Second Life - a not so new idea
After watching the video that was posted, a few thoughts spring to mind. One being that while in one sense the development of a site like second life is a little scary, it doesn’t seem like much of a stretch. Even before the age of Web 2.0 and video games, people have enjoyed the idea of being someone else or having a life different from the one you actually have as a form of entertainment. The game of Life anyone? While I know that Second Life is a far cry from the board game, it draws on the same desire. Games like Counterstrike, World of Warcraft, the various versions of Sims, and other interactive games allow us to be people other than who we really are and lead a different life in an alternate reality. As someone else said earlier, these games allow you to be the god of your own universe. While the frameworks of these games do allow for consequences, they come with luxuries like multiple lives and the all powerful restart option. The danger of things like Second Life arises when they become addictive, which they often do, to the point that they cause the user to withdraw from their real life and become more focused on the advancement of their alternate persona than their actual one.
From an entrepreneurial perspective, Second Life is genius. It allows for product testing and marketing strategies to be developed and tested on real people before putting large amounts of real money into a campaign or idea. In my very limited understanding of the site, it appears as though it can be used as a playground for the development and testing of new ideas, which seems like a cool idea to me. However, I would be worried if a company ever became profitable by dealing solely in the Second Life world.
Having never actually used the site, it’s hard to form concrete opinions one way or another on the issue but it seems to me that if people used if for the capabilities in terms of development that you don’t have in real life doesn’t sound so bad. However, the fact is that I’m sure some users are not using it to supplement their actual lives and businesses but to replace them. For example, spending so much time walking around meeting other “avatars” that you never leave your computer to meet with real people or abandoning efforts to market to real people to focus on “avatars”.
In conclusion, I think that some of the possibilities that the site offers are kind of cool, but as with all technology, it can become dangerous if allowed to consume too much of our real lives.
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