Second Life

The Inquirer describes Second Life as 'the premier destination for those lacking a first'.

It strikes me as a virtual world frequented by slightly daggy people who are a bit out of touch with technology but think they might just appear hip to their children, along with other, somewhat strange people who like to meet other somewhat strange people. To an online gaming whiz-kid, I imagine it would be a weird, slow and boring environment that older people seem to like. The technology looks old and out of date, and the world looks like it's built for old people. It doesn't nearly match up to the slick, graphically impressive games available in recent years. It is really slow, and it takes forever to do anything, and in order to do anything even remotely cool like make your character look like a Wizard, bodybuilder or your favourite cartoon character you need to pay money, and even once you pay for it it still looks lame. And you have to pay for lots of things. And there are losers in it that keep ruining it for everyone.

I truly think that attempts to use Second Life as a communication medium, or to reach a younger audience, are both misguided.

As a communication medium, it is unnecessarily complicated and overly restrictive. It requires a new, high powered computer. Most laptops or office desktop computers won't run it satisfactorily. It also requires a fast broadband internet connection, and uses a lot of bandwidth, making it unnecessarily expense, and for users in some areas, all but unusable. There are high costs involved in leasing 'virtual land' within Second Life in which to conduct your meetings. It also presents an unfamiliar user interface to everyone - more unfamiliar than they possibly could have imagined before. Suddenly, in order to conduct a meeting all of the participants will need to configure their avatar and wander around a 3D world, a complicated task not usually required for participating in a meeting.

As a way of reaching a young audience, there are problems. Firstly, if any of the people you are trying to reach are under 18, they won't have access to the same Second Life world as you, and you won't have access to theirs. They have their own separate 'teen' world which attempts to be safe from predators by barring access to adults. Some 'Second Life library' proponents apply a generation-Y stereotype that portrays young people as all being as comfortable in 3D virtual worlds as in any other medium. It's a stereotype that doesn't have basis in fact. 3D environments are used in certain genres of video game, and video games are by no means enjoyed by a majority of young people, nor do these people accomplish other tasks in 3D virtual worlds.

I have a Second Life account and I have stumbled through the overly long, complicated and poorly guided procedure of customising my character and wandering around various places. It didn't really appeal; it was just too frustratingly clunky to be enjoyable.