Darb Dabney’s OpenSim Blog

Inspired by reading this
valleywag.com/tech/second-life/a-story-too-good-to-check-221252.php

Clay Shirky wrote this, among his curmudgeonly grumble:

I was talking to Irving Wladawsky-Berger of IBM about Second Life a few weeks ago, and his interest in the systems/construction aspect of 3D seems promising, in the same way video phones have been used by engineers who train the camera not on their faces but on the artifacts they are talking about. There is something to environments for modeling or constructing visible things in communal fashion, but as with the video phone, they will probably involve shared perceptions of artifacts, rather than perceptions of avatars.

I sure understand and value quite a bit his point about ways that hype expresses itself. What’s been transformative for me in my perception of SL is:

1) SL is distinct from gaming by its poignant lack of purpose

2) Without any 3-d gaming experience, I found the SL client intuitive in minutes.

3) My excitement is precisely that emphasized by Wladawsky-Berger and acknowledged by Clay Shirky: shared perception of artifacts. That is precisely what we’re after with GIS, and providing that information to others in ultimate detail and through a natural way.
As Clay wrote

Second Life’s metaphor is simplicity itself: you are a person, in a space.

Try instantiating that metaphor using GIS products, and you’ll grow old before the necessary upgrade arrives.

4) I share the view of SL as a primordial virtual world. I’ve experienced prehistory with VPL systems gaming about 12 years ago when there were a couple of trendy salons in San Francisco, and before that in a demonstration at the Society of Exploration Geophysicists convention in San Francisco. But as awesome as the commercial VPL salons were, most scenarios they offered multi-user death and destruction. As written here
3pointd.com/20060820/mitch-kapor-on-the-power-of-second-life/
I personally share Kapor’s experience and perception

I was fortunate back then to be able to put the goggles on and the gloves. It for me was a transformative experince. I levitated, I flew around and I landed on a lily pad. I got it that there was something incedibly important going on and that reality was not ultimately defined by bricks and mortars and atoms, but that anything convincing enough could be real.

5) As a six-week-old user who at the moment owns over an acre on four parcels, I would restate Lynne’s comments contrasting SL and Craigslist. As I work to consolidate a half-dozen small parcels around a new one that I am working to improve, I have contacted and briefly met and traded with some really interesting long-time SL users who seem to me like really nice people.
These neighbors have either sold me their small plots, been willing to trade for nearby land, or work with me to improve the appearance and usefulness of our shared space. These are my neighbors, and bringing us together spatially regardless of our interests is something Craigslist might aspire to, but it’s a natural part of community building that SL seems quite good at.

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