Assignment 9: fmSL Collaboration [Daniel Gustafson, dgg67]

Second Life has a lot of potential to be a unique, serious, useful collaboration technology, but suffers some significant drawbacks limiting its actual usefulness. While Second Life does have the potential to bridge the significant gap in communication efficiency introduced by computers/technology, and does in some circumstances, I feel it fails in proving itself to be truly useful.

One positive aspect about second life is that it gives its users the ability to control every aspect of their character's appearance. From their name and hair color, to their species, users have the ability to customize the look and feel of their avatar in their Second Life. We have already covered (especially in 2450) exactly how avatars can effect the way others interact with you. Something as simple as your avatar's height can influence how you act towards others. I remember reading that in one study, users with taller avatars tended to walk closer to partners than those with shorter avatars. Taller avatars were also more successful at bargaining studies. Alongside theories of behavioral confirmation, it's very clear that SL gives the user significant power to alter how they are perceived, and therefore how others treat them. This inherent customizability could prove useful for SL as a collaboration tool. For instance, if IBM were hosting a meeting within SL, something as simple as making the boss/presenter taller than other avatars in the room could have a significant effect on the delivery and reception of the message. This functionality can also be a negative, however. Because users have complete control over the look of their avatar, almost everything in the sims are conventional signals. Because the data is all stored electronically, it can probably be easily duplicated, and therefore assessment signals become very difficult to come by.

Significant deficiencies in SL become clear when considering synchronicity. In SL there is a significant amount of lag, which is not uncommon for graphic MUDs. Like many MMO games, lag (or stepping away from your keyboard) are used as common excuses. Often times, people are simply lying, and just have more important things to do. Because lag and false “afk”s are so common, SL's value as a collaboration tool is significant decreased.

Due to the lack of Assessment signals, and the diminished salience of time, SL has some significant trust issues to overcome. These two facts in particular work together to create a space where users are unaware of exactly who they are interacting with (or if they are even interacting with someone who is paying attention). These facts wouldn't even be mitigated in a professional circumstance. Performing a meeting over SL effectively tells you nothing about who you were meeting with, and whether they even met with you. The inability to guarantee basic information such as this significantly limits SL as a collaboration tool.