More About . . .

Second Life is usually a complete mystery to those who have not experienced it. "Who I am and what I am doing in Second Life", is often equally as mysterious to those who know me only in Real Life or only in Second Life. So this page is attempt to clear up some of those mysteries by providing more information on Second Life, more information on me and my various avatars, colleagues and students, and more about what I am trying to achieve in Second Life.

More About Second Life

One of the most difficult questions to answer for people who are unfamiliar with Second Life is the question - What is Second Life? Imagine somebody who had been asleep for twenty years waking up, having a coffee, and then asking the question - What is this World Wide Web that people keep talking about? It would be very difficult to explain the World Wide Web to somebody who had never seen a website. And it is difficult to explain Second Life to someone who has never experienced this virtual world. Having said that, one can think of Second Life as a three dimensional version of the World Wide Web in which one surfs and looks for information by creating an Avatar who goes into the three dimensional world to do the exploring. Given that sound bite introduction, this page will attempt to explain Second Life in a little more detail and introduce you to my avatar, some of my colleagues avatars and some of my students avatars so you will know who we are and where we are spending our time. As was explained breifly on he first page, Second Life is a 3D Virtual Reality environment that is used, today, primarily for social networking. That is, people get a Second Life account, create an avatar (a digitally rendered little person who represents you in Second Life), and send their avatar into Second Life to explore and interact with the avatars of others. I explain this again here because it provides the first step in a trajectory of understaning. Second Life consists of regions which can be thought of as a three dimensional analog to a web site. Regions have funny names such as Ghamb or Jirasan and few people other than the land owners in a region will know the name of the region. Most will know named locations within a region. Nonetheless, regions provide shopping, socializing, education, and some are just interesting places to visit. Some avatars just sightsee. Others socialize. Some learn. And many shop. In an ordinary chat room, personal expressiveness is limited to the name you use and the things you say. In Second Life you can shape your avatar, buy clothes, hairstyles and jewelry, and you can demonstrate your shopping and exploring prowess by showing off gadgets, trinkets and clothing that you have found. If Second Life were nothing more than that, it would still be pretty impressive.

But, at another level, Second Life is a digital canvas upon which the residents paint their fantasies about how their lives, in particular, and the world, in general, should be. People become better looking, more socially adept, more successful at business, accomplished land developers and so on. In some ways Second Life can be thought of as a video game where the only goal is self actualization. But the fantasy in Second Life, unlike the fantasies we keep locked up in our own individual imaginations, is a shared fantasy. And the social component of this shared fantasy adds a compelling sense of realism. After all, if reality is socially constructed, why should digital reality be any different?

In this creative and largely unconstrained environment many interesting things emerge. Personalities and values change. Gender roles become ambiguous. And relationships are formed between avatars that both reflect traditional relationships between people in Real Life and take on a unique flavor in Second Life. Numerous academics are studying the psychological and sociological aspects of Second Life. Where else can you study social and psychological evolution in such a pristine environment where many factors that are not controllable in real life (RL) can be controlled and even manipulated. And if Second Life was nothing more than a 3D chat room that evolved into a sociological experiment it would still be worth the investment of time required to check it out. But that is not all.

Second Life provides a 3D virtual reality interface with some limited object orientation. It still has a way to go to fully realize this paradigm but it strongly suggests what the future of computer interfaces may look like. We can see a progression from punched cards, to command line interfaces on cathode ray tubes, to point and click graphical user interfaces on personal computers, to 3D virtual reality object oriented video game like interfaces. Each advance seemed, at the time, to be a small, but important, improvement over the previous interface. Yet, as the possibilities in the new interface began to become more obvious, the advantages grew until it became possible to do things through the new interface that could not have been dreamt about using the old interface. In this way, the technology of Second Life (or some future incarnation of this technology) is likely to completely change the way we use computers and allow us to do many things that are simply not possible with the current 2D point and click interfaces. Consequently, many entrepreneurs, technical experts, academics, corporations and universities are exploring Second Life trying to figure out how to unleash its potential.

