Project 1: Second Life Autoethography

- Autoethography is an autobiographical genre of writing and research that displays multiple layers of writing and research, connecting the personal to the cultural.

A personal diary can serve as research? While the idea certainly crossed my mind, voices of my high school and college professors cause great contradiction to this concept. “You must endlessly search the library and have no fewer than 12 sources. You are unable to be an expert on the subject.” This statement beat into my head by teacher after teacher is true but also a source of great frustration. It seemed all the research I was doing was merely looking up other people’s research and rehashing it and properly citing it. I simply love the concept of being to take my experiences, my observations and present them for others to consider. It offers me the chance to offer something new through my research methods.

Communication and Social Systems:

Before I even installed Second Life to my iMac, I was skeptical. One word that immediately came to my mind was system. My first thought placed Second Life into the category of another computer system. Second Life is basically another communication system in a sea of social networking systems including e-mail, chat rooms, Facebook.com, Google and Google Chat and the discussion forms on Blackboard. I asked myself, simply how many communication systems and social networks are important to learn? As daunting as they all are, how many systems could I learn? How many systems should I learn? Was there really a need to learn and use another communication system? Would it offer something different than other systems? Of course, all these perhaps pessimistic thoughts served as a shield to my fear of the unknown. Fear of how much time it would take for me to learn my way around this new system.

Yet, perhaps this is the most important element of our educational system. The need to experience new systems, to discover them, to be aware of them so that we can make educated decisions on their functionality and usefulness.

The first Second Life experience:

I proceeded to the Second Life Web site to begin my experience. The first step of selecting a name seemed the most critical. Dr. Pine expressed in the course blog, once we selected a name we were stuck with it. Maybe to many this was not a big deal, but the finality of anything is enough to make me nervous. Besides, there were only a select few last names to choose from. I searched around a bit to find out why only select last names were available, but was unable to uncover definite information. I selected Siege LeFavre as my avatar name and proceeded to install the application.

The first terms that came to my mind when starting to work with the Second Life grid was cumbersome and unresponsive. The interface’s complexity did surprise and impress me. It reminded me of early first person video game shooters. I recalled my first person experience with the game The 7th Guest. The graphics were impressive for a late 1990s video game. Yet, they simply couldn’t hold their own when compared to today’s Play Station 3 graphics which serious gamers are accustomed to. Grant it, I don’t play video games often and when I do it’s more for the wow factor of realistic graphics. What did stand out was Second Life’s advanced approach to social networking. Once I made myself understand this was not a game, but rather an interface with real people, it’s impressive nature grew.

As I completed the tasks on Orientation Island and stumbled around on Help Island I quickly understood what one’s draw to Second Life could be. The ability to do all those things I wanted to do in real-life but couldn’t. Flying and teleporting were especially appealing. I’ve always wanted to be able to fly, really who hasn’t? The ability to teleport to any part of the world at a moments notice also fulfilled dreams of things I thought only possible through my collection of Sci-Fi movies.

A few people tried to chat with me on Help Island, but the conversations were narrow, most likely because I was somewhat afraid to open myself to full disclosure. My initial explorations were really limited to flying around, looking at things and then proceeding to teleport to an additional random location to see something new. It became quickly apparent to me just how huge the Second Life grid was. I began to feel the only way I would ever fully understand the complexity and options of this social system would be to invest a lot of time exploring and be extremely outgoing. Unfortunately, I don’t see myself as having enough time to become adequately immersed in the system. Perhaps the online class meeting will help. But I am just not sure.
I immediately jotted down a few notes comparing Facebook to Second Life. Facebook seems to have a much larger group of young people participating. In fact, I could find but one or two students at my small college who had a Second Life account. Based off of my initial impressions here’s how I would compare my initial experiences with each:

Facebook -> Second Life
Text/photo based -> Virtual reality
Information sharing -> Building a second life/world
Entertainment -> Outreach for my personality
Large but well connected -> Huge with random connectedness
Quick in/out get information -> Time consuming to find information
Good message system (asynchronous) -> Good live communication system

In a nutshell, although Facebook and Second Life are active social networks, I see Facebook as an asynchronous communication tool, while Second Life is directly interactive. The only problem I see here for Second Life is the amount of time required to get information. One of the most difficult things to do today is to find time to catch up with friends, meet and discuss projects with colleagues and actively communicate with many people at the same time. Second Life does not seem to overcome these communication bottlenecks nearly as well as Facebook and perhaps it’s not supposed to. Yet, in my initial experiences, I personally don’t see myself using it often for these reasons.

Raising Questions in areas of media design interest:

As an educator the first question the social system Second Life sparked was the potential use for social network systems within education settings. Could social systems like Second Life become new classrooms? Perhaps they already are? Often battling with students who seem to find more value in updating their Facebook profiles than listening to class lectures, I thought how could this technology be used to teach rather than to destract from it. I am rather excited this course will offer me a chance to engage in Second Life through academic activity. The ability to design a character, have my voice heard, and directly interact with other students from the New School online creates a new experience in my online learning. As someone who embraces new technology, I can’t help but hope these new systems that are widely popular with young students could be used for something more than casual chatting and pasting photos; most of which are seemingly self-centered promotions about their lives.

While I can’t comment fully on Second Life yet, I feel the seemingly endless posts and photos on Facebook serve as pointless fodder to those who like to feed on gossip. Perhaps I am missing the entire social network structure. It’s great to be able to stay in touch with people you care about, but I really find it an unnecessary waste to know everyone’s, every move. I have enjoyed the time I have spent on Facebook and Second Life to this point. I have learned new information, explored new ideas and followed-up with friends, but most of this exploration fits under the category of entertainment, not education. My thoughts turn to thinking of ways the two could be combined.

Final Thoughts on my Second Life

Media continues to be used to confuse and create reality. Second Life seems an attempt to open the creation of reality, through media, to anyone. Yet, there is still a system in place. There are still levels of control by dominant forces who have setup the system, established the rules and enforce them. Is this virtual reality world really controlled exclusively by its users?

What is the driving force behind such technology? Are people who long to create a second (virtual) life conceding that in physical reality the dominate forces of leadership are so in control it is impossible to create the life you want? Therefore, one must seek an alternate virtual reality where the controlling forces no longer exist, are easier to overcome, or better represent the ideas of current cultural trends?