Martha’s just written a wonderful blog post (“A Second Lifetime“) on Second Life. I was commenting on Martha’s blog when suddenly my comment morphed into a blog post of my own. Rather than leave the world’s longest comment, I decided to move my remarks here. They’re provisional, and I don’t have any pictures (they’re on my home desktop), but more will follow, I’m sure.
I’ll start by saying that Martha’s observations seem pretty fair to me. There’s a lot of SL that’s puzzling, a goodly amount that’s repellent, and it is discouraging to move back into a Garden of Eden only to find that we’re bringing the serpent in with us. I hadn’t looked at the user forums for anything more than technical help, so I’m interested to see that some SL folks are wondering why so much of SL culture is so impoverished or appeals to lowest-common-denominator desires.
However….
I’ve been exploring in SL for an average of about 30 minutes a day over the last 10 days. If you look at the curve, though, that average would look like 10 minutes a day until the last four or five days, when it shoots up to about 45 minutes a day. (Don’t worry–this is all at home, and in place of my listening-to-the-stereo time, alas.) Why? Because of an unplanned meeting with a stranger. After that, my in-world experience went from intriguing to a much more satisfying aesthetic and cultural experience (in the non-mature areas–Martha’s right that the, ah, other stuff is all over the place, both virtually and metaphorically).
The reason for the change? Not only conversation, though that’s part of it (my extroversion has room to play in SL). Mostly it’s because the person I met shared some landmarks with me. Suddenly I grokked something important, something that makes SL very much like RL (real life) and means that Linden Labs should not be engineering development and it’s a good thing they haven’t. It may even be a good reason why you shouldn’t be able to add a friend unless both are in-world, as that process would likely short-circuit the process I describe below.
In Real Life, most of our awareness of surroundings and resources comes from word-of-mouth. That’s horribly inefficient if one wants to compile a good shopping list quickly, but it’s incredibly efficient at making information exist in a human context. That human context makes the information meaningful. SL has demonstrated, in a rather awesome way, just what makes a society a society. It’s not just the stuff you go to see, it’s the people who tell you about the stuff you should see. That makes the stuff, when you see it, the result of sharing, not of a Google search (which of course is a bad analogy because it too is built on sharing, not just on indexing–but I digress).
The three landmarks the stranger gave me in that one encounter led me to places that were very beautiful, intriguing, and (in their way) gentle. Not busy, clangorous, or mature (at least, not aggressively so). Now SL felt like being in a storybook, or a lovingly crafted movie.
Those discoveries meant I had even more to talk to the stranger about. I then learned the trick of looking at the “picks” when I met people, or when I met a FOAF. Those are the places people say “hey, you should check this out.” Yes, some of them have been abandoned, and some you may not want to see, but others are still there in all their glory. I’ve taken a ride on a train, visited a drumming room in a castle on a volcanic island (even played drums with some other visitors, streamed in real time audio), seen new art and listened to a player piano in a treehouse, etc. You can look at people’s picks even when they’re not in-world, just by looking at their profile. (That bit may contradict some of my earlier argument, but never mind.)
And why all the replication of RL in SL? Why all the houses and sofas and so forth? Because people want to craft a space that’s theirs, an environment that’s an extension of their identity, and we ‘re all hard-wired to recognize signals of embodiment as identity cues. That’s not a good or bad thing; it’s just a thing. And it does mean that there’s an interesting boundary layer between, say, the familiarity of a porch swing and the strange exhilaration of flying around everywhere. Call it a comfort zone for inspiring lucid dreaming.
There is indeed a depressing sameness to much of what’s on offer in SL. Sex and money, sex and money, sex and money: gee, didn’t I just leave all that behind in the RL? (People are people, wherever you go.) That said, where the different things happen, there’s something quite magical the place makes possible. I’m beginning to think that one has to build to get the full experience–and that’s a good thing. If one wants to learn to build, one’s spoiled for choice: many in-world building tutorials are held every day, for free, by citizens who want to help other citizens. That’s good for Linden, of course, since they’re selling land, but still: the community creates itself by passing along its skills and knowledge.
Also, last night, my avatar was dancing to 70’s music streamed live from the host’s RL turntable/record collection. It was a party full of people I’d never met before, a party I went to on a whim, one that looked safe and interesting. I could dance along by clicking on one of the hosts, which another dancer also did, so that suddenly the three of us were dancing in formation, together, to “Don’t Fear the Reaper.” In the chat, we were all cracking jokes about more cowbell, letting out text-whoops at our favorite parts of the song, acting nutty, booing the “mandatory downtime in one minute” Linden warning (there were crashes, apparently, that they were trying to fix), and in general acting the way people do at parties. The host had huge bunny slippers on. The dancemaster gave us some cool John Travolta moves, including periodic flights up into the air as we continued dancing next to the disco ball (I had requested one, and it promptly appeared). Each time a new song came on, the crowd of 10-12 dancers cheered and cracked more jokes.
It was a very strange and compelling experience. My children were watching this and were fascinated–they thought it was very cool, especially when they saw their dad’s av spinning on his head. (You’ll be sore tomorrow! the other folks told me in the chat.) Oddly, I could feel my muscles responding a little, almost as if I really were dancing.
