And suddenly it gets more interesting...

This is just a quick post while I'm still thinking about this stuff....

So while we were playing around during class, I jotted down a few more pros and cons:
Cons:
Frustratingly slow
It's hard to tell when one place begins and ends
Hills, ditches and random holes are annoying to walk through!
If you're used to regular video games, it's especially frustrating


Pros:
Paying library fines in Second Life is pretty neat!
You can overhear some bizarre conversations (if the names 'Pet' and 'Master' are bizarre in SL... I suspect not...)
Vampires!
I was delighted to learn that there is a game within SL called 'Bloodlines,' in which people walk around sucking blood from other people (it's really all very polite... you have to ask permission and everything!). To turn into a vampire, another vampire had to suck my blood. When I was completely drained, she got my soul. Then I had to drink her blood, and I became a vampire. The neatest thing was that I joined the above mentioned vampire's clan, 'Wicked Kiss.' The group has a castle (complete with dungeons!) and consists of around 45 girls. The ones I have met so far have been very nice, and have offered to show me where to get the best clothes. Apparently, there are always people around to talk to and hang out with at the castle. Now that I actually have something in mind to do in SL, it has become more interesting...

There are a few questions that this Vampire game brings up for me that could be interesting for further exploration:
1. To what extent is SL a venue for the exploration of counterculture and fantasy?
2. What needs does SL fulfill for people? Does 'Wicked Kiss' become a place for people to feel a sense of belonging that is lacking in real life?
3. How taboo is it to talk about real life in SL? Do people want to maintain the illusion, or do they want to bring their personal lives into it?

Hopefully I'll be able to look into a few of these....

Well, what can I say about my first few days in Second Life? Here are a few thoughts that I've had:

1. The controls and commands have been relatively easy to learn so far. It took me a while to figure out how to put away a book that I took out of the library, but otherwise I haven't had any trouble navigating or figuring out how everything works.

2. There are a lot less people than I expected! Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places, but I haven't really seen anyone around. Granted, I've mostly been looking around at the ALA site and a few nearby places , but I thought there would be at least a few people to chat with. I haven't been doing much socializing for something that claims to be social software!

3. I'm fairly impressed by the ways that information can be shared. I was especially 'wowed' by a library I stumbled into that had a collection of public domain literary classics that could be downloaded as audiobooks. I also wandered around a site that had information about various religions. From what I've seen so far, it seems like information can be presented in unique and interesting ways within Second Life... but none of that really matters if there is no one there to see it!

All in all, I'm a little underwhelmed by SL. I guess it will take more exploration to see what it really has to offer, but so far it's not as great as all the hype said it would be. The graphics are less than spectacular, and it runs annoyingly slow at times. I have doubts about whether it can truly function as one of Foucault's heterotopias, simply because of the lack of users. But, as I said, I probably just haven't explored it enough. It will be interesting to see how it compares to other virtual worlds and to compare my impression of it now with my impression of it at the end of the semester.