danah boyd has a post called "On Being Virtual" (be sure to read the comments) As Kevin Gamble on the SLED list notes, what she seems to be saying is that if you look at the rise of social tech amongst young people, it's not about divorcing the physical social structures to live virtually. She is also saying that virtual worlds are not for everyone which is definitely true.
I don't think she is saying SL is a fad that will go away as other people without her depth of knowledge have articulated. She says as much in the comments of her post in response to commentors. Her post places an emphasis in looking at SL as simply virtuality (read this too) not social networking - as did Clay Shirky.
These posts have sparked some thoughtful reflections, from a folks on the Second Life Educator's List and I'm going to quote and summarize a few:
The Second Life Doubter's Club
Here's the response to the Shirky numbers argument:
I think that Clay Shirky is looking at SL through the eyes of a mass
market MMO like WOW. Right now anything that does not have more than a
million users is considered a flop. I really don’t think at this time
that SL wants to be a WOW. The difference between the two are about as
stark as between Night Elves and Taurens (a little WOW humor). SL
will take longer to gel into a cohesive environment that has a purpose
and a following than the explosive growth experienced by WOW.
The response to Boyd's "On Being Virtual":
Again, we have someone who has either not spent time in
SL, or has had a bad experience and now wants to convince the world
that SL has no value and no future. If Danah is so deeply rooted in
social spaces, like MySpace and others, it’s no wonder she does not see
SL as a next step. To me, SL has the potential to replace all of those
social networks with personal 3D spaces, all linked via a
pseudo-metaverse. Maybe Danah has been reading too many Stephenson and
Gibson novels of late, because I don’t think I’ve ever read a post,
blog entry or article in a major publication that suggested we were
pushing towards divorcing ourselves from reality and physicality, and
moving entirely into these immersive virtual spaces. Come on, get real
already<bwg>.
SL has the potential to add a new level to the existing
web technologies. Being another layer over existing technologies,
those who are comfortable with the current models can stay behind while
the rest of us move up to the next level. As always happens, these
slow adopters will eventually be dragged kicking and screaming along
when they find nobody occupying the space they stayed behind to
protect. I have a large collection of buttons that I’ve gathered at
various computer conventions over the past 25 years. One of my
favorites that I display on my office wall is from Word Perfect Corp.
It simply states “I’m sticking with DOS”. Back when World Perfect was
making the move to the new GUI of Windows, a very large number of their
longtime users stayed with DOS (actually, the majority of their market
share stayed with DOS). I think you would be very hard pressed today
to find anyone still using a DOS version of Word Perfect. How could
serious work ever be done by trading in embedded codes for pull down
menus?
This argument repeats itself over and over throughout time
as each new technology emerges that has the potential to replace or
improve upon an existing technology. SL is not some new revolutionary
model that has never been seen before. It is a social space, a virtual
space that can be used to model things not easily modeled in reality,
and it’s a graphical layer that has the potential to link together many
of the 2D media that we currently access via the Internet. It is VERY
well suited for connecting people from physically distant spaces for
shared learning, communication and group participation. This is why
there is a current increase in educators coming to SL.
Now that Clay’s article has been linked to from all over
the web, expect more of these me-too’s to jump in to add their words of
criticism to the void. Don’t worry, they will eventually get it.
We’ll see them again when “the next big thing” comes along that needs
someone to take the negative position.
Gary Hayes points to one of his older posts about this issue with a visual. He also remarks:
This area of future gazing really polarizes people, especially those who have
been through the cycle a few times, hype and burn. I also have been around this
a couple of times and yet fall into the web 3.0, immersive social space camp as
likely to grow and grow (even if it does crash and burn again do we really think
in 20 years time Danah that we will still ONLY be browsing endless pages of flat
text, graphics and video? I think to say that things will stay this way is far
more preposterous than proposing an immersive MUVE communications revolution). I
was a BBC new media producer from 95-04 and was part of one of the first
broadcaster VRML world projects in 96 called the Mirror (BT, BBC and others).
Six worlds, avatars, lots of chat and even then screens receiving video for
'avies' to stand around and chat. It sucked. Hardly anyone there, mostly early
web geeks and cardboard cutout avatars. But more than this superficiality...
Why did these and others fail and why is Second Life really pointing the
way to the future? To me the big difference lies in the integration of social
web 2.0 principles that has turned the web from pushed to participatory. SL and
its successors will have integrated personalization, networking toolsets, self
publishing, it affords deep self expression, just above a visual quality
threshold that makes suspension of disbelief far easier AND you create your own
rules. So this goes way beyond just web pages and pictures, the identity
statement you can make in SL and beyond is far less abstracted than it is in
flat 2D web (and the area I think that most polarizes is 2D or 3D - as a
technical step) - for those that don't get immersive spaces for social
networking one has to use real world, simplistic socio-comm metaphors - web
2.0(D) is to sending a letter with your picture in it as web 3.0(D) is to going
there and having a cup of tea with them.