The social aspects of play, the way communities are built and strengthened, the way in which everyone greeted me by name when I arrived (most events are public) and said farewell when I had to leave: there’s something very interesting here, with strong connections to much of what we think of when we consider telepresence and the residential college experience. I can see a fascinating horizon of possibilities here. I’m also aware that some of what I’ve described will sound silly or perhaps even dangerous to some people. I can’t see that it’s any more silly or dangerous than reading fiction or poetry–you know, stuff people just make up, out of words–or looking at paintings–what is that? just pigment on a canvas–or listening to music. It’s play, it’s culture, it’s society, it’s people. As Lear says, “Reason not the need.”
A modest recommendation to NMC from a SL newbie: don’t make all the campus structures institutional meeting places. Build some dorms, rooms where we can hang out in environments that reflect some idiosyncracy.
Hmmm. . . I think I get what you’re saying. And your post makes me think that perhaps I’m approaching my experience in SL from exactly the wrong direction–expecting tools and aides for navigating the world instead of giving myself up to the experience and seeing where it takes me.
I enjoy random exploration in SL. And, after reflecting on what you’ve said here, I can appreciate the value of experiencing SL through human connections made in-world.
That said. . .
If human connections are the engine by which SL is meant to operate, I wonder about the accessibility and availability of those connections. In RL, human connections are powerful generators of context and information as well, but we’re surrounded by aides that help us to those connections. Heck, the internet is probably the most powerful aide around in this regard. More specifically, my blog could be a powerful aide for helping me to develop human connections. What I’m saying is that I choose to use tools in my life to seek out others who can bring value to my life. That doesn’t mean I rely on a master directory in which I can look up the top 10 people in the world who are best suited to be my friend. It does mean that by blogging about topics of interest to me I can make connections with people. By searching the Web for parenting in Fredericksburg, I can find other people who are experiencing similar moments in their lives and I can forge relationships from those connections. I chose to go to college by researching the schools out there and finding one which one was the best fit for my needs and desires. I didn’t randomly criss-cross the country until I stumbled across a place where I could be happy.
What I’m looking for is something in between that master directory and the walkabout. I want ways to find people in-world who I might want to connect with. I want to do this by knowing what their interests are (in a more granular, specific way that is available to me now). I want to do this by finding stores that contain things I’d like to buy and seeing who else is there. I want to do this by searching for spaces that contain objects or events of particular intersest to me, visiting, and then striking up a conversation with whomever is standing next to me.
I’d also like to occasionally take flight, see where I land, and simply walk up to a stranger. I guess I want life.
Also, I was wrong when I said that Linden Labs should engineer any of this. Residents should create these systems. I don’t even know if that’s possible given the way SL is engineered, but it should be
As for the furniture, I still don’t like bumping into it. And, while I understand that people are creating things that are markers for them in RL, and thereby communicating ideas and information to others, I think that’s missing the point to a certain degree. Again, in SL, I don’t need to sit down to rest. So why the need for a lot of chairs. Maybe what I need is something else. Maybe what I need are clouds that I can sit on, from which I can float and explore while “resting.” At a certain point, if we’re going to live in a new, virtual world we need to embrace the differences that this new space affords us and build new, different kinds of spaces–ones that support our new kinds of lives. If we find a way to tune into those needs (and that’s hard to do), we’ll free ourselves to really live authentically in this new world.
At least, that’s what I think today. π
Much, much to respond to here. One quick thought and then I really must get back to grading: being born into SL is just like being born into RL in many respects. Before one can search for spaces that contain objects or events of particular interest, one has to do a lot of random criss-crossing. And learning to speak and read accelerates everything.
Okay, one more quick thought. The great paradox of SL is that is can never be a world in which we live, because it is not real. Instead, it’s like literature, with all the genre possibilities: realism, naturalism, allegory, fantasy, SF, etc. We read novels about the full range of our experience, both internal and external. Movies, ditto.
SL is a metaverse, sure, and a consensual halluciation, sure, but it will always be a second thing. π
PS: something about groups here, too–just sussing that a bit myself. Group formation seems very important to some folks. That, and groovy wings. π
In our conversation with Andrew Treloar about Second Life at lunch the other day I was working through his suggestion that our privileging of the physical distance between actors in SL (for example, I am sharing a rollercoaster ride with someone from California, or Alaska -isn’t that cool) when talking about our experience in this world seems unfounded.
One of the things that I was trying to work through after that discussion was why my first experiences in Second Life were always framed by this fact of physical distance rather than some other variable. When first exploring SL I invited a friend of mine from Portland, OR into this world so that we could explore together. It was really a blast, we cruised around the landscape, gambled, went to the fun house, checked out the heart clinic, and even purchased and drove a 1932 Indian Motorcycle. And while any one of these things are not particularly interesting in and of themselves (save the Motorcycle!) what struck me as we said goodbye and returned to our physical space is that we had just spent over an hour in a space together wherein we both shared a similar frame of reference from which we could explore a world. We could laugh about his new purchase of the motorcycle, kid each other about the clothes we bought, experience a Haunted House with one another, and even sit back and just chat about the space and how crazy it is.
I felt like this experience was similar to our walks with our newborns around Clinton Hill in Brooklyn – we reacted to the built environment around us for the space we occupied was a shared space and it always generated new ways of understanding where we were together at a particular moment. SL was a similar experience for me, but the major difference, in my mind at least, was that we had this shared experience at the distance of 3000 miles. This fact struck me as remarkable -hence my own privileging of this facet of the experience that made physical distance remarkable because it had changed my understanding of it in some fundamental ways.
