Euan’s Blog

I was first introduced to Second Life in May 2006 at a seminar at the SRI (previously ka Stanford Research Institute).   The attending Valley folk were gushing about it. I was told that as well as an exciting and fulfilling virtual world, the educational possibilities were ‘limitless’.  The future of digital education and ‘games based’ learning seemed to lie in it’s untapped and yet to be developed islands.   Not having seen it at that point…all I had to go one were descriptions and to be fair I was a tad dismissive, even a little sceptical.    It sounded like Alphaworld which I had first come across in 1995 using a dial up modem and had been introduced to by a bloke from BT labs who had set up shop there.    I loved the idea then, but the reality never seemed to live up to expectations….so I chose to spend my virtual life in 2D based avatar worlds, bulletin boards and chat forums.  The interaction was immediate, the graphics easy to develop , alter and play with….and the lag just about bearable. 

Despite my quite mild scepticism in this new online utopia, it was suggested by some of  the SL’s champions ( all west coast industry and academic stalwarts) that without experiencing it I wasn’t really qualified to pass judgement (…. I have never really fully understood this kind of reasoning…I’ve never experienced putting my hand in a kitchen grinder and flicking the on switch…..but I have always felt comfortable that it was probably a bad thing to do.) 

Nonetheless, with my interest piqued  I came home, signed up and found the whole process ………. just hard going.    Broadband, a very well specced gaming machine, didn’t seem to help, poor instructions, servers going down (just as I was dressing) and no support eventually just turned me off.    I mentioned this experience at an event later in the year , whereupon I was taken to task by the esteemed Donald Clark, who assured the audience that the whole process was very simple and straight forward…….but I don’t think I am alone in my initial or subsequent experiences…   

Now my interest in Second Life has always been from a professional point of view…ie how to use it as a learning environment, as this is how Linden Labs people first presented it to me.  

My criticisms are that Second Life is NOT a gaming environment, that because of it’s technical limitations it is not inclusive, and for both informal and formal learning there are better technologies.    The one thing we have learnt at 3mrt is that increasingly, whether desirable or not, the demand for the delivery of knowledge and learning digitally is that it needs to be served just in time, in digestable, bite sized chunks, with no technical hurdles and no learning to learn curve.   I’m not saying I like this, just that I recognise this as a fact of commercial life.   The growth of casual games and the casual gamer is testament to this demand for knowledge and learning at a time when the user demands it.  

So for me Second Life as a place for virtual and social interaction seems like a cool place to go if you have  a lot of free time.   A lot of people seem to have a lot of fun there …and without doubt there are some incredibly talented and creative people working within SL, (check out this clip   http://digitaldouble.blogspot.com/2007/07/watch-worlds.html )  …… but for me as I look at Second Life, I still feel like the boy who saw the emperor had no clothes….although given during my last visit to SL a few weeks ago my connection was lost while I was trying to get dressed, maybe its just me who has no clothes?