists in isolation.
Writing in precise, elegant prose (usually in British English), she combines analytical rigour with a taste for playful wit. Whether untangling a thorny algorithm, debating the future of decentralised infrastructures, or reflecting on the subtleties of human collaboration, she brings the same qualities to the table: intellectual breadth, interdisciplinary depth, and a quietly persistent curiosity about how complex systems—technical or social—actually work.
In short, she builds, she teaches, she writes—and she asks inconveniently thoughtful questions about all three.
- That was really wishful thinking, back when I started writing this page. Today, it’s probably closer to 40 — 4 of which are human beings. ↩︎
- Computer software traditionally goes through a release cycle: ‘alpha’ — everything breaks apart and is buggy, but the main concepts have been implemented and can be tested to see how cool they actually are; ‘beta’ — things work reasonably well, and we’re considering releasing it soon-ish, but there are a few kinks to iron out — if we have the time; ‘release candidate’ — we’re tired of tweaking code, we can’t get rid of the bugs that remain, so, who cares, this will be pretty much ‘it’; ‘release’ — most things that are broken will only be fixed on the upcoming release, not this one. Some add a few more steps: ‘early alpha’ — we don’t even trust ourselves to run it without crashing; and the ‘beta’ phase, in the gaming industry, is often split into two: ‘closed beta’ — we think the code is fine, but we’re testing it on our own first, not daring to show anyone how bad it actually is — you can join us, but you need a special invitation; and ‘open beta’ — all right, it’s bad, but it’s fun to watch when it crashes, come over to try it out and bring your friends with you, the more, the merrier!
Incidentally, the ‘beta grid’, in the context of Second Life (which also known by its internal code name, ‘Aditi‘ — Linden Lab loves obscure Sanskrit words), is the ‘testing area’ for up-and-coming new features, which is open to all Second Life residents, and where they can freely do whatever they wish. The money circulating in the ‘beta grid’ is ‘toy money’, i.e., not linked to your real account, so you can test how it feels to give a million L$ tip just for the sheer fun or it — or, more seriously, to test if your scripts can accurately deal with such amounts.
In the early years, sometimes the main grid was so broken down and impossible to log in to that people would flock to the beta grid instead, where they met ‘refugees’ and ‘temporary exiles’ from all over Second Life, patiently waiting there until Linden Lab fixed the ‘main’ grid… we had some nice impromptu events back then!
Therefore, the concept of ‘being in beta’ is not necessarily ‘bad’ per se. It means cutting-edge technology which is continuously being tweaked to ‘perfection’. It means, like Zuckerberg used to say, ‘moving fast and breaking things’. It means being creative both with what you can accomplish and also in figuring out how to prevent the worst from happening. Computer nerds call this concept hacking — again, another word that got a bad reputation connected to cybercriminality — but which, in the past, only meant ‘tinkerer’. Most scientific progress comes from researchers happily hacking away on the devices in their labs, wondering what happens when they push the ‘wrong’ button or pull that lever fully down, or, well, if you drill some holes into it, will it dissipate heat faster? ↩︎
