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.
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