Friday, January 05, 2007
Some Thoughts on Second Life
CROSSPOSTED FROM IMAGESPACE--ARTS AND WEB 2.0
Second Life reminds me a lot of LambdaMOO, where I met my wife. While Lambda is entirely text based, Second Life is a sort of strange hybrid of LambdaMOO and the Sims wrapped into one. Lambda's appeal was, and still is, the immediacy of the experience. I am fortunate enough to have made some pretty terrific friends there but it did prove to be a tremendous time suck. I still visit occasionally and it is nice to note that the old characters are still there engaging in the same word play.
Word play--that is an essential element in keeping text based environments interesting. Without the rhyming, non-sequiteurs, and puns, places like LambdaMOO would become deadly boring. That said, the environments that folks are creating on Second Life make half the fun exploring.
Second Life now has a greater GDP than some small countries. That is a remarkable feat. Many things are for sale like land and clothing.
What does this have to do with the Arts Nonprofit community. Interestingly, quite a bit. First off, many non-profits have taken up residence in Second Life setting up virtual offices. Reuters was one of the first real live companies to do this but since then hundreds of others have done the same, including the 110th Congress. Tech Soup is setting up a virtual community--an experiment with tenants who will have space in a Commons. Gallery owners have set up virtual galleries of work. The list goes on and on.
What started as a curiosity is taking on a life of its own. It will be interesting to see what comes out of this massive experiment. If you have a little time to kill, get a character and see what the fuss is about. You might find that you enjoy it.