Charlie Nesson, Founder Berkman Center at Harvard Law School, also reflects on the Clay Shirkey post and the description of the "one time look virus." Nesson writes:
my first visit to second life would have been one time, if that,without my daughter to lead me and hold me in. whenever i’ve left berkman island to go forth and look around i’ve found the environment elaborately constructed but humanly forbidding. yet i am excited at the prospect of holding court in this virtual immersive domain. second life is a crappy way to do some things, maybe a fine way to do others.
If I didn't have a guided experience on information island and the benefit of conversations with so many educators engaged in exploring it for learning, I might be blogging naive remarks like this too. That's part of the problem - it is still a fairly steep learning curve to master SL and to really understand the potential you have to experience it. How can you write an informed critique by just reading other people's critiques?
In reading Nesson's post, I was fascinated with the description of Harvard Law School's virtual court project:
my sense is that second life is an ideal environment for mock trials. compared to live mock trials which tend to be a rush of words in which evidentiary objections are difficult to focus, the pace of exchange in the text environment of second life is slower and more deliberate; a record is naturally generated; evidentiary objects are
easily represented.
we’ve built a courtroom on berkman island that gives an immersive sense of a legal dispute-resolving environment. we will select a jury from those in second life who would like to participate as citizens of the space in which they live. we will have witnesses and student-lawyers speak in text under disciplines of civility and rules of evidence, subject to objection by opponents and ruling by the judge, who will be me.
i expect the experience of the mock trial in second life to be better in many ways than cognate live face-to-face events. i am going to see, and to see if the experience can scale. i’m looking forward to teaching students who are able to gather and practice in a virtual environment which immerses them in the reality of the questions of liberty, identity and governance presented by our investment of energy and assets in a virtual world owned by a for-profit corporation.
It seems like one key strength Second Life offers for educators is simulations and other learning. Sigh. This is most likely so far from the everyday training and professional development needs of most nonprofits. Where, if it all, might immersive environments be of value? Maybe for nonprofits, it is in the marketing area, where taking people into your world makes sense or for museums.
It makes me again reflect on the fact that using Second Life as an interface where groups are working together to get things done versus learning is not the best use. If you are running meetings to plan events or do projects - Meyer's Briggs J tasks - Second Life sucks. There are better and more efficient channels for collaboration, conference calls for one. It works okay for getting things done if you use it as a back channel to say a conference call or a real life event. That enriches the experience.
For example, I get more out of remote attendance in Second Life that via an IRC chat line. That also gets to learning styles too .. I'm a visual learner and text interfaces simply don't do it for me. People who are not visual learners may have the opposite experience.
I move from Nesson's Second Life reflections those of Gene Koo, a Berkman Fellow and also involved with legal education training initiative in Second Life. I've actually bumped into him in Second Life and chatted with him and not otherwise had that opportunity. His reflection "When do online/computer simulations add the most value?" The answers:
- The subject is best learned through role-playing
- The subject must be modeled using complex data and formulae
- The subject is amenable to learning through exploration
Last week, I attended via Second Life, a discussion panel at Berkman on the use of technology in legal education. My notes are here. While poking around Koo's blog, I found the transcript and audio for the session, along with screen capture of what Second Life participants looked like from the view of those sitting in the room at Harvard Law School.
I am reminded of the rich experiences I've had in Second Life where there were simultaneous events taking place in "real life" and in "virtual world." The MacArthur press conference, for example, and other classes or forums. And, I am also reminded of the learning that happens by creating and building together in Second Life - the virtual morocoo project for example.
There was an article on ZDNet by Dana Garber on Second Life.
It took about an hour before I finally switched from thinking that my initial experiences with Second Life were a waste of time — to actually finding them being productive in new ways.
He goes on to talk about the other quality of Second Life that I found compelling:
What was different is that I was a virtual arm's length from some
heavy-hitting IBM talent and leadership, and I was able to communicate
with them, and learn from them quite well. That is not always the case
in the real world, where crowds, noise, location, and the competition
can get in the way.
There is an egalitarian equalizing effect when your avatar IMs with
another … even if you know who they are. There's a comfort level with
being virtual, and the IBMers seemed eager to chat with lots of folks.
I can see getting better access to executives and the creative minds at
IBM in Second Life than I do in real life, and that's a good thing.
I experienced this last night at the Creative Commons party being able
to IM with Jimmy Wales. Probably something that would never happen in
Real Life.
He goes on to describe the value of SL from business perspective:
I therefore see Second Life as IBM does, a powerful tool for bringing
people and technology together, and given that proximity able to
productively accelerate the processes that bind them. Yes, SOA may
actually make more sense in the virtual world than it does in the real
world, where the effects of SOA benefits will ultimately best manifest
themselves.