In fact, I don’t think a phone call, IM, or a video chat could ever reproduce our peripatetic peregrinations around Brooklyn, and while SL is certainly no Brooklyn, it did go one step further than the phone, IM, and video-chat towards reproducing the spontaneous interactions, possibilities, and excitement that two people experience when they share and explore a space together – a sense of wonder and conversation at once -not a catching up, not a retelling, but a generative experience premised on variables outside of our control.
SL fascinates me!
What an enjoyable post and comment discussions. I think I need to take some of that open exploration time you described. Like many, I am intrigued and excited about the “feel” of this place and its interactions, and am not quite yet sure what we “do” with it. Maybe that is the problem, i always trying to boil out a purpose and justificatio.
The essence is Second Life is an open ecosystem, not one pre-determined, almost the Grand Watchmaker kind of world. My aimles wanderins have been less successful, running into place after place of furniture casinos, and places to buy things, and not running into too many people. But what you describe in terms of the casual interactions where people are sharing things is where I think the magic lives here- not in the devices or mountains or cool motorcycles (though I can see why they are desirable).
So Abdiel, let me know next time you are wandering about, would love to join in. And NMC Campus is not just sterile replicas of buildings- the creation of conventional classrooms seems to ba a bridge for the familiar to the unfamiliar. We have a dance hall, with musical instruments, a medaition area, a camp fire, secret rooms; I have chatted with people while floating on inner tubes in the lagoon or standing on a mountain top. Be glad to show you around….
CDB
I must be missing something.*
It looked like yet another way to escape the challenges and very real consequences–mitigated by the occasionally breathtaking successes (which is what makes it all worthwhile)–of the actual reality realm.
Having come from a graphic design background, I suppose I am tired to death of creating visual representations meant to communicate my ideas.
I’d rather eat a peach.**
*Of course, I read for the Jason Priestly part in 90210 and left mumbling that the pilot was the worst piece of cr@p I’d ever laid eyes on. So, my take on pop culture is somewhat suspect, I guess.
** a la Eliot
One other question on SL: Um, where’s the fat people?
As they say in the biz, YMMV.
Like any imaginative realm, SL can be an escape, sure. But like any imaginative realm, it doesn’t have to be *just* that. It can be a place of freedom that helps bootstrap our imaginations into making better stuff in the real world. It’s also a place to play, and Vygotsky’s essay on play beautifully articulates why play is a vital (perhaps the vital) factor in intellectual growth.
Where are the fat people? If anyone chose to be fat, they could be fat. Body design has few limits in SL. Folks choose to have all sorts of different shapes and sizes. It is interesting that no one I’ve met so far chooses to be fat. Very few people I’ve met so far choose to wear eyeglasses, either I can’r remember any, to tell you the truth–and hey, if I could have good eyesight without letting lasers vaporize bits of cornea, I’d throw my glasses away tomorrow. π
This is not to equate obesity with poor eyesight, of course, but to emphasize that so far as I can tell, SL is the result of people’s choices. Your question would be a good one to post to the SL forums. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a good discussion already going on concerning such questions. I know that the third birthday celebration has a theme of celebrating diversity, and that questions of avatar diversity are being raised in that context as well.
Thanks for stopping by, Dan. Remember to part your hair behind and roll your trousers. π
Sorry, Dan. I’m afraid I must disagree. π
You’re right that there is a lot of activity going on in SL that could be considered escapist. And, really, until you dig around it’s easy for it to seem like that’s all that’s going on.
But I’ve been doing a lot of digging lately, and there is amazing suff.
There are people who are wheelchair-bound in RL who are experiencing what it’s like to live as a fully physically-abled person in SL (they can even fly!). Part of that means they’re navigating a virtual environment in a very different way than they can in RL, but it also means they’re interacting with other people in a very different way. Of course, all navigation and interaction in SL is, by its nature “different” than RL, but I can imagine that for these people, that difference is particularly dramatic.
There are societies being built in SL in which people are negotiating issues of governance and dominion. People are working together to figure out how to live together in a way that we rarely see in RL.
The other day, I experienced an experiment in which I was able to experience (virtually) some of the symptoms of schizonprenia. By walking through a house in which objects were scripted to do things and say things to me that altered the (virtual) reality I was expecting to experience. The experiment is still a little rough around the edges–but still fascinating.
(I still stand by my statements earlier that I wish it was easier to find some of these kinds of events, places, etc. in SL. I find the wading through night clubs and casinos a bit draining.)
People who in RL might be disempowered are free to invent a new kind of self for themselves in SL. And, I would suggest, that if you talked to some (many?) of these people, they would tell you that the experiences of empowerment that they have in SL often become catalysts for finding ways to overcome the limitations they struggle with in RL. That’s just a guess, but I have a strong feeling about this.
I, personally, find this fascinating, but I also think that the experiences we have in SL, in and of themselves, regardless of how they affect us in RL can be amazing. I feel compelled to value SL not only as a reflection or re-presentation of RL, but as something new and powerful in its own right.
As for the fat people, one of the most off-putting aspects I find in SL is how narrow the “appearance groove” is. Everyone seems to want to look like a supermodel. If you wander into a shop, most of the women’s clothes can best be described as “sex kitten.” That said, I have also seen people who are choosing not to be beautiful people, and I suspect that as I unearth more and more of the interesting, out-of-the-ordinary experiences in SL, I’ll find more of these people.
