Second Life is a threat to the preservation of the reality-based Internet, according to one poster over on Corante.
“I’ve spent about six hours in Second Life, and that’s enough time to know that I want no part of it, and I’m dedicated to keeping it from infecting the rest of the web. I consider myself an activist for the preservation of a reality-based internet”
Actually, this is a highly engaging and thought-provoking discussion (reality-based Internet activist notwithstanding). What a *shock* to discover Prokofy Neva over there stirring up reactions.
Hearing the skeptics view is first a good reminder of how seriously weak Second Life’s positioning is to the wider world. Its deeper potential and the clearly demonstrated current uses for things like rapid prototyping, education, and collaboration were clearly unknown to the group who kept insisting that Second Life is a game. The snarkiest of the bunch strongly advocated for IRC:
As I’ve said earlier, the visual information is phoney, the physical interaction is a sham, and it all distracts and interferes with the real information that is transmitted. In IRC, the visual element is usually missing, but it’s always possible to post a picture on the web and post the url in the chat. It’s crude compared to Second Life, but it’s REAL. I like seeing what the person I’m talking to looks like; I’m not interested in seeing a pixilated puppet that looks like Wile E Coyote.
IRC???? Oh dear lord.
They further claim that IBM’s involvement in virtual worlds is simply participation in a costume party whose intent is to sell gaming chips. Such a well informed group.
Project Bluegrass anyone? Portable avatars? IBMs interests go far deeper…they’re betting significantly on the metaverse as the next technology that, well, is going to need a technology partner. (Meanwhile, over at Cisco, they’re telepresencing from golf-themed conference rooms).
There were, however, far more astute observations, including a provocative posting on the use of the 3D Internet for accessing information:
I would strongly disagree with parts of this statement. First, the cursor as we know it is dated. The mouse/cursor interface was built for a single person and a flat page for which it is indeed terrifically well suited. But the cursor is limiting for other types of interaction such as collaborative tasks and any other types of data management or data exploration that go beyond the 2D screen. Full body video tracking, gesture tracking, and physical interfaces like Jeff Han’s Multi-Touch Interaction surfaces begin to imagine richer, more collaborative, and physical ways of controlling multiple cursors at once- concepts that will come in handy in future immersive worlds… http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/index.html
As the amount of videos, essays, research, and other user generated content continues to grow, how will users, engineers, and researchers possibly still use the traditional mouse/cursor to find what they are looking for much less to work together to build the next space ship to Mars? Surely the single-user mouse/cursor can only be understood as a great way to navigate certain types of information, not all types of information.
Recommended read…in particular for the marketing department over at Linden Labs, who needs to do some serious work on explaining away the costume ball/gaming imagery. And by the way, shouldn’t a Linden be patrolling the blogs and posting? Their cone of silence is part of what leaves them stuttering when the latest negative press report hits the nightly news.
Oooh, good stuff, Dusan! Costume balls, indeed. I don’t think that’s the issue. Second Life, or for that matter any virtual world – in the present or future – is and will be what we make of it.
Want to get real? There are already companies that will recreate your Real Self into an avatar. We use our voices. There is a section in our profiles where we can state as much information about Real Selves as we like. Universities and museums are recreating their hallowed buildings and campuses… but all this is on a very plastic level. What about virtual worlds as a tool? Distance learning, realtime global collaboration, using the grid as a blueprint for architecture and design and all sorts of platforms for progress that directly impact our Real Life.
Mostly, I believe this individual has not had even a glimmer of understanding of the psychological effect that being handed an inexpensive yet Super Powerful tool for creativity will have on global productivity.
There will always be naysayers and luddites, but I think this person’s concerns are pretty lame. For me, the real nail-bitters of moving into a 3D Internet are the CO2 consequences to the environment of all those servers, the social and anthropological consequences of people working in isolation (as social as virtual worlds are, you cannot smell a rose or shake hands), and then there’s the addiction factor… knowing when to stop… and stepping_away_from_the _computer, to run out and get some exercise and roses in your cheeks.
The next few years are going to be very interesting, aren’t they?
I couldn’t agree more Bettina…and just want to add that ignoring Second Life as a window for what to come also ignores its growing integration with the Web itself, and cross-over with the “real”.
Augmented reality, embedded Web objects in virtual environments (whether Croquet, or SL this spring, or Metaplace in April), and mixed reality events will just add to the soup. The metaverse is fast coming, (has arrived and is expanding) and those who want to chat in IRC about the coming plague of “costume-ball based worlds” will wake up one day to wonder why people found some things easier, more intuitive, and more engaging in the metaverse than they do on the “flat” Web.
The collaborative Web came courtesy of Wikipedia. The social Web comes courtesy of Facebook and its predecessors and followers. Open source arrived with Linux. And 3D environments will be an alternative bridge across these concepts, societies, maps, tools – call them what you will.
And it will bring with it intuitive ways to view and interact with information (reams and reams of it), powerful vehicles for self-expression (see my earlier post on the emotive avatar article in Harvard Business Review) and collaborative work environments where we can “see” a project/corporation/vision – hierarchy gone, feminine corporation arrives, the role of the craftsperson celebrated.
And, um…well, not sure where that leaves IRC.
And finally…one of the greatest challenges, I think, for the early pioneers of these spaces is to articulate that the virtual does not replace the real, and to help translate the recursiveness of virtual worlds in a way that betters us as individuals and societies and yes, that includes roses in your cheeks.