2nd Life

I have spent some time in Second Life, and I'm actually quite interested in the way it can be used to redefine what we consider to be space. Using the "Unofficial Guide to SL," I hit a number of the highlights in the book. My favorites were Midnight City and Landing Lights Island, which is part of Democracy Island. The latter is in fact and in-world design framework setup to generate design options for a park in Queens, NY. Once at Landing Lights you teleport to a smaller scale version of the park site, complete with runways, street, and buildings. You can add and manipulate objects and post your design. Cool. Oddly, there were weapons lying all over the place, guns, lightsabers, and sai--what is with that?! Weird.Honestly, the thing that struck me the most was how few people I saw in-world. As I was logging in there was a banner claiming that 53,746 people our also online. I think I saw about a dozen. Where was everybody? And the people I saw were sitting on a bench that, I think, would pay you for sitting on it. I bet those people were out to a movie or eating dinner. Assuming the numbers are true does lend some credence to the enormity of SL. However, I find it troubling for my ability to appreciate the environment as a space without other people around. I think that socializing and connecting are the biggest parts of how I define space. The biggest question/critique I've heard when talking to folks about SL is, What the heck do you do there?! Answer: the same stuff you do out here in physical space: work, socialize, explore new places. It's a space if you want it to be, if you dive in and participate.

Another point about space: When I clicked on the above image in my email, it sent me to a map of SL and then asked if I wanted to dive back in. I really like this idea of nesting spaces and the vast number of possible connections. Now SL is in my inbox, which is on my desktop, on my physical desk, in my room... The delineations of spaces don't really seem to hold up. Like what Chun said about the fluidity of place, and how we need to stop thinking of places as relating anymore to physical spaces or finite URLs.