"Second Life (SL) is a virtual world developed by Linden Lab that launched on June 23, 2003 and is accessible via the Internet. A free client program called the Second Life Viewer[1] enables its users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars. Residents can explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade virtual property and services with one another, or travel throughout the world (which residents refer to as "the grid")."
Wikipideia accessed 20.12.09
"So if you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project--every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in--that represents something like the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought. I worked this out with Martin Wattenberg at IBM; it's a back-of-the-envelope calculation, but it's the right order of magnitude, about 100 million hours of thought."To do: before we meet for the induction!
Gin, Television, and Social Surplus Accessed 19.12.09
- Create an account www.secondlife.com
- Email your full user name to b.rush@gsa.ac.uk
- Go ahead, log in and adjust your avatar's appearance.
- Visit some places. On the delicious Second Life Tag cloud (also in the Site Place Context blog) there are a number of links for 'best places on Second Life'. Visit a few and take note of your favourites –– we'll go visit them as a group during the induction.
Second Life is representative of many different virtual digital worlds. We can look at each of them as an experiment in and with reality: how we see it, how we engage with it, and how we engage with each other. Some virtual worlds have been constructed with Utopian ideas while some function on conflict. While Second Life has no - game rules per-say, there are ones with definite rules and objectives such as World of Warcraft. Each of these is a projection of an alternative set of potentials: What will people try to do in this place? How will they act and react. Our behaviour in such an environment says as much about the place as it does about us as people, societies cultures etc. Would it be possible to create a world where everyone gets along? Even if the program were perfect - we would probably mess it up wouldn't we?
The fact is that socially collaborative electronic media is becoming more and more a part of our daily activity. Less then 20 years ago we sat down in front of the TV and were entertained passively. Collectively these hours added up to absolutely enormous amounts of time! - Now more and more people are choosing to spend at least some of that time engaged with projects like Wikipedia which boasts 3.1 million articles in English alone, all posted by folks across the globe - and it was only founded nine years ago. Second life is much the same way. People visit - and while some don't come back - but others do, they create communities and they build things. In this way our cognitive surplus, or time wasted in passive consumption has been put to use.
- In relation to the Site-Place-Context the Second Life Island is will be the locus of much of our activity - its a sand-box to try out ideas and see how they go. You’ll be granted access after the induction.
- The application Second Life Viewer has been installed on the machines in the Macintosh Computer lab in the GSA Library. Feel free to install it on on your own computer if it meets the minimum requirements (available here).
Video Tutorials:
- Editing your appearance
- Looking Around
- Moving & Flying
- Teleporting
- Talking with others
- Filling in your profile
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