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I’ve been trying. Really trying. I just can’t find a way to “get” what all of the SecondLife hype is about. I mean, yeah, it’s cool. It’s fun. It’s a really interesting and diverse metaverse. It’s a blast to create and buy stuff, and customize an avatar, and fly around islands. I get that part of it.

But, for education, it largely doesn’t change much over the existing and available tools. I could see it if you were working on a collaboratively designed architecture project. Or perhaps some theatre or alternate reality exploration of literature.

But what I (still) see as the primary use of SecondLife in education is to compel people to sit in rows of chairs to watch a screen at the front of the “classroom”. Some classrooms have innovated - no roof. But, underneath it all, it’s still didacticism with chalk-and-talk replaced with stream-and-chat. I checked out a hybrid event today - a “traditional” web-enable streaming video conference, simulcast into SecondLife.

In this screenshot, the back window shows the “conventional” webcast of the presentation. Streaming video and audio, at full resolution. The front window shows the SecondLife simulcast, with attendees sitting nicely in rows, watching a lower fidelity, smaller and distorted version of the same webcast.

Sure, in the SecondLife version, there was opportunity for interaction between participants. But that could have easily been added through a chat or IM group. And much of the interaction involved “how do I sit down?” and “how to I give my avatar breasts?” rather than discussing the presentation.

Much of that is a result of n00bs learning the environment, and that is to be expected. But I’ve been in several SecondLife sessions over the last week, and none were what I’d call compelling or innovative educational pedagogies.

I still don’t get SecondLife, as it is typically used for education. I’ll keep trying, though.

I want to preface this post by saying I'm not trying to attack SecondLife, nor any of its supporters. My sole intention is to identify what I see as some important issues that need to be addressed when individuals and organizations investigate moving into SecondLife. There are many people doing very cool work in SecondLife, and I respect them for it. I now pull on my asbestos underoos… 

I've been following much of the SecondLife cheerleading over the last year, watching as it got hyped higher and higher as The Next Big Thing That Will Change Everything. And I've been getting more and more nervous about it. As a piece of technology, SecondLife is really amazing. It's a seamless integration of multiple virtual realities, providing ways for individuals to come together and interact, create, and play in a pretty impressive 3D environment. My issues aren't with SecondLife, per se, but its elevated status on top of the hype pyramid as something that will revolutionize business and education.

Imagine! My campus can have a virtual space, so students can get together and learn in virtual reality! My company can have an immersive online store experience, where shoppers can walk through the product line and buy stuff right there! This is going to change everything!

Except, it isn't. It's just a shiny 3D environment. That's all. We've had that before. VRML.  HotSauce. Both of those where The Next Big Thing in Virtual Reality, over a decade ago. eWorld was supposed to change the way we interact with networks and communities. Heck, even Gopher was hyped (albeit with less fervor) as The Next Big Thing (20 years ago). I remember playing with each of these as they came out, and the feeling was quite similar to the excitement around SecondLife today.

But what, really, is SecondLife? It's an economic system with the sole purpose of driving revenue to the company that owns it, Linden Labs. That is the only reason for SecondLife to exist. All other aspects of the system serve this goal. Including education. It is not open, nor Open. Yes, you can write scripts, as long as you stay within the boundaries imposed by Linden Labs in order to protect the economic viability of the system. Copybot was an attempt to bypass the artificially imposed economy of scarcity, with one based on open abundance.

So, as long as we're willing to colour within the lines, and behave according to the laws mandated by Linden Labs, then we're able to use SecondLife. Which is fine, except you need a place to hang your hat "in world" and that costs money, both in "Lindenbucks" and real hard cash. This can range from $5US to $195US per month to rent a parcel of "land" to build your home on. If you want your own island, as many companies and organizations do, it'll cost you $1675US to create the island, then $295US per month to keep it.

So you could wind up spending thousands of dollars to essentially rent some drive space on a Linden server somewhere. Which means only the rich will be able to own land, setting up a nice class or caste system. Rich landowners get to make the rules, homeless paupers get to wander from region to region until they find a place that works for them. Even things as simple as choosing your own in-world name can cost you money. There are stores to buy new skin, hair, clothes, even coffee. You can actually pay real money for virtual coffee.

Now, LindenLabs has made a giant leap in releasing the code for the SecondLife Viewer application, making it possible for the community to enhance and extend the functionality of the SecondLife interface. But, they haven't opened up the server. We can modify the source for the client application, but we're still chained to their economic engine if we want to do anything with it. 

Linden is essentially building a new 3D world wide web, controlling the entire network themselves to maximize profit to the company. They control the horizontal and the vertical. And we're welcome to play (and pay) as long as we follow their rules. 

For interactive 3D environments, especially for education, I am much more interested in the Croquet Project -  an open source platfom that allows anyone to create their own world(s) for free, and to easily create hyperlinks between them. Anyone can run their own server. Anyone can run the client, and create anything they are willing and able to create. For free.

Sure, the Croquet system isn't as mature as SecondLife. It's not quite ready for prime time, but it's getting closer. 

I just did a very dangerous thing. I downloaded the latest version of Second Life - one of those immersive massively multiplayer doowackies that I never really got into. I just threw an hour away twiddling bits to make my Second Life character kinda sorta look like me, then starting to wander around Tutorial Island. The environment is really quite cool, and I had a lot of “hey, this would be cool for a blended learning thing…” moments.

Here’s what my character looks like now:

There appear to be some rendering artifacts - in close-up view, my character has hair (but not much more than I do) and his pockets don’t contain inter-dimensional rifts. Apparently, my video card isn’t quite up to snuff…

If you sign up for a Second Life account (your first “Basic” account - what I got - is free), drop my name “Darcy Malaprop” and my character will get a few fake shekels for the referral.