Hooray for the future!
Linden Lab approved our proposal to do a study of Second Life for our Design of Online Communities class.
Second Life is incredible. It’s mostly what they promised in early 80s cyberpunk, minus the fully immersive VR. It’s a gigantic virtual world, with the focus not on questing or levelling up but simply socializing and building new things. The genius of it is twofold: the developers have given users the ability to shape and modify the world in startling new ways, and they’ve designed the economic system from the ground-up to support integration with the real world (e.g. selling stuff on eBay). I’ve flown on angel wings to a fetish night in a castle in the sky (you can stream audio into the environment from your computer — instant DJing!). I’ve swapped genders like a suit of clothes and built a Mayan pyramid in the sand, while lobbing 80-meter-high boulders at my playmates. I’ve become an instant tango expert, thanks to a vending machine in the corner where I can download the scripts I need to tear up the dance floor. It rules.
We’re going to study gender in Second Life. I’m interested in how having utter control over appearance and demeanor helps a resident’s formation of identity.
It’s a thorny issue, of course, and we’re going to have to be extremely cautious in order to safeguard our participants’ privacy and dignity. But having this opportunity is fantastic, and I hope to make the most of it.
You can read some amazing, personal stories from Second Life at New World News.