You are Never Alone

A recently released TED video focuses on a talk Philip Rosedale, the creator of Second Life, gave at a conference in May 2008.

He talks about living (and learning) online, and the shifts in society that are coming as more and more of us live through avatars. He sees profound changes coming.

Here are some of the notes I made as I watched and listened.

Why build a virtual world at all?
We can have so many creative ideas but be unable in the real world to “realise” them.
The ultimate in the internet is simulation.

A virtual world (Second Life) is a place where you can build things, in a shared, creative way.
Virtual worlds can connect to space - humans are fascinated by the idea of going into space. You can transform yourself, leave real life behind. Ideas that in space anything will be possible.
Virtual worlds represent the tangible expression of these ideas.

Second Life uses 20,000 computers connected together through 3 US facilities, there are about 250,000 people wandering around it any day, rather like a smallish city, the space itself is about 10 times the size of San Francisco and about as densely built out.Expanding very rapidly, about 5% a month. There are 100 million user created objects, possibly interactive. 100 terabytes of user created data. Sheer scale of what people can do is pretty amazing. It will be bigger in total use than the web itself.

For the most part the web puts data in text and images.
The Virtual world presents information using iconic symbols which are more memorable than text. Experience of creating, consuming and exploring that information in the virtual world is inherently social. In most internet experiences you can’t communicate with those viewing the same page as you are. In a virtual world you experience the information with others.Likely that in the next decade or so that virtual worlds will be the most common way in which we consume information on the internet. The web will become a tool of the virtual world.

His presentation contains a variety of images taken from SL showing places and avatars.

Half way through other speakers and the audiences begin to ask him questions.

Some tools created in SL have turned out to be ones which users did not want. Soon after SL creation, users began to want to buy land. Some users have created purchaseable experiences. The economy of SL is critical to its operation.

Does SL have its own culture?
Rosedale believes SL is in the early stages of evolution, more like a frontier society than a cultured one. However the nuanced interaction that creates culture is happening at 10x the speed of the real world. 65% people in SL are not from the USA. It is a multi-cultural melting pot.

Demographics
Average age of SL people is 32, but use of SL increases dramatically as your physical age increases. As age increases from 32 to 60, then usage in terms of hours spent there in the week goes up by 40%.
Many people make the mistake of thinking SL is an online game, however it is not very appealing to people who play online video games, because the graphics are still rather primitive by game standards.
65% users are not from the USA, and there are users from virtually every country in the world. UK and Europe together make up about 55% of the user base.
Men 55% and women 45%, but women use SL about 30-40% more. More men sign up than women but more women persists with using it.
About 55,000 people are in SL are making money out of being there (he calls them cash-flow positive). They are making “real world” money.

Will we come to prefer our digital selves to our real ones?
Rosedale says he finds that a horrifying thought (that our real lives may move into the digital world).
He sees this change as a huge disruptive change but no amount of back-pedalling or legislation is going to wind it back.
Today’s world presents challenges for us to be more creative and smarter.
Being present in a virtual world also presents challenges so that we are better than we are in the real world.
Virtual worlds are going to see big changes. The change is coming.

Implications for education
For me the most interesting thing he said was this:
Many people make the mistake of thinking SL is an online game, however it is not very appealing to people who play online video games, because the graphics are still rather primitive by game standards.

I think many educators who have been thinking in terms of “immersive environments” have not seen the distinction that Rosedale is making. They are thinking that a virtual world will appeal to student users, when in fact they are thinking more of an online game. I haven’t seen many make the distinction between the two.

Other links:
My Other posts on Virtual Environments
WICKER, a novel by Kevin Guilfoyle which how we re-create ourselves in virtual environments.
Education.au bloggers talk about Second Life
Virtualization meets Virtual World
A search of edna: Virtual worlds