While my avatar would probably be considered attractive, but I’m deliberately trying to avoid supermodelitis. I’m always searching for quirky things I could add. Right now, I’m searching for freckles. I always wanted freckles in RL! I’m also proud of my pointy ears. π
If nothing else, the fact that most people want to be supermodels, while sad, is also interesting.
Quick question: given that quirkiness has its own powerful attractions, what’s wrong with wanting to be attractive? Is it okay to want to be smart, or fleet of foot, or graceful? Part of life is accepting what we can’t quite get to, of course, and finding the value in the gifts we’ve been given (which is not always the same as making a virtue of necessity ;-)). I’ll even go so far as to make that mysterious givenness part of life’s strong and poignant beauty, at least potentially.
But that’s not the same thing as saying that it’s wrong to want to be able to fly. I’ve always wanted that ability. Now I have at least a compelling way to imagine it, with others, in a mutually constructed environment. And I don’t have to wear glasses.
“Sex kitten” is a very narrow appearance groove, and SL has way too much sex kitten and stud-shaping. Beauty does in fact go much wider than that. But quirky is not the same as ugly–at least, not to this beholder.
Besides, Ingrid Bergman puts supermodels to shame.
After I wrote that comment I thought I should have been more clear.
My objection is solely to the cookie-cutter “sex kitten” (on the female side–I don’t know how to term that for male residents) tendencies. I am, admittedly, very sensitive to these issues in RL, and, for me, as a woman in SL it’s hard not to feel bothered by what simply comes across as sexual objectification.
As for wanting to be attractive — that’s certainly an understandable desire! As long as “attractive” can mean lots of different things to lots of different people.
I agree completely. It is interesting that people in SL make choices that replicate very repressive and sometimes even self-destructive things in real life. Of course those dangers don’t exist as a physical threat in SL, just as video violence doesn’t cause physical damage when one plays, say, Grand Theft Auto. On the other hand, one has to wonder if the virtual world of SL isn’t encouraging people to reinforce their own worst tendencies. On the third hand, however, there is an unprecedented opportunity for us all to reflect on the choices we make in a society where we’re all buidling together without famine, disease, death (unless you let your account lapse, I guess), or other physical limitations. Plus we can dance and make some very cool stuff together. The educational possibilities are awe-inspiring, truly.
As a Miltonist, I have to say that I am utterly rapt by this experience as an object of contemplation. How could I not be? π
O.K. One at a time, guys.
Here’s what I think on the possibilities (or existing tools you mentioned):
It sounds like you’re saving the bathwater for the sake of the baby. Here’s what I mean:
Martha:
You say you can do all sorts of things in this Second Life place. And that’s great. I am happy to hear about the wheelchair folks who are able to navigate through the environment. I think that’s cool. One of the two labs I’m working in this summer is engineering an interface that will allow locked-in people (Lou Gehrigs, etc.) to control things via thought. The prototype looks promising. I was helping pilot it today. It seems to be working.
You also spoke of the schizopheni-o-matic thing. Also cool. Very creative. I’d like to see it.
Gardner: Flying is also fun, I’d imagine.
HOWEVER:
1. Why wade through pornography, virtual real estate ads, chat rooms, imaginary psychosexual encounters, married people flirting, pedophiles, dopey teenagers, dopey adults, morons, not to mention the loads of mediocre dross that I imagine fills most of the virtual world just as it fills the real world just to get to something good? Unless you dig the ‘walk on the wild side’ thing. I don’t. I want content, not teenaged japanese transvestite llamas. Not that they don’t have a right to be that. Just not on my time. In my living room.
2. Why limit your creativity to a single circumscribed set of tools that SL gives you to create with? Why not use best-of-breed software that fits the application you’re interested in and create content that way? It’s like constructing a complex apparatus made of hoses and nozzles and jamming them up your nose, ducktaping them, and taking the whole thing in the pool and then saying “Look what I was able to do with what I had!” rather than going down to the sporting good store and getting a snorkel. That’s great for McGuyver, but I think not so good for instructional technology.
I’m a believer in using the right tools to accomplish my goals. Not to mention using the tools that I’ll be using in the real world when I’m getting paid to do what I’ve got a degree for it. This is a student’s point of view.
3. Y’know what students would do in a SL world? They’d hook up. That’s it. Except for a few. I think the last thing frontal-lobe challenged hormonal teens need is a lot of distractions in the way of their information. I’m sure you can provide anecdotal evidence to the contrary, but that’s my opinion, and I’m sticking with it. It looks like the vast majority of folks are doing just that already. What in the world makes you think that would change?
4. Bells and whistles. If you want to fly, and you have an x-box, I’m betting you’ll go for the x-box. I would. Those games are frickin’ cool. Why wade through chatrooms just to use a semi-lame gui that lets you fly through them? Try an x-wing! Now that’s flying!
On the fat people thing: My comment wasn’t meant to disparage horizontal/vertical-ratio-challenged people. Rather, it was meant to illustrate that the first thing people jump to is appearances. That’s something I love about the net, and blogs. Nobody needs to know what you look like, and you are judged on your ideas. In SL, I gotta assume it’s about intrigue and flirting, since most people seem to be lookin like porn stars. If the place is about creativity, then why all the impossible boobs and cut abs? Where’s the freckles? Where’s the love handles? Where’s the myopia?
