Thinking Out Loud about a Post on Second Life

**Warning - Stream of Consciousness Post Ahead**

...so I'm working on this much longer post about second life and some of the recent critiques of SL...but as I sit here, up waaay too late, and having been roaming around in SL tonight, the little mantras of "what is the requirement?"  - "what does this do differently or better than what has come before?" Kept running through my head. One answer to the former question is...there is no requirement. No requirement you can pin an ROI to. No requirement you can justify to a boardroom. Really  - at this point there isn't - so stop looking.

There was also never a requirement for Picasso. There certainly was never a requirement for Calder. None for Cummings or Ginsberg or Mozart or Simon&Garfunkel. Did they however advance our collective understanding of the possible? Of the range of human potentiality? Damn straight.

2003. 3 years ago people. That's when SL went live. 3 years. I've been involved in acquisitions that took longer than 3 years. How deep have any of you gone into SL? I'm telling you this..there are some amazing artists at work in there. I'm still thinking through the implications for learning but I do know that the mere existence of something like SL is changing the discussion. G'night.

Comments

[Glen]

I'm thinking SL is going to be a valuable tool for education, especially in a multicultural context.

I have been following the development of a sim at the Global Learning Center at Wichita State University that would fit in SL. It is a game where based on the communication theory of CAGES, developed by Hugh McKay in Australia. The CAGES theory holds that we all communicate from behind an invisible cage, the bars of which are constructed by our unconscious fears, belief, prejudices. The key to successful communication is to make the bars of our cages visible to our selves and our partners in communication. We won't eliminate the bars but we will make them visible so we can work around them. If we begin relationships by interacting though our avatars it gives us a chance to explore and develop cultural sensitivities that can enrich our life in meat space.

This could be particularly helpful here in Canada where there is a need to reconstruct the colonial system of education that was characterized by the Indian Residential School era. Second Life would be a perfect environment for such an exercise and could offset the hegemonic influences of mainstream education.
My avatar, Telmea Story, has been spending time in the Red Rock Mesa where the Aboriginal influences are quite apparent.
IMO SL is the leading edge of Web 3.0, the 3D web.
Be sure to catch Jeremy Kemp presenting on Education in Second Life at this years CADE/AMTEC conference in May in Winnipeg.