Second LIfe - I'm having enough trouble with my first one!

Second life - Hmmm.

I know a lot of people that absolutely adore second life - some that adore it so much their Second Life is threatening to unsettle the priorities of their first life.

In the early 90's there were things called MUDS and MOOs - a MUD was a "Multi-user dungeon" (or domain) and a MOO was a "Mud - object orientated". In those days you had to use Telnet to get onto these areas and they were text based. The main distinction of MUDs and MOOs (apart from the fact MOOs used Object Orientated Programming) was that MUDs were for online Gaming and MOOs were for social interaction. A bit like the difference between World of Warcraft and Second Life.

I'm really showing my age here - but the point I am trying to make is that AT FIRST Second Life appears very much like a MOO with pictures and no programming.
However, there are two big differences between Second Life and the old fashioned MOOs. The first is that Second Life is very easy to use, even for people with very basic techno-literacy. The second is that Second Life has had huge coverage in the media. This means that people from all over the world, with all sorts of experiences and desires are using second life to help bring those desires to life - or at least to Second Life. U2 did a Second Life concert and many writers and artists are using Second Life to bring their work to a wider, virtual audience. Info Isle on Second Life has been set up for Libraries - a place where the residence of Second Life can go to a library and get help with a reference question or just browse the shelves, much as they do in a real world library. This is all very exciting.

However I do have concerns about college libraries encouraging students to use second life - and these concerns have nothing to do with the huge use of bandwidth.

One thing I think is very similar between the old fashioned MUDs/MOOs and Second Life is the degree with which people identify with their online identity or avatar. This is what makes virtual worlds so much fun - but it is also what makes them potentially dangerous. Second Life really is like a huge City, and like all large cities it has safe areas, and areas that are not so safe. Info Isle is a nice safe island full of helpful library types, but there are some very dark areas of Second Life. For example Sky did a news story on the pedophilia scene within Second Life.



Now, I am not a big fan of censorship - but I do think that if University Libraries are going to advocate Second Life to their students then the libraries must examine to what extent they are are responsible for what the students experience in Second Life. Do we have any responsibilities to these students?

In the 'good old days' you needed a certain amount of technical profiency to get online. If you wanted to make an object in the MOO you needed to have a basic understand of OOPs. (Object Oriented Programming) Things were text based - which meant, if nothing else, you had to think of something, and put it into language, before you could communicate it to someone else. You had to have the idea before you could put it out there, and it had to be in words - there was no visuals. This meant that things were much more conscious and deliberate. Everything had to be expressed verbally. If you wanted to show pain on your face you had to type a discription of that pain, there was no automatic animation what would change your faces expression to one of pain.

Second life is very different. Much of the interaction is done via animations - which you can either develop easily, or copy. The objects are visual, and when you trigger them they take control of your character and make you perform the action programmed into the object. You can see your character perform this action, but cannot directly control it. You can witness it passively, without having to process it through language.

The loss of direct control of your avatar or self-object, the passivity of consumption and the ease of connecting brings up a few issues that were not present in the far off days of MOO.

First of all MOOs weren't as publicly advertised in main stream media as Second Life and today's social network outlets - people were much less likely to 'stumble' into a MOO with absolutely no idea of what they were getting into.

MOOs were much smaller, with a relatively tiny population. That population tended to be much more homogenous than the population of Second Life. "Sex, drugs and Rock'n'Roll etc" were all represented on the MOOs - but it was the production of those characters that inhabited the MOO. There was no commericalisation, no profit to be made.

I'm trying to avoid making value judgements - but what I do believe is that visitors to Second Life can easily be exposed to what is beyond their experience and ability to process and cope with.

Triggering a device out of curiosity can leave you watching your avatar being stripped, bound, gagged, penetrated and displayed. If you have a strong identification with your avatar, and this positioning was not your intention, and beyond the sort of thing you yourself are comfortable with, this could be quite distressing.


If we actively encourage students to enter Second Life, do we owe them any safeguards or warnings - and if we do, can we provide these without seeming to want to limit or censor?