Martha, I appreciate and applaud your avatar’s quirkiness. Good on you. It sounds as though you are not trying to disappear into a silly fantasy, but rather to explore sides of yourself through this SL place. Gardner, same thing.
But I guarantee you are by far the exception to the rule.
Look. I took a look at the place and I saw a less-than-realistic experience standing in for a real world all around us. I saw what the preponderance of the Net has become, only in VRML: Sex, Gambling, Flirting, Intrigue, Fantasy, and a rather flat imitation of real social paradigms, robbed of most of the nuance that is available in face-to-face contact. But with pockets of genuinely interesting content and creativity.
I’ll stick with google, scientific journals, good software, blogs, books, and bugging my professors for information and “actual reality” for my interpersonal interactions. And I’m gonna stick to flirting with my wife. π
Dan,
I think we’re working from such different assumptions in some respects that we may end up simply having to agree to disagree. No problem there, but your comment does deserve a reply, and so I’ll try to muster one.
A couple of general point to begin. Saving the bathwater for the sake of the baby sounds like what we all do every day if we’re trying to preserve the best of civilization and build on it. Even the comparatively rarefied world of Ph.D.-level discourse has plenty of bathwater, and there are many days I’d like to open a window and heave-ho, but then I’d be committed to finding a bathwater-free zone of intellectual discourse, and I don’t believe those exist.
What you say about Second Life has been said, over the years, about novels, popular music, movies, and most major cities. There’s a great irony in your praise of blogs, given that I’ve had many, many conversations with people who describe and judge the blogosphere in exactly the terms you use to describe and judge SL. I’m not arguing that there is no dross in any of those things. Quite the contrary. My argument is simply that the good things–and the opportunities for building and sharing good things–are worth the wade.
And after awhile, you don’t have to wade much anymore. In real life, you know where the good novels are, and you go there. You know where the bad parts of town are, and you don’t go there. Second Life is no different, except that once you figure out how to find the good stuff, the teleport function means you can go to those places directly there and skip, say, the Welcome Area, which I imagine is the place you found yourself in right away, and which is not at all representative of the good stuff in Second Life (though it does resemble the Tenderloin district I had to walk through to get to downtown San Francisco).
Taking a look at Second Life is not enough to get to the good stuff. Spending a day in Manhattan doesn’t exactly close the book on the NYC experience either. π
I’m not sure what you mean about limiting creativity to SL’s tools. I don’t plan to limit my creative output, or my students’ creative output, to a virtual world called Second Life. But if I want to place certain parts of this creative output in the context of a persistent virtual world, SL offers compelling opportunities for me and my students to do so. Like the real world of, say, a college campus, SL can also be used for intoxication, gambling, and sex. But I don’t see that abuse as an argument for eliminating residential colleges, and I don’t see it as a justification for dismissing SL.
Sure, use the right tools to accomplish your goals. But if one of your goals is to imagine new goals and new tools, you’re in the realm of the virtual already. SL is a useful and unique virtual space, for reasons Martha has already explained very well. There are plenty of virtual spaces to use–including language itself, which has its own share of abuses but which, for better or worse, is a tool we all build and share. There are ethical issues to engage, yes, but complex possibilities can’t be judged at a glance.
X-Wings? You bet. And these days, every game manufacturer has a robust set of online options for their games. Turns out people like to compete and fly their x-wings in formation. I’m more interested in looking, talking, and building these days than I am in shooting, so SL is more interesting to me than, say, Star Wars Battlefront, but I’ve watched my son play SWB online, using a “team speak” server for real-time voice interaction, and I can see that there are very cool things to do in that world with other people. And you can’t beat the transportation. For me right now, though, worlds one can build in are more rewarding. Ultimately, some combination of buildability and cool in-world games would be most satisfying.
As far as my being an outlier in Second Life, why should that be surprising or an argument against that virtual world? Thing is, there are other outliers in there as well, and they’ve built a lot of the stuff I’m most interested in. Strike up a conversation with someone and you’ll soon learn if there are any points of contact.
Yes, it’s the net all over again, because the net is the world all over again. How could it be otherwise? The products of culture are us.
And Dan, if you want freckles, love handles, or myopia, there’s nothing stopping you or anyone from writing or buying the scripts that’ll put them there. (Seriously, though, who would choose to be myopic?) Over time, I believe SL will engage these issues and you’ll see more avatar variety. Yet what better place to engage these issues by trying them out? MIT’s Rodney Brooks says that we try to understand life by building something lifelike. Sounds like a good reason for SL to me. If I can build, I can choose the understanding I want to work on. And if SL isn’t cutting it for me, I can always pick up my guitar or a book. Shut down the computer altogether. Flirt with my wife. In real life. There’s no either-or here that I can see.
Thanks for your spirited and thoughtful comment, Dan. You push me to make my arguments better, and to keep my own judgment sharp and complex. And it all happened on a blog! π
I have to say I have a visceral response to pornography on the Internet, and a constitution ill-suited to experiencing this junk and other disturbing stuff on my way to Nirvana. Funny, because in the city, I can walk through disturbing neighborhoods. I grew ennured to men exposing themselves to me on a regular basis. But, there is something about these pixels, and their distillation of reality that makes it painful.
