Next
month I'm participating in a 'fireside chat' on the future of education
with a group of leading thinkers on the subject from around the world
-- in Second Life. We'll all be there, represented by our avatars,
sitting on a beach in this virtual world, warming ourselves by the
bonfire, stretching our legs, having a drink, going for a walk among
the palms, and chatting both in our real voices and by a displayed IM
thread. The chat will be broadcast to others who don't have avatars (so
they can't be present 'in person'), and it will be recorded as a
vlogcast.
Setting up my avatar, pictured above, was easy --
you start by picking from a dozen 'stock' avatars. But it doesn't take
long to learn that you can no more keep the appearance you first
entered Second Life with than you can keep the appearance you first
entered real life with. It just isn't done. You have to reinvent
yourself, change your body, your skin, your hair, your clothes, learn
some new moves.
Second Life is very much like real life -- but not for the reasons you might imagine. It's like real life in these ways:
- There are clear codes of conduct that vary by culture, and these codes are mostly unwritten, and must be learned.
- Unless
you're a master at computer scripts, you're pretty helpless when it
comes to making anything for yourself. You have to buy everything from
others, or pick it up from the popular 'free' malls in Second Life.
- It's a fun place to hang out with friends and people you know.
- It's really lonely if you hang out there alone. There are a lot of lonely people wandering through Second Life.
- Many of the people you meet are trying to sell you something, including sex.
- It's a complex social environment. There is more going on than you can ever know. Life there is unpredictable.
- Most people judge most other people by appearance and first impression.
- Most people are very serious, and quite a few seem quite desperate. Even the dance floors seem rather joyless places.
- There
are a lot of ego games being played. It is, despite appearances, a
fiercely competitive place. This is entirely unnecessary but it is so.
We may adopt new personas with our avatars, but we bring our neuroses
and other emotional baggage with us.
- When someone turns on
their mike and speaks with their 'real' voice, it can really break the
spell. Reality intrudes on one's imaginings. No surprise that most
people in Second Life communicate only with the IM/chat.
- There
is a discouraging amount of reproducing in Second Life exactly what
exists and happens in real life. Given the imaginative potential of
this world, this is ghastly to behold.
- There is the potential
of 'stalking' in Second Life. It's kind of dumb, because there are so
many other characters there you can get infatuated with instead, but
it's possible, easy to do, and next to consequence free.
- You
learn by making mistakes, not by reading manuals. This is embarrassing,
sometimes even humiliating. Some people will be kind when this happens.
Some will be cruel. Most will be indifferent.
In some ways, Second Life is 'better' than real life. Therein lies its seductive appeal:- There
are no physically ugly places there. Some places are surreal,
mindbending like a good trip (in both senses of the word trip),
provocative, stimulating, relaxing.
- There are no physically
ugly people there. Everyone is beautiful, even those who adopt
grotesque appearances and costumes. Almost everyone is young, healthy
and well-endowed. You need no food or water, or to consume anything to
thrive. Everyone lives forever. (Some people may think this is not a good thing.)
- You can buy weapons, but, from what I can tell, you can't hurt or kill anyone with them, so they are pretty rare.
- Everyone can fly and teleport anywhere else instantly. There are no carbon emissions in Second Life, no pollution, no waste.
- With
some limitations (some severe, others not) you can do some interesting
social simulations in Second Life and repeat them over and over,
learning each time. You could, for example, create an intentional
community, and experiment with real people 'living' in it to discover
compatibility, learn to create consensus etc. Some aspects of Second
Life are much like an idealized Gift/Generosity Economy, which is
intriguing to study. You can live quite comfortably, free, or you can
spend a small fortune if you want to.
- You can record anything you want in Second Life, relive it over and over, and erase it whenever you like.
In some ways, Second Life is inferior to real life. These can 'get' to you quite quickly:
- As
superficially beautiful as the many created environments in Second Life
are, they are strangely flat, two-dimensional. They lack the drama of
real-life natural beauty.
- There are no realistic wild creatures
in Second Life. You can choose an animal as your avatar, but you just
can't behave like an animal, and the creatures 'programmed' to do
things over and over in Second Life are mechanical, and therefore
depressing. It's a wilderness in there, but not in a good way.
- The
visual and aural effects in Second Life are very clever, and because so
many people have been involved in their creation they rarely get
boring. But they are all two-dimensional, not immersive, and the rest
of your senses are not engaged at all. After a while you get a kind of
numbness setting in as a result.
- While it's a complex social
environment (ten million avatars have been created and tens of
thousands are online at any time, moving or teleporting from one place
to another), it's not a complex ecological environment. The scenery is lovely but it's fake. You can't do ecological simulations there.
- Voyeurism
and exhibitionism are rampant, and tolerated, even encouraged. Staring
at others is not a bad way to learn how to operate in Second Life, but
it makes you feel uncomfortable, queasy.
- Your whereabouts can
be tracked throughout the vast spaces of Second Life, over time. Big
Brother may be watching you. Probably is, in fact.
So what's
the potential here for holding virtual meetings and distance learning
sessions in Second Life? I think it's extraordinary, with a few caveats:
- There
needs to be a way to require 'full disclosure' of your true identity as
a condition of participating in serious events like meetings and
education sessions. One click on someone's avatar at a 'full
disclosure' event and you should be able to see their real photo, age,
gender, and highlights of their CV. That context is essential for trust
and meaningful sustainable communication.
- There needs to be a
way to 'transport' windows from your computer screen into the Second
Life environment. Jumping back and forth from the Second Life view to
the desktop videoconferencing or screen-sharing application is just too
jarring. It spoils the whole illusion of really being there together.
- It
would be very helpful (and not just for these applications) to have an
nTag-type feature built into Second Life. nTag is a badge that contains
magnetic information about your personal interests, skills and
experiences, and when you are physically close to someone else who
shares these qualities, it lights up and displays what you have in
common. This would be relatively easy to add to Second Life, and would
be a brilliant addition to it, perhaps even transforming into an
important Social Networking tool.
- One of the critical
advantages of face-to-face learning over distance learning is the
ability to demonstrate to students how to do something, and let them
practice. This would be much more difficult to do in Second Life, but
without it, some face-to-face practice sessions will always be needed,
which is a serious constraint. We learn by doing, not just by listening.
Despite
these caveats, I'm really excited about the potential of virtual
environments like Second Life as meeting and learning tools. I can even
imagine having an Open Space event in Second Life, complete with the
invitations, the opening forum, the breakout sessions (each recorded
automatically), and even, virtually, the exercise of the Law of Two
Feet. I wonder if any Open Space experts have thought about this. I bet
they have.
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
