An obvious advantage that a lot of the blog posts thus far have touched upon (and for good reason) is Second Life’s 3d graphical world. Essentially, the representation of place is a powerful way to make people communicate and open up. “In a dominance Western tradition, vision and place are linked through the idea of landscape, which ‘represents a way of seeing – a way in which some Europeans have represented themselves and to others the world about them and their relationship with it’” (Boellstorff 92). This is key into someone opening up on Second Life as opposed to meeting in a chat room or other text based place. It allows for identity and thus people will instinctually judge people on their look in Second Life. Essentially, Second Life is a good platform to open up and meet people.
Let’s look a bit deeper into this though. The chapter of Boellstorff that we read starts out with dialogue about the “glowing monstrosity” called Zazzy’s. It was a virtual shop placed in a virtual neighborhood that was ruining the virtual view. Boellstorff connects this anecdote to the argument above, but notice how the nature of the exchange is itself collaboration on the world. “Try to understand: this club is this woman’s LIFE,” (Boellstorff 90) Samuel says. In Second Life, the virtual world nature really helps people represent a physical aspect to each and every item. To every real item in our “First Life”, there’s probably a representation to one in Second Life. Extending this even further, it’s interesting to look into how owning items has evolved since Second Life was started (Wikipedia is an interesting read here).
Collaboration in Second Life can also be much more complicated than it needs to be, partly for the same reasons. Second Life, in itself, is supposed to be different from the lives that we normally lead, hence the name. It can essentially replace the world we live in, and that comes across quite well in the form of the economy and land that people control. Thus, if we were to use Second Life as a form of real life collaboration, say to finish or work on a project, it wouldn’t work as well since there’s no natural transfer of data or even a necessity to have the virtual nature and advantages of Second Life in that situation.
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I think that you hit on some major points here as far as Second Life as a representation of a place and its allowance for identity. The idea of owning items or land in Second Life is a fascinating topic as it has a transferable value to real dollars and has coined at least one millionaire. However the nature of a developing technology is that users invest a lot of time and effort to re-represent physical items in Second Life with no guarantee that the virtual world platform is going to be around in the future.
ReplyDeleteIf forming an identity is so important to form relationships and as you put it, "instinctually judge people," why do you not think this identity is useful for collaboration. I agree that Second Life is not the most ideal platform for collaboration but I do think the "virtual nature and advantages of Second Life" that you describe are then one aspect that could make Second Life a great tool for collaboration if it lets people interact in a way that is so instinctual.
ReplyDeleteWell maybe I should be clearer. That whole 400 word limit might have made it not as clear :-). But I do think identity is useful for collaboration. But to an extent, we can only really trust the person in the context of Second Life. That is literally who they are in Second Life and trying to translate that trust into our "First Life" doesn't quite work. We can trust that the avatar is the same as the person and it's also pretty well known that people may want to live out their Second Life in a different fashion than their real life (different gender for example).
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