Something would have to happen to me cognitively to give over the notion of a context of the messy, all-too-human world to that which is on the screen. But, I am hyper-aware that the screen is on my lap, on the sofa, in the room, in the “real” (for lack of a better term) world, and so still experience the screen as content divorced from the kindness I give a living, breathing individual who can’t help but show me his “goods” as I’m walking across East 19th street. I can give the crazy guy the space to be crazy. I can’t give that same person the space to be crazy on the screen, on my lap, on the sofa, in the room, in the “real” world. Why my compassion is wiped away, I don’t know. But, on the screen, he becomes massively disturbing to me, as counterintuitive as that can seem. I’m just aware that the hopeless schnook with the dumb compulsion becomes a sinister being when he has to have the presence of mind to login, create avatars, and build a virtual sexual space. That’s a mental illness of a higher magnitude in my book. But, that’s just me, and I’m aware of that, too.
All that is to say, I am one of those skiddish types that would be disturbed if SL as it is were used as a teaching tool. The idea of using space to express what the paper, or the classroom, cannot is extremely intriguing. But, I really hate online porn and baser escapism of that nature because I’ve seen people and families destroyed by it. That point of view is no less valid than inviting virtual experience of all stripes. We all have our attractions and aversions. And, as Stuart Smalley would say “That’s OK!”
I gotta say, I have no desire to witness virtual pornography either–in SL or anywhere else online. And, in my limited time on SL so far, I really can’t say that I have witnessed it all that much. Yes, there are lots of scantily clad residents, whose choices as to how to enhance their avatars have raised my eyebrows. And, yes, I’ve wandered into stores where the displays were beyond what I would call appropriate. I walked out.
But, by no means, would I describe my overall experience in SL to be steeped in pornography. In fact, most of my activity over the last week has consisted of me wandering lovely landscapes virtually alone, simply soaking in the sites. And, while I find it fascinating that people choose to engage in provacative andmextreme behavior when given the possiblity to invent themselves in any way they’d like (again, interesting, not surprising), I do not find the behavior itself compelling or particularly interesting. And I take steps to avoid having to be exposed to it.
As Gardner points out, when you enter SL you can quickly move past that welcome area and seek out places that are inviting and intriguing. Once you’ve found those places and created a few landmarks, your experience of SL can be easily filtered by those choices. And, I imagine, that’s the kind of approach that would be most appropriate (and is probably being taken) when using SL for education.
Check these out. I think they make clear what I am saying very poorly. The second one is by Ethan Zuckerman, who brings a real-world perspective to what it is I am driving at, and actually says some thing compassionately that I was thinking when I wrote my posts, but didn’t include cause I’m prone to snarkiness plus I am a hunt-and-pecker.
Please read. Good articles. Let me know your thoughts.
http://www.secretlair.com/index.php?/clickableculture/entry/ethan_zuckerman_gives_second_life_a_reality_check/
http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=545
I’ll read those articles, Dan. In return, I’d ask that you commit the same amount of time to checking out the worthy places in SL. Fair?
Cathy, I agree that there’s a paradoxical immediacy to the virtual world that the computer brings into the real world (there is a real world, I believe, so I won’t put it in quotation marks :-)). That’s one of the things that makes the 2D, online, rendered world of SL oddly compelling. It really is like a co-constructed movie, or a living real-time storybook, framed by and running with real life. And yes, there are many stories in the city, or in the world.
But hey, friends, Martha is right: Second Life is far more than adult nightclubs and casinos. Mature areas are clearly labeled, on maps and in searches. One can filter such sites in any search (the default is NOT to include mature areas). The folks who want to go to those places have that option. Those of us who don’t, ditto. You’ll find some coarse language at the welcome area, at times, and yes some of the avatars can be off-putting, but even at the densest concentration of off-putting avatars in the PG areas is not anything near what I’d call pornographic. It’s easy to exaggerate the tawdriness of the place, I think, and “the place” is by now so huge that it’s difficult to generalize about any of it.
Do I think that my students should hang out in the welcome area, ogle the natives, and soak up the chit-chat? Nope. Do I think they should visit the worthy places? Absolutely. Do I think we can build those places together? Yes indeed. Why waste time on Second Life? Because the possibilities it offers for deep, multimodal symbolic building and communication are vast and powerful. As Martha has been teaching me, they can (not must, not will, can) help us bootstrap thinking and creativity into “4D” levels, where we can communicate and build by manipulating symbols that incorporate text, music, graphic design, even ambient sound design. (The wind, waves and bird cries at the Lauk’s Nest are quite lovely together.) By building and walking around and flying through this environment together, we can learn something that might otherwise be hidden from us.
Anyone can decide that SL is not for them, and I certainly respect that choice. I’m not shilling for Linden Labs. That said, the opportunities here are too rich to deny or dismiss. Examples: The BBC has a parcel here. One builidng is up so far, for a Radio 1 weekend in May. I got my free t-shirt, so this anglophile is happy. USC Annenberg has a campus there, as does the New Media Consortium and Stanford. I don’t believe the Stanford campus is publicly accessible, alas, but the NMC campus is going public very soon, a decision I applaud them for.
Linden Labs has one staffer whose job is focused on enabling real life education in Second Life. With apologies for length, I’ll copy-and-paste the information below.
SL is not nirvana, or an educational panacea, any more than textbooks or discussion groups are. It’s another set of possibilities, and I’ll take all of those I can get, while recognizing that it is my responsibility as an educator to help students learn how to manage the extent and direction of those possibilities. Just like in real life.
There are links in the original notecard I’ve copied below, but since they only work in SL, they don’t appear here.
