Cory and Phoenix warned us: use the web now, because once we're all in the
workshop using SecondLife, you won't be able to squeeze a bit through our
traffic."
This is why: SecondLife is a Massively Multi-Player Online Role-playing Game
(MMPORG). ``Lifers" assemble in a digitally created space---think Shrek---and
interact to do the sorts of things that we usually do: in the case of this
group, assembled on Joicho Ito's own SecondLife island, it is to gossip, swap
information, look at art, watch films. It is done in a rich virtual world, and you can imagine the stress on the nternet connections is considerable.
SecondLife provides the infrastructure
for the world to flourish---not only servers and bandwidth, but also a stable
currency (it grows as a function of the number of members) and rules of
privacy. SecondLife is remarkable as an experiment in tabula rasa politics. Not only do
the rules of interaction need to be created, but the rules linking SecondLife
to our more familiar lives also need to be defined. I have collected a few stories about the in-world/out-world frictions on my delicious mmorpg page. The Daedalus project is particularly rich in information and analysis.
This is where SecondLife's interest in intellectual property law comes in. Members can create ``in-world" (that is, in SecondLife) value. For example, Joicho has built an amphitheatre
on his island with a huge video screen where we watch parts of today's
proceedings. The value can be traded both in-world, and potentially,
out-world---for example, an image might become part of a publication. Hence
SecondLife has needed to think hard about the status of in-world IP. They have
decided to allow both Copyright and Creative Commons, but are keen on Creative
Commons because of the potential for re-use of material in-world, and the
ability to combine out-world material with in-world artefacts. (I tried to
make a cape out of my flickr picture of a Mission Mural that I thought
captured the spirit of today).
SecondLife and other MMPORGs have shown that it is possible to create
remarkably vibrant virtual communities based on no particular focus except our
species' innate sociality. They use rich graphical representations of worlds,
rather than the screens, text pages, lists and pictures of something like this
community's web site. This is bandwidth-hungry, so today is not a technology
that is accessible globally. However, when the bandwidth comes, I am really
excited by the thought of what will happen if we can join together the purpose
and focus of our community with the natural interaction of SecondLife.
That excitement was shared around me during the workshop. A teacher thinking about
bringing pupils together in a SecondLife classroom, an activist dreaming of
organising SecondLifers for this-life causes ...
