At the end of March, I wondered aloud whether companies like IBM were really serious about doing PR in Second Life (SL). That got me quite a few comments, mostly from people who, on even cursory examination, clearly have stakes in SL.
"illuminator" agreed that SL isn't work-safe, or home-safe with children in the house, but encouraged me to spend more time and explore the system, having found it fascinating himself. Traven Sachs explained some of what is going on with the deceptively porn-heavy "popular places" list in SL, and offered to show me around the system. Sachs runs Wolfhaven Productions, which is a vendor of SL artifacts.
QTLabs, an IT consultant specializing in 3D virtual worlds, likened porn in SL to streetwalkers in any large city, and offered the opinion that "Second Life and 3D virtual worlds are changing the way humans communicate and share information." 57 Miles, a blogger who writes about SL, said "For some it just grabs you. It did me. For others it takes some perseverance before you become fully immersed." 57 Miles also offered to help me out on SL.
Jane Janus, who runs seminars in SL, admitted that SL is buggy, and opined that "the search engine really is awful." But then she went on to claim that
Barack Obama is rolling out a second life campaign strategy because the demographics of users are 20 - 32, his target market.
Universities are putting their digital libraries on second life. Virtual classrooms are far superior than current online courses.
The opportunites are endless. And inevitable.
Ahem. That's probably going farther than I'm willing to accept, and verges on "resistance is futile." Borg, anyone?
Phoenix Psaltery invited me to check out the Metaverse Messenger (M2), a weekly newspaper that covers events in SL. Psaltery is a staff writer for M2. Alliez Mysterio, a real-estate developer in SL, offered to show me around SL, with the coment that "yes it can be addictive but I guarantee you it will be the best addiction you ever thought you had."
Jon Udell pointed me at a video he'd made last fall, http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/10/16.html. It was something he himself described as "snarky" at the time. I couldn't view it using IE at the time, but I was able to see it using FireFox when I tried again, and I can see it in IE now that I have installed a new version of QuickTime. Jon's point, which was finally clear when I could actually view the video, was that the use of 3D in SL at the IBM press event he "attended" was basically gratuitous: technically interesting, but offering little real advantage over the 2D Web.
Finally, Petey, who writes a blog that's mostly about how SL sucks, gave it all a different perspective:
Don't let the kool-aid drinkers fool you, Martin. Second Life is not the future of the Internet. It is no social revolution. It is, instead, an intrepidly marketed and somewhat interesting MMORPG that will, I think, be dead within the year.
Legal issues and eventually revealed hyperbole (like the fact that less than .002% of the registered residents have a positive monthly cash flow of *any* fraction of a cent despite claims of economic opportunity) will show people that while Second Life may be a fun place to build something cool, funny, or interesting, it is not by any means revolutionary in character.
I remember the 1978 Jonestown tragedy fairly clearly. "Kool-aid drinkers" isn't funny unless you don't know what it really meant. Other than that, Petey makes a lot of sense.
I have been back to SL once or twice since my last posting. The system was working a lot better than it had been, and I was able to go through a full orientation tour. It was a surprisingly pleasant experience: I discovered that there was sound I could turn on, and that I liked the music being played just then. It was evening in SL, the avatars were behaving themselves, and the island setting of the orientation was charming. I could almost feel the evening breeze.
I could get to like this. Now, if I only had time to explore...
Posted by Martin Heller on April 30, 2007 06:00 AM