Real Life Education Places in Second Life
Here’s a list of publically accessible places in Second Life where educators and students are working together as part of a real life class or educational research project. If you would like your place listed here and want a directory kiosk on your own land, please contact Pathfinder Linden.
This notecard is frequently updated, so please check back at this kiosk in the near future for an updated list.
LAST UPDATE: 06.20.06 (newest additions will now be added at the top of this notecard)
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The Social Simulation Research Lab is a public hub of cyber-research resources in Second Life. The Lab’s library brings together over 50 publications on the social science of internet research, computer-mediated communication and online studies, plus many links to researchers’ homepages, other online resources and online cyber-research journals.
Contributions are welcome! If you have a paper/resource you’d like to add to the SSRL’s shelves or would like to suggest one, email secondlife@surrey.ac.uk
The SSRL is a non-partisan project, but is the home of University of Surrey PhD student Mynci Gorky (aka Aleks Krotoski). It’s also the base for the Second Life Social Network research project, which aims to map the social relationships of SL residents in order to understand how information flows through social virtual worlds like Second Life. More information on the research is available at http://www.surrey.ac.uk/~psp1ak
You can contribute! Everyone with an account is welcome to take part and help us fill in the gaps in the SL social network! Participating is easy – simply go to the online survey at http://www.psy.surrey.ac.uk/survey21 and fill in your SL friends. Further questions help to determine where they’re placed in your immediate social network. This information will be added to the SL network to generate a meta-map of interaction.
The associated SocialSim blog also tracks changes in the project and makes announcements of interest to cyber-research and online culture. Check it out at http://socialsim.blogspot.com
Finally, the SSRL is also host to events, including in-world discussions and lectures with leading cyber-researchers from around the world. If you would like to participate in this exciting lecture series or would like to suggest a researcher, please contact the SSRL at secondlife@surrey.ac.uk!
Look forward to seeing you here.
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Visit Info Island! Come to the Alliance Second Life Library to get information, attend programs of interest including book discussions and authors, find out about great books to read, and more. The Island also has a Medical Library where you can get information and programs on health, a history gallery garden where you can get to know people from the past, a scifipod in the sky where different science fiction writers will be featured each month, and a beautiful rock pond garden where you can relax. Alliance Library System is spearheading this project, but librarians and others from around the world are involved to create a library presence in Second Life.
Info Island also has a Writing/Performance Center, the ICT Library, Techsoup.org, and World Bridges.
Please contact Lorelei Junot with ideas and suggestions.
For more information, visit http://www.infoisland.org
If you’d like to participate in the RL discussion about Second Life Library 2.0, please also consider joining the Google group: http://groups.google.com/group/alliancesecondlife
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BetterWorlds.com introduces virtual solutions to real world adaptive learning education with our new line of products, the Better Worlds VIEW System. (The Virtual Interactive Educational Workshop System).
Better Worlds VIEWs brings technology based immersive learning to the classroom. Using adaptave learning concepts in a virtual world environment will enable educators to offer nearly any sort of first hand learning experience that they can imagine. With Better Worlds VIEWs virtually any life experience can be simulated in a realistic and immersive environment.
Of course, we realize that an animated virtual Zebra is no substitute for the sights and smells of a trip to a real zoo, but we believe that combined with one or two such real life trips, virtual worlds offer a way to continue these types of lessons back in the classroom. In fact, some studies researching the use of virtual reality for concept reinforcement and adaptive learning, along with real world exposure to the lesson content show that such combined experiences are often competely successful. We have lots of supporting evidence and we’d be thrilled to share it with you. Some of this information will be made available via our web site at BetterWorlds.com and some will be made available through video, notecard and live presentations made here at Better Worlds Center. See one of our in-world staff members for more concrete evidence about the success rates of using virtual worlds for real world education today.
News Flash: Better Worlds is considering non-profit status allowing us to provide low cost or free educational opportunities to disabled and disadvantaged students. If you are interested in helping to sponsor our activities, contact us for more information on how you can help out.
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The ICT Library is a not-for-profit endeavor formed to reach out to members of the educational community working within Second Life. Funds received from sponsors will be used to expand the knowledge of SL members who are interested in using this virtual environment as a way to mediate classes or training.
It is based on a premise of taking information that exists on websites (ex., http://www.simteach.com, http://www.secondlife.com/education, various blogs, etc.) and putting it in SL for display and demonstration. The library hopefull will help solve the difficulty many new educators have in finding useful tools and ideas (rather than leave it to serendipity). Central to the Library’s goals is the tenet that outreach to educators is essential in helping expand understanding and knowlege of media tools. Specifically, the ICT Library will:
– serve as a repository of tools and scripts that would be useful for instruction (both commercial and “free” tools)
– give hints and tips about how to best use the virtual environment to promote higher levels of thinking and constructivist approaches to learning
– provide case studies of how educators are using tools
– show pictures/descriptions of innovative educational projects
– offer small grants to spur innovation in educational implementation
For more details, or if you are interested in sponsoring the ICT Library, please contact Milosun Czervik.
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Our vision for USC Annenberg Island is that it be an international virtual worlds portal for public diplomacy. Our goals are to explore how virtual worlds can be used as effective tools to bridge cultural gaps, to foster new ways to resolve conflict, and to learn and teach new skills in communicating with each other to build a better world.
