This year marked my first visit to Black Rock City, the intentional metropolis created in just a few weeks on a Nevada playa and home to the notoriously anti-authoritarian ritual known as Burning Man. Living in Black Rock City for a week, I realized the place has its own cultural norms, modeled largely on the way people communicate online. Everything and everyone are interactive. You can walk up to a group of people and just start talking to them, as if you'd entered a chat room and were introducing yourself. Interactivity and sharing, as it turns out, are the main ways people socialize in the wild.
Money has no meaning in Black Rock City.
Barter is the only legitimate form of commerce, except at the Cafe Temps Perdu, which sells coffee and ice. Of course, it would be important not to confuse L2K with KY2 Camp, where KY jelly was handed out for free with much rejoicing. I kept meeting Mac people, which seemed oddly significant. Loitering in front of Center Camp's Radio Free Burning Man, I discovered that the person I had struck up a conversation with was none other than Mac guru journalist Raines Cohen, a founder of BMUG and NetProfessional magazine. Raines let me play with his iMate, which he had duct-taped to his bicycle handlebars.