While written in January, an in-depth review of architeture in Second Life picks up a recurring thought I’ve had over that the geography of Second Life has become increasingly narrowed to the results of the search facility, and wondering whether SL is missing what may be a criticial technological underpinning if it is to remain a progressive platform allowing the mapping of information in 3-dimensions.

As they comment:

Not to sound like a virtual Jane Jacobs, but by actively moving through these worlds we begin to understand the nuance of character of the different parts of the map and have a richer experience because of it.

Before my time, in order to travel through Second Life you needed to find hub or you needed to walk or fly. As the size of Second Life grew, this became an increasing barrier to fairness for business and prevented users from interacting with content, each other, and events at times of their own choosing. The decision to allow users to teleport anywhere immediately changed the accessibility of content but left a gap – namely, an emerging georgraphy that allowed users to create mental models of how the content of Second Life was stored and organized.

Search is Not a Map
The search function was the recourse, although cottage industries of blogs and Web sites attempted to help users clear through the clutter, highlighting, for example, the best furniture, clothes or skins. Recent improvements to search, which previously didn’t allow multi-word or boolean operators, have attempted to make sure that relevant search results point individuals in the right direction.

The reality is, however, that for most users there’s little difference from the mainland, private islands, or individual plots. If they arrive at a place that delivers on a promise of (for example) the best beds or prim pets, then they’ve arrived. However, this is a lot like shopping on a standard e-commerce Web site. The universe of choice is limited to what’s in front of you, and there’s little chance of serendipity.

The concept of a traversable geography kept the concept of chance and virtual architecture as an emerging language for communicating concepts and content. Like a library, you may go to a certain section looking for a book, but along the way discover something on a topic you weren’t expecting to be interested in. It’s common to teleport into a store or location and out again without looking around to see what the neighbours are like.

Better Toolsets Needed Appropriate to 3D Spaces
This may seem insignficant. But as 3D worlds evolve, we will gain new perceptual and display tools that help us to browse, categorize and link information in far more sophisticated ways than 2D environments. The work of reflective architecture is a hint of what’s to come.

At a bare mimimum, tools from 2D sites should be extended into 3D spaces so we can start to create linkages and associations in the absence of a georgraphic metaphor. For example, linking objects and areas of SL much like Amazon links books. “If you liked this shoe store, you might also like….” Or “People who bought this sex bed also bought….”

If Second Life is to fulfill its mission to represent the “everywhere Metaverse” it’s time to start thinking about what makes a 3D world different from the flat Web in how we think about, search and represent content and their connections.

Currently, SLURLs are nothing more than URLs and search isn’t much more or meaningful than a pre-Google Yahoo scan. Even current popular information organizers like tag clouds, eBay power seller icons, or Amazon ‘recommends’ are difficult to graft onto the SL environment (though not without attempts).

Because SL has effectively abandoned the map as an exploratory mechanism, individual islands or micro-continents are the only ones left exploring the 3D space of SL as a geography, while Linden doesn’t take us much further with search than a quick commerce-focused slice that is flat itself and discourages both serendipity and doesn’t exploit the very technology that SL is built on – 3D clustering of concepts and information.