Unfortunately, there are two major shortcomings with Second Life today. First, far too few people have heard about it. And, second, those who have heard about it and have signed up for an account, find it overwhelming. Consequently, the purpose of these pages is to make those unaware, more aware, and to make those who are confused and overwhelmed, a little less confused and a little less overwhelmed. If you would like to explore Second Life yourself, go to the Second Life website where you can sign up for a free account, create your own avatar and embark on an online experience the likes of which you have never before experienced.

A reasonable question to ask at this point is - Why Bother? After all if Second Life technology is the future of computer interfaces, why not wait until that future gets here along with stable software, adquate support, good documentation and decent, well designed classes? The answer to this question depends on what kind of a person you are with respect to technology. At the risk of gross oversimplification I can say that there are early adopters and late adopters of any technology. Early adopters like the excitement of the new and believe that the benefits of being out in front of the technology curve far outweight the risks. Late adopters rely on early adopters to make the technology stable, more easily usable and more accessible. If you lean more towards late adoption then these pages are definatlely not for you. If you are, however, an early adopter, read on. I have much to say that you will want to hear.

More About Me in Second Life

When you sign up for Second Life you choose a name and an avatar (again, an avatar is merely a little person who represents you in Second Life). You cannot change the name, but you can do a lot to the avatar. The picture you see to the left is a picture of Professor Lane, one of my Avatars. I use him as a front person to do demos and provide a public face. Those of you who know me, know that I do not look anywhere near that good in real life, nor do I ever wear a suit. Already we begin to see some of the magic of Second Life.

Writers of fiction often claim that once they create a character, the character takes on a life of its own; often beyond the control of the author. A very similar phenomenon occurs with your avatar in Second Life. It will develop a personality, interests and a set of friends that may or may not be what you had intended. There is probably something deeply psychological about this phenomenon. But there is also great fun in it.

I actually have a total of twenty alts that I created for various purposes. Some I created to explore different aspects of Second Life just so I could keep the inventories straight. Some I created just to see how other people expereince the world. And others, yet, I created just for fun. I choose to keep some of these alts secret for a variety of reasons. But some are public as you can see by going to my Alts pages:

Alternative Avatars

More About My Colleagues, Students and Classes

Initially there were only two faculty in Second Life. As more come on, I will add there avatar pictures to the faculty pages. For a decade or so, I have taught a course in Web Based Systems Development. The focus has been in designing web applications. Now I am including a few lectures on Second Life and allow students to design Second Life applications. As students from this class join the effort, I will add their pictures to the Students page. Finally, my evangelical efforts have attacted a number of our staff into Second Life and their pictures are on the Staff page.

More About What I am Trying to Achieve in Second Life

Second Life is a great deal of fun but I am not the kind of person who would do something merely because it is fun. The last 'killer app' in Information Systems, which was the World Wide Web, is now fifteen years old. It is time for a new killer app and I am betting that it will be Second Life. It is easy to imagine a future in which all 2D point and click websites are replaced by 3D VR websites. And it is also easy to see that the impact of that may well be greater than the impact of web technology. Today most people cringe at the idea of having to interact with a computer through a command line interface. In the near future, people will cringe at the idea of interacting with a computer through a 2D point and click interface. When something like that hits, playing catch up is difficult in the extreme. It is much better to invest time as it is occuring and absorb the technology and its implications slowly. So I am spending time learning about all aspects of Second Life technology.

In the early days of the World Wide Web, it was a cowboy environment. There was little discipline in development or project management. However, as the web matured the need for discipline grew and more structured approaches began to take over. We see a similar pheonomenon in Second Life. There is no discipline in development and nothing in the way of project management. So there are opportunities to make contributions in these areas.

On of the problems that you encounter over and over again in Second Life is that many people recognize the potential but few if any can see how to realize that potential. This is because realizing the potential of Second Life requires imagination and the ability to see possible applications that do not exist in the world today. I have already begun working on this problem by having my students develop concepts of Second Life applications. I hope to get a handle on the range of possibilities and begin publishing in this area.

I should not forget to mention that I am having more fun than one could ever imagine possible. And, as an added bonus, Second Life is the most stimulating environment I have ever encountered for one's imagination and creativity.

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