Second Life would work well as a virtual environment that allows users to disconnect from real life and meet people, express themselves and do things that they normally wouldn’t be to do in real life. It’s immersive qualities would work very well for tasks such as real estate open houses or tours in the virtual world. By providing a “sense of place” and giving users a “sense of self” in the form of their customizable avatar, as outlined by Professor McLeod, any tightly or loosely coupled task in which just a shared physical space is necessary but does not need to be completely realistic, such as a virtual Easter Egg hunt, can be replicated to some accuracy using Second Life.
Intricate interactions that incorporate body language and emotion are much harder to convey in Second Life due to the limitations of user’s scripts. For example it would be very difficult to have an argument or negotiation session via Second life due to the huge sociotechnical gap in ability to convey emotion or body language. The issue of trust also comes up when considering that businesses like IBM use Second Life as an environment for meetings; the reduced cues and range of avatars can effect the levels of trust that otherwise would be higher in a Ftf interaction.
The concept of time is complicated in Second Life due to the fact that there are users from all over the globe. Boellstorf talks about how “Even when place becomes virtual, time remains actual,” which is apparent in how users in different time zones often miss out on events that are centered on the Pacific Time default of many events in Second Life.
In the reading, Boellstorf mentions lag and how it plays a serious part in interactions because it breaks the constancy of virtual time. Processing power and therefore the fluidity of interactions is limited by the number of prims and scripts used in certain area so Second Life is still not an idea platform to design fully immersive environments with realistic interaction from scripts. The idea of time also comes into play in that there is a conscious trade-off of user’s real world time and the time they spend in Second Life; thus users need to be heavily entrenched in the community or economy to receive the benefits of investing a lot of time in Second Life.
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I like the idea of real estate open houses to encourage social interaction and immersive experience. Because of the shared space, the whole idea of Second Life is to feel involved, experiment virtual space and at the same time, socialize by sharing observations and ideas to each other.
ReplyDeleteThus, Second Life would be useful for social purposes to bringing people together in more intimate settings where they can get to know each other better. As you said, I don't think Second Life would be efficient for problem solving, negotiations, and generating ideas.
Nice post. I agree that it may be hard to convey body language in Second Life. Also, the cues for impression formation are reduced, which results in fewer assessment signals. This makes it more difficult to accurately determine identities of other users online, since avatars can be created at the user's discretion. They do not have to entirely resemble the user's identity, which brings up issues of trust as you mentioned.
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