I like to think that I am just behind the curve on techie, internet like things but I realised just how behind the curve when I chanced upon this video of a Second Life designer making a virtual guitar of Suzanne Vega's performance in the Second Life virtual world. She became the first major recording artist to perform live in Second Life in avatar form. The video is quite beautiful really:
For those of you who are dummies like me, Second Life is a virtual world. There are nearly 7 million people there. There are other virtual worlds like Entropia (they have just signed a massive deal in China). These are not really games - there are no points or targets - just spaces to live. People can make things in there, like this guitar. People can make money there.
Problem is I don't have enough time to live this life let alone a second one, so I think I'll pass for now, nosily gazing at this other world over the fence.
4 comments:
The implication of your internet-techie self-assessment is that I'm just about catching up with Galileo! But I am interested in what's involved, and particlarly the positive social potential in a globalised world. For instance, does this not provide a very promising environment for handling the 'office at home' issue in that it is not just a technical platform for 'doing the work' with contacts limited by the company etc. but provides a very much user led social context within which to locate the work activity?
Will be fascinating to see where this all leads - even if one can't comprehend the means of propulsion!!
I think people do do work there, in the sense that they make money through Second Life, sell products etc (there is an Apple store there) but I think trying to use it as a work space would be rather like trying to plonk your lapdown in Harrods main hall and writing your paper. It is very much an entertainment space at the moment. A friend of mine once had an internet startup company that was trying to provide a virtual environment for meetings (you could see the person speaking and they could see your avatar and conversation could therefore be managed and directed in a natural way) but I don:t know what happened to that.
I take your point - and like the simile! There was a recent G report about the Entropia/China deal which 'spread' to broader issues and i am sure that it referred to a major international conference being conducted via Second Life (I think). Anyway I am still intrigued by the social potential/implications. The trouble is it is being viewed in political circles here as creating a 'problem' - the fact that a young person can be interacting with people in, say, Kansas and Delhi but not with their local community. They are, alas, therefore not seeing themselves as British' enough! I don't see it as either/or but as complementary and positive.
My God! The next thing we know it they`ll be reading Kafka, and Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky and Homer and Tagore and Murakami and then where will we be? What about Kipling! A story about a boy in India! Before we can blink an eye they`ll all be international citizens!.
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