Now in Second Life. Photo: US National Guard

The US Air Force, which already owns 12 regions in the virtual world, Second Life, now plans to give each new recruit a duplicate copy of himself to manage for the rest of his career.

The Airman in the first run of a proposed, permanent shift by the US military into virtual reality, will be assigned to a base that matches the one he has outside of Linden Lab’s servers, almost exactly.

The Airman’s avatar, meanwhile, will have a face that crinkles with age. His avatar will also rack up kills, and receive medals, in parallel with his real world rewards.

From a story about the proposal:

“This would take place in simulated worlds that mirror the service’s actual facilities. ‘Everyone who comes into the Air Force will be given an avatar, and that avatar travels with them, grows with them, changes appearance with them,’ said Larry Clemons, of the Air Education and Training Command. ‘It will provide them a history of where they’ve been and a notion of where they’re going.’”

The experiment also reiterates the US military’s commitment to mastering virtual reality — after most people are unable to distinguish between their first and second lives.

That’s what will happen in the Singularity, a forthcoming period of advanced technological development, in which genetics, nanotechnology and robotics converge, and humans achieve immortality.

The Singularity has been explored and described by Ray Kurzweil and others in the transhuman movement.

And only two years ago, the US Army attempted to define what it might mean to be a leader in the Singularity.

via Airmen to Live Out Their Careers In Cyberspace.