Second Life

[southsider2k5]

Anyone here do this? Well obviously my second life is here, so I was curious what others thought about this?

 

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/11/13/second....sity/index.html

 

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The classroom of the future isn't on a college campus. It's in the virtual world of "Second Life."

 

In "Second Life," virtual residents -- cartoonish-looking characters controlled via keyboard and mouse -- create anything their hearts desire.

 

Also known as avatars, the residents start up businesses, stage their own concerts, sell real estate and design fashion lines. Reuters news agency even has a correspondent based in the cyber community.

 

A growing number of educators are getting caught up in the wave. More than 60 schools and educational organizations have set up shop in the virtual world and are exploring ways it can be used to promote learning.

 

The three-dimensional virtual world makes it possible for students taking a distance course to develop a real sense of community, said Rebecca Nesson, who leads a class jointly offered by Harvard Law School and Harvard Extension School in the world of "Second Life."

 

"Students interact with each other and there's a regular sense of classroom interaction. It feels like a college campus," she said.

 

She holds class discussions in "Second Life" as well as office hours for extension students. Some class-related events are also open to the public -- or basically anyone with a broadband connection.

 

Since opening in 2003, "Second Life" has experienced strong growth. Now some 1.3 million people around the world log on to live out their second lives.

 

The growing adoption of broadband Internet connection has helped drive that trend. Some 42 percent of Americans have a high-speed Internet connection at home, up from 30 percent last year, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

 

Besides improving the quality of distance learning, educators are finding "Second Life" is a good way to introduce international perspectives. In Nesson's course, students as far away as Korea engage in the classroom discussion and work on team projects.

 

Flying distractions

"Second Life" isn't without its drawbacks. It can be distracting to have people "flying" above you while you're trying to concentrate on a classroom discussion, said Brien Walton, 40, a master's degree student in educational technology at Harvard who is taking Nesson's course.

 

("Flying" and "teleporting" are two ways of navigating around the online digital world.)

 

Distractions aside, there's huge potential for the field of education in "Second Life," according to Walton, who in addition to being a student runs a company that develops distance courses for educational institutions and corporations.

 

Most people think online learning doesn't require participation or engagement with course material, he said. But in "Second Life" there's real-time interaction, which means students need to engage in the discussion -- much as if they were sitting in a brick and mortar classroom.

 

John Lester, community and education manager at Linden Lab, the creator of "Second Life," echoed that view. "There is a real human being behind every avatar -- the people are very real. It's just the medium is different," he said.

 

San Francisco, California-based Linden Lab develops the infrastructure for the online society, but it's up to its virtual residents to develop the content in the community.

 

That's one of the reasons some are skeptical about how much of an impact "Second Life" will have on the educational landscape.

 

"'Second Life' on its own doesn't force anyone to do anything," said Marc Prensky, a leading expert on education and learning. "It's a blank slate, and whether it develops into a useful tool depends on what sort of structures are created within it."

 

While it remains to be seen how much of an impact "Second Life" will have in the long run, there is immense interest within the educational community to find ways to harness its potential, said Mechthild Schmidt, a professor at NYU-McGhee, a division of the School of Continuing and Professional Studies.

 

Schmidt, who learned about "Second Life" from her teenage son, integrated the virtual world into a course she teaches on digital communication to give students a new avenue for collaboration.

 

Right now, it's the early adopters who are living second lives, said Elizabeth Edmonds, a trend researcher at future-focused marketing consultancy Faith Popcorn's BrainReserve.

 

But as broadband adoption goes more mainstream, she expects the site's popularity to grow -- and not only with educators.

 

"Everyone will become involved in this," Edmonds said.

 

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationw...1&cset=true

 

1.4 million get a virtual life

Site attracts `residents' who meet, learn and even spend real money

 

By Robert K. Elder

Tribune staff reporter

Published November 13, 2006

 

 

SAN FRANCISCO -- If the virtual world of Second Life has a Mt. Olympus, the place where gods flex their power and influence, it's here at parent company Linden Lab.

 

That makes Linden Lab Chief Executive Officer Philip Rosedale a Zeus-like figure. From an open, cubicle-free office near Telegraph Hill, Rosedale oversees 1.4 million "residents" of Second Life's 3-D, online world of commerce, information and social networking.

 

And Second Life could be headed for Next Big Thing status.

 

Think of it as MySpace meets "The Matrix," where players create alternative reality versions of themselves and then live out their new, digital lives online amid 26,000 virtual acres of islands, casinos, shopping districts, libraries and universities. They make and visit friends, have sex and get married. They can build a house, test drive a car or buy virtual goods for actual money.

 

Residents craft elaborate "avatars"--or animated alter egos--and spend Linden dollars (L$257 = $1 U.S.) to outfit themselves with wings, designer outfits and associated bling.

