The Second Life generation June 25, 2007
Posted by Bryan in : Opinion, Other Stuff , trackback,
Email this post
My wife and I were discussing Second Life yesterday (as I’m sure all geek couples do), and she noted that unless you have a certain level of programming ability there’s not much you can do in SL besides walk around and chat.
If you’ve visited Second Life you’ve probably experienced this, too. Second Life is a pretty intimidating (and boring) place when you don’t know what’s going on. When everyone around you knows how to manipulate the environment and you don’t, you’re at a significant functional disadvantage.
Right now, Second Life would still be classified as a game by most sane people. However, if the success of MySpace, Facebook, and similar networking sites have shown us anything, it’s that people want to be a part of online communities. The more immersing world of Second Life is the next stage of development for the online community. But there’s one key component that’s different - worlds like Second Life have functional uses that MySpace, etc. do not. Take, for example, that a professor can hold class via SL or a company can plop you right in the middle of a visual representation of a firewall for training purposes. Right now these uses are not mainstream, but one day they will be.
How can you tell? Look at who’s using the service. Geeks, educational institutions, and companies.
I personally believe the reach of Second Life is a little overemphasized right now. To read through the blogosphere or mainstream news, you’d think that everyone was on Second Life. That’s just not the case. As I mentioned, my wife and I are pretty geeked out, but we’ve probably spent 4 hours total between us on the service. Out of all of our friends and family - a very technically oriented group - only one person uses SL regularly. But what’s important is that the demographic that is currently using SL is the same demographic that was using the Internet in the early days. Once these institutions and companies develop online presences, they will start pushing people to them and eventually it will become the main point of interaction with these companies. Why wouldn’t it? It will be able to offer the same things a normal web page could, plus much much more.
Soon after that, not using a service like Second Life will be a significant disadvantage for getting information. Using such a service may even be required for your job.
The culmination of our discussion was the realization that kids growing up using services like Second Life are going to be much better prepared to function in such an environment, just like kids growing up with computers have been much better prepared for related technology.
Although the Internet has changed the way we access information, I think most would agree that a more important generational gap exists between those who grew up before interaction with computers was the status quo and those who have always dealt with ATM machines rather than bank tellers, debit cards rather than cash, and online bill payments rather than snail-mailed checks.
Second Life (or services like it) stand to revolutionize the way we do business in a similar fashion. As this occurs, those who didn’t grow up learning how to manipulate such environments from an early age could be at a significant disadvantage to the Second Life generation.
Comments»
[…] My wife and I were discussing Second Life yesterday (as I’m sure all geek couples do), and she noted that unless you have a certain level of programming ability there’s not much you can do in SL besides walk around and chat. … …more […]
Yes and no. Toss all the social networking hype - social networks have been around as long as humanity and what the technological offerings demonstrate is that mankind doesn’t understand social networking. That it is only being used in the context of marketing is… hah.
So SecondLife. Well, you don’t need to be a programmer - but you do need to get the basics. Clothing is for graphic artists, building is for people who like building (rez a prim with a right click: You’re a builder).
There is much more to the world than chatting. Trust me, I’m not a big fan of chatting. Like everything else, you get out of SecondLife what you put into it. Granted, it isn’t always efficient - but neither is anything else we mortals do.