Click here for a detailed description: ΓΕ‘
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A public space to share information about real life education in Second Life as well as to hold meetings of the “Real Life Education in Second Life” group. Be sure to visit the kiosk in the photo and click on it to learn more about education opportunities, our Campus:Second Life program, and how you can participate!
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Most of the Campus: Second Life classes are held right on a region named “Campus” (easy to remember, eh?). If you look around this region, you’ll see different classes working on various projects on their individual plots of land. There’s also have a public meeting area, a sandbox for temporary building, a public pictureboard for sharing fun photos, a sculpture garden for relaxing between classes, and a campfire for late-nite fireside chats. For more infomation, please see this notecard:
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Glidden Campus
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Glidden Campus is a replica of a real life campus in midwest USA. Altgeld Hall is the main structure on the Glidden Campus and was originally built in 1895 by the Architect Charles Eliphalet Brush of Chicago. This 130,000 square foot building was then renovated in 2004 and built in the virtual world in 2006. In order to preserve the immersive quality of the GLidden Campus landscape our virtual classrooms are 600m in the sky. To access them use the bus stop/teleport.
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The course Production of Architecture at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm examines the history, theory and practice of representation and production of architecture. We will see that projective systems affects our understanding of space through the evolution of media such as painting, photography, film and computer generated imagery.
Fourth year students of architecture has started LOL architects; the worlds largest virtual architecture office. Visit us at our office: The Office or look at PDFs, powerpoints, images and texts on the internet.
For info: http://www.unrealstockholm.org, IM me or e-mail at tor@llp.se (SL name: Kapital Metropolitan)
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This Campus:Second Life plot is located outside of the main Campus region. Victor Highlander is faculty in the department of Computer Science and Engineering at University of California Riverside and directs the Riverside Graphics Lab in developing cutting-edge techniques for computer graphics, animation, and virtual environments with a focus on physically based modeling and human animation. He will be teaching a course on “Video Game Creation and Design” using Second Life.
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This Campus:Second Life plot is located outside of the main Campus region. Rhys Soothsayer is doing research into the teaching abilities of virtual environments at the University of Derby, United Kingdom.
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This Campus:Second Life plot is located outside of the main Campus region. Doc Flimflam is a professor of film & media studies at the University of Oregon. He will be teaching a course on “New Media & Digital Culture” in April 2006 in which the class will on occassion meet in Second Life.
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Well, it’s not really an education “place” per se, but rather my inworld office. One of my roles at Linden Lab is to help the real life educator community and run the Campus:Second Life program. If you’re a student or educator and have any questions about Second Life, please feel free to visit me at my office or send me an IM. I can also be reached at pathfinder@lindenlab.com.
Take care,
-Pathfinder Linden
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The networked kiosk system used to distribute this notecard was developed with scripts by Sasun Steinbeck. If you would like more information about the system, please feel free to contact her directly. Thanks, Sasun!
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Just read the Tony Walsh piece and found it so-so. Then I read the Ethan Zuckerman blog and went “whoa.” Though I don’t agree with everything he’s saying, he does offer a powerful and articulate response to cyberutopianism (I also resist cyberutopianism, by the way, but that’s another story). The real keeper for me, though, is not so much Ethan’s blog as the comments that follow. That’s one astonishing comment trail. By the time I got to the quote from Auden’s “Musee de Beaux Art” I found my mind well and truly blown.
What an educational opportunity that debate alone represents! I’m humbled.
Thanks for that link, Dan. I don’t know that you and I would draw the same conclusions from the blog + comments, but I’m really grateful to you for sharing that link.
Yeah good comments. Actually, I’ll bet we got pretty much the same message. I’m not dismissing SL–just trying to put it in perspective. It seemed from your earlier comments that you regarded it as a sort of panacea, and from this quote
I can see that I was wrong.
I’ll be happy to check out good content. I just want to know: is there a way I can avoid all the cr@p on my way there? That’s what I don’t like. I don’t want to be advertised to, in general. How do I do that?
Yes indeed. Numerous ways.
The easiest would be for us to meet in SL and walk/fly/teleport around. Along the way I could show you some of my newbie strategies. Maybe we could even go to one of the meetings sponsored by the new citizens group–can’t remember the exact name, but they have a very strong “help the newcomer” ethos. I’m enough of a “let me drive first” kind of person that I haven’t gone to that event yet, but I’m starting to see how valuable it would be.
I’m also thinking of a future blog in which I spell out some of the things I’m learning about how to avoid the cr*p and find the amazing stuff. There are strong connections between those strategies and the kind of “you may also enjoy this book” stuff that you find at Amazon.com, or in a blogroll.
In the wake of our discussion this evening, I logged onto SL for just a bit and deliberately made contact with the first two people I saw. Both were newbies. Both were looking a bit lost. (Interesting that an avatar can look “lost”–or act lost, really.) I gave them both a couple of landmarks. One I pointed to the Pathfinder’s Picks utility. Since we were both hovering in Lauk’s Nest (one of the most beautiful sights I’ve seen in SL so far) right next to the sign on the side of the cliff, it seemed the thing to do.
This was the first time I deliberately tried to help out a newbie. All my teacher-reflexes sparked up. It was a strange sensation. It felt awfully human. So thanks for that side-effect of our debate.
Some days, I feel like I’m learning a ton. Most days, these days.
P.S. Your “cr@p” turns into an automatic mailto in Word Press. For some reason that strikes me as very funny.
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