 

Hundreds of thousands of real dollars are spent every day, including $605,000 in one 24-hour period over the past weekend. Entrepreneurs with virtual shops earn real money designing software, clothes and buildings for Second Life clients.

 

Joining Second Life is free, though the cost of building objects and buying land varies. A small, 16-acre island will set entrepreneurs back $1,250 in U.S. dollars, plus a monthly maintenance fee of $195. Large islands run $5,000, plus $780 monthly, though more affordable plans exist for inland lots.

 

The population of registered residents is growing by 30 percent a month.

 

"Second Life looks like the statistical average of all our dreams," says Rosedale, 38, an intense but soft-speaking San Diego native.

 

"In-world," as they say here, he's "Philip Linden," an urban cowboy punk. In real life, he's an entrepreneur who has attracted some of the biggest names in the online world as investors.

 

"But the thing that's so compelling about Second Life: There are no gods," he says.

 

Attracting major players

 

In the past few months, companies such as Sony BMG, Nissan and Adidas/Reebok have rushed to establish corporate beachheads on Second Life, founded in 2003. This fall, Harvard Law School offered a class taught partially on its virtual campus in Second Life (called Berkman Island), and Reuters news service assigned a full-time reporter to cover Second Life.

 

Wes Keltner, president and chief executive of The Ad Option, helped American Apparel set up its own island and is designing a virtual version of New York's Times Square.

 

"Linden Lab gave people a sandbox to play in and said, `Make something cool,'" Keltner says. "Science fiction is now."

 

The implications of interactive worlds such as Second Life reach beyond the Internet. Residents can make money and retain intellectual property rights to their creations, as long as they adhere to user agreements.

 

"For us, it's a whole new medium," says Jeff Yapp, executive vice president of MTV Networks' Music Group.

 

In September, MTV launched its own Virtual Laguna Beach, a sandy 3-D space akin to Second Life and Sims Online, based on its popular "Laguna Beach" TV series.

 

But Second Life isn't TV, nor is it a video game, says Rosedale. Unlike video games, there is no singular objective, no princesses in distress, no alien bad guys to slaughter wholesale.

 

Lori Bell, 45, a librarian in East Peoria, Ill., works at the in-world Alliance Second Life Library on Info Island. She calls it "an opportunity to see things like Dublin, an ancient Egyptian area, a 19th Century simulation, museums and things you would never get to see in your real life. [it's] a place for boundless creativity and learning."

 

Tracy Hughes, 38, a pharmacist's assistant living near Birmingham, England, discovered Second Life through a friend on MySpace six weeks ago. She's a frequent visitor to Duran Duran's virtual mansion, where the British band hosts a scavenger hunt.

 

"I've made so many friends, and just like in real life, I love to see and chat with them. In fact, they are as important as the friends I have outside of Second Life," Hughes says. "We go dancing and to art galleries, to parks and to each others' houses."

 

And she says her money goes further.

 

"In fact, I'm saving so much money in real life because I get the satisfaction of spending in Second Life and it costs almost nothing," she says.

 

As landlord and currency exchange, Linden Lab gets a small part of that "almost nothing," multiplied exponentially.

 

Business, space keeps growing

 

Second Life is taking up ever-expanding server space, housed at 365 Main Inc., a little more than a mile south of Linden. Rosedale calls it "the big mountain."

 

Behind bullet-resistant glass, on an earthquake-proof foundation, Linden's servers spit out hot air and whir a low musical hum -- the sound of Second Life growing.

 

"It sounds like money," says Kevin Shanahan, vice president of sales for 365 Main.

 

Because Linden Lab is a privately held company--investors include eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar and Amazon founder Jeffrey Bezos-- it does not release profit figures. But Rosedale will say this much: "We're very close to profitable. The business itself, on an operating basis, is very profitable. We're doing fine. We're not going to need different revenue streams to grow and be a very big company."

 

With its huge monthly population boom, Second Life could reach the tipping point of a full-blown cultural phenomenon, though skeptics offer caution.

 

"It's an online space that's relatively easy to understand and use, and that has a richness to it that has been lacking in other similar attempts before it," says Steve Jones, professor of communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "On the other hand, I suspect ... that there will be a Third Life at some point, if you will, that will build on what Second Life has done. It may be that Second Life's creators will see to that evolution themselves."

 

Rosedale remains philosophical about his company's future.

 

"If we're remembered someday as the company that started this all, I think the thing that would be cool, that would feel rewarding, was just to feel that we made it happen a few years earlier than it otherwise would have," he says.

 

"The idea of simulating the world has always, to me, just been completely inevitable."

 

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[CrimsonWeltall]

There ain't no 1.4 million people in SL. It's probably like 300,000. Plenty of MMORPGs have more users than that and have most of the functionality that SL has, plus a lot it doesn't.