It’s a good thing that I don’t have a boss, because if I did, I would probably get fired for engaging in rambling, discursive IM conversations with White Whale clients when I should be doing actual client work.
The following IM conversation with David McKelvey of Lewis & Clark began as a discussion of their recently approved Web design final release candidate. L&C uses the phrase “Uncommon Journeys” as a motto of sorts, and although many higher ed slogans are kind of lame, we all really like this one. A discussion of its use in the home page design led to a discussion of one of my most beloved bands, Journey (beware: loud rockin’ flash intro!), and their new lead singer (who was found on YouTube). Reviewing this information, David also noticed that Journey’s now got an island in Second Life.
David is an early adopter and a technology enthusiast (and is eminently Googleable, though not to be confused with his many imitators). I, on the other hand, am more old school, and my love of technology is ambiguous and complicated. I am, therefore, deeply skeptical about Second Life. Once David mentioned it, I couldn’t resist engaging him in a conversation that wound up expressing my professional opinion about SL (or is it 2L?) pretty well.
The full chatlog follows.
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Has my addiction to learning seriously kept me out of the loop on this during the last five years that I guess this thing has been around? This is the craziest thing I’ve seen in a while; its like World of Warcraft meets MySpace. I am tempted to tinker with it, but am inclined to avoid the soul-sucking pit that it is apparently known to be, much in the same way that I avoided it’s all-consuming plague pseudo-contemporary WoW.
The “soul-sucking pit” expands: http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/07/09/1210218.shtml
I personally don’t expect younger people to have the attention span required to use Second Life in it’s default, freeform state; they require more concrete task-based environments – which is what educators (i.e. real people) can provide within Second Life.
Second Life is not an end product designed to be used as is for ever more without change. It is a journey, an idea that changes and develops, and a place to have experiences.