Try doing *that* using conventional tools!

Alan - You’re right in that you don’t need to buy land, but to do anything interesting in SecondLife you do need to spend money. I’ve spent around 10 hours “in world” - less than half of that was spent doing things that didn’t cost me money (vehicles, clothes, etc…)

I completely forgot about The Palace! I’m sure there are many others I missed. Wasn’t aiming to write an encyclopedia of Next Big Things That Never Were, but history is important.

And, I do agree with you that SL is currently the only viable platform for testing these metaverse concepts on a large scale. My fear is that SL will get first-to-market momentum (as if it hasn’t got it already) and make it difficult or impossible for other metaverses to develop and thrive.

I really wasn’t meaning to throw stones, but it seemed like nobody was talking about the very real issues that are part of the SL world. There are even more serious issues of governance that Ethan outlined in the video linked by Dave (you are subject to the laws of The Corporation. Any rebellion will likely be met with eviction from regions, possibly to Corporate Gulags, or even out of the SL metaverse altogether). It’s not a happy democracy, it’s a very real Company Town.

But among the misconceptions is that without building you cannot really do much here, and I’ve been amazed by an increasing number of open educational sims.

Yes, there is quite a bit of hype to duck. Anything that suggests this is the next web, or that it is the next distance learning platform or …

And on your history list, you left off my disappointing avatar environment of the mid 1990s- The Palace which still seems to be a happening place for some.

On the other hand, as Dave points out, Second Life is an environment where virtual worlds can be tested now on a large scale, not the only, maybe not even the “best”, but there’s something there. I too was hooked by the groovy Croquet demos over the last years, but never quite found the beef. How many of us are able to explore and dabble there? I could never get the thing to work.

But there is a thriving and growing community of educators giving this a try for some innovative ideas- and sharing them for free. There is an interesting cadre of artists and musicians sharing their craft.

So I am neither a frothing cheerleader not a stone throwing skeptic, but sense there is something there… and do not consider SL the be all destination.

Now where is my pink penguin outfit? I have a meeting with a blonde werewolf…

Interesting… and interesting echoes of the same concerns in this fantastic interview http://youtube.com/watch?v=T_akmmr0ReI .

In my mind… and to most of the people i’ve talked to, Second Life is a really great place to test out a few theories, and get some people moving in interesting directions. I don’t ‘believe’ in secondlife… but in terms of discussing what 3D worlds are going to look like, seems like as good a place as any to start. It is here, now, and will be gone, sometime in the future. Where else could we actually do large scale research of this kind…?
activeworlds…?
croquet…?
in both cases things aren’t shiny enough to get stuff started.

croquet will come… and we’ll probably move there. But the secondlife lessons will do alot of help us work out what we could be doing

We have purchased an island (i.e. are renting a server) and are slowly developing and figuring out how to share with our constituents… nut the intellectual property issues ties with the issues of economics are unanswered and a little troubling. In many ways they greatly magnify existing, overlooked issues with collaborative workspaces, 3D or not. I remember a friend who, upon first seeing blogs and comments, wanted to talk about the whole proposition of opening and hosting that space and what that meant… which is a similar issue, but foregrounded in SL.