Comments | kateamdahl: Is Second Life revolutionary?

kateamdahl

Is Second Life revolutionary?

Jun 28, 2009 16:04

On Charlanna's blog (whoops! forgot to link this when I first posted it!), she talked recently about how her expectations for Second Life had kind of dropped a little over time. It's still amazing, I think many of us agree, but it doesn't seem to be turning out to be revolutionary, changing society around us ( Read more... )

shopping, realism, tools, searching, technology, second life

Comments 12

Good points! anonymous June 29 2009, 15:05:01 UTC

You raise some very interesting points, Kate! Don't get me wrong, I still think there are tremendous possibilities that exist for virtual worlds. Your example of being able to virtually try clothes on already exists (to a certain extent) with My Virtual Model. A big part of what I was trying say in my post is that the school of thought that seems to believe you can take what you do in the atomic world and transfer it in the virtual world and somehow it will be revolutionary feels wrong to me. For widespread adoption to take place, it has to feel like a tool that people simply can't live without in the same way that it would be hard to imagine not having an email account. Technology, applications and adoption of virtual worlds will catch up, but IMHO, we're still a loooong way away from being close to that. (plus there are a whole couple of threads that I didn't quite touch on in the post but have been thinking about...one is that we might not even be able to conceive of what the best applications will be until technology catches up ( ... )

Re: Good points! kateamdahl June 29 2009, 15:22:45 UTC

Hi Lanna!

Oh, I *did* forget to say that my post is really a kind of tangent. You brought up the very good point that you can't just bring something into a virtual world and expect it to offer all kinds of special value just because it's virtual. Past that, though, I think even a lot of the things that can offer special value in a virtual world won't be able to appeal to a wide public until they are much more sophisticated in terms of those three things I mentioned.

My Virtual Model is a very good example! It seems like a great idea, but having a sort of online image approximating my body is a very different thing than being able to (if I want) have an online avatar that is pretty much exactly like First Life me, and dragging and dropping things on a Web page is very different from trying things on in a virtual world.

Right now there seem to be a lot of neat ideas and possibilities, but I don't think they'll become major forces in our culture until they're much more advanced than they are.

^^^\ Kate /^^^

anonymous July 1 2009, 10:38:05 UTC

What always puzzles me is that Linden Lab seems to see the only justification of SL to be as a business tool, a tool for corporations. What they are lacking completely is that they created a huge social tool for finding friends, getting involved in social activities or even maintaining long distance relationships. Two friends of mine live 600km apart, and live their relationship live in SL before they can - in the intermediate future - move together. And in fact the "imperfectionism" of SL actually fosters this, because people can easily get involved. "Blue Mars" looks stunning from what I have seen, but not many content creators can achieve this level of realism, and therefore Blue Mars will be more sterile compared to SL. SL is a social platform and allows people to get involved, and meet new people. And that is the "killer feature" of it.

-- Peter Stindberg

ext_196619 July 1 2009, 10:44:06 UTC

test with OpenID

Same issues in First Life gemblue July 2 2009, 21:39:39 UTC

The realism point that you raised is very true -- I commented on this in an earlier post. As for the other two points, it occurs to me that I have the same problem with finding things in First Life that I have in Second Life. Google has been a help, though -- maybe we need a search hud for SL content that guides us to the location of what we're looking for.

As for ease of use, having a more immersive user interface would help with that, but I also notice that much of First Life has ease of use issues. Some day I really need to learn how to ice skate!

Gem
PS -- nice to see you posting again, Kate!

Not quite yet... anonymous July 5 2009, 10:42:39 UTC

I was having a very similar chat with a friend in-world just the other day... our impression was that we in sl are on the leading edge of the wedge, way out in front, using a tetchy, touchy bit of technology that's still just being devised as we speak. I suspect that in some years, the virtual worlds will be teeming. Competition will probably drive improvements and ease of use - then we'll all be able to find the literary discussion salon we've been dreaming of ;))) (Eveline N.) (/me waves to Kate!)

Re: Not quite yet... kateamdahl July 5 2009, 17:29:02 UTC

Hi Evie!

I would *love* a literary discussion salon. (At least, I think I would. There would be dancing, wouldn't there? Although if one can't have dancing without people yelling "Hoooo!" ...)

^^^\ Kate /^^^

faerie_h July 5 2009, 11:39:08 UTC

To be honest I think the greatest limitation to virtual worlds is the attitude towards them of 99.99% of the world. They're just not ready to accept VW yet and VW won't be generally accepted or understood until most people's attitudes change (and let's face it I think we are talking about generational changes).

kateamdahl July 5 2009, 17:27:34 UTC

Hi Faerie! What do you see as the biggest obstacles to people accepting virtual worlds? It's an important subject for Second Life and Resis, I think! Not to mention to me, as my beloved is in that 99.99% you mention ...

faerie_h July 6 2009, 01:58:22 UTC

What does it take to change people's attitudes towards things they don't understand? I wish I knew. People believe what they want to believe ( ... )

faerie_h July 6 2009, 02:00:57 UTC

thank you live journal for removing all my paragraphs so that my reply looks like an unreadable block of text ( ... )