The Forge: What Do Paris Hilton and Second Life have in common

Indeed, Second Life is the Paris Hilton of virtual worlds at this point. It is famous for being famous, and little else. Linden Labs, its creator, likes to constantly trumpet the idea that SL represents new opportunities for real-world companies to make money virtually, but that’s simply a flat-out lie. Watch the video in the article I linked to above. SL’s technology can’t even handle two dozen people in the same location without the avatars skipping and jerking around like bad stop-motion animation. What’s truly unfortunate is that the real-world media is so clueless about virtual worlds that they just eat up Second Life’s PR like whores, never stopping to examine whether “Adidas opening a store in Second Life” actually means a damn thing beyond the initial press release. It doesn’t, and the cost to Adidas (or any other company opening something in Second Life) is so trivial that it’s a fire-and-forget exercise that never has to actually perform, since the press release was the whole point to begin with.

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Silicon.com: A second life cheat sheet

A basic overview of SL for the unitiated. Linked here as a public service

At last! The "people-centric" web!

"I think that what we are seeing is the evolution of the Internet and World Wide Web in incredibly important new directions. Foremost among them is a much more people-centric Web."
--IBM VP, Irving Wladawsky-Berger IBM, speaking via avatar in Second Life

Here is a column by Glyn Moody, writing in Linux Journal. What's odd about all this is that there actually is an alpha linux client for SL, and it's not bad at all, it's how I got there, so I'm not sure what the point is, but nonetheless, it's the references to the corporate push behind SL that inspired me to start this site.

MANIFESTO: I'm not out to ruin anybody's fun.

Yes, I really do hate second life, but that's not really my problem. I'm not out to ruin anybody's fun, but when people talk about SL as "the future of the internet": why yes, I do have a problem with that. This is what the internet of the future is supposed to look like? Are you saying that I'm going to have to drag an avatar around through an elaborate virtual reality interface to surf, to chat, to shop, to do research? I mean, frankly Scarlett, fuck that.

I've spent a few hours strolling the streets of Nowheresville, and to me, Second Life is basically a chat client with the biggest and most bloated GUI ever. With 32 mbs of RAM, a Linux command line, and a simple program like BitchX, I can connect to an IRC server and find a chatroom dedicated to a subject that I am passionate about. Why mess with avatars and artificial streets?

I can't think of any social, educational or organizational function that good old IRC couldn't do more simply and directly-- and therefore better-- than Second Life, though maybe in tandem with other internet technologies, e.g. a webcam or two. Why would I want to drag an avatar to a virtual classroom? I went to a LUG meeting once in second life... it was boring and distracting. When everybody sits down for a gathering, it's kind of static, like the picture of the dogs playing poker. The scrolling text actually moves more.

There's a political element to all of this. Unnecessary super-elaborate graphics are going to require more expensive computers and faster connections to do things that otherwise wouldn't require more than a 20 dollar garage sale computer, a free Linux system, and a simple dial-up connection. The benefits of the internet should be available to everyone, and this kind of graphical excess precludes that.

But, like I said before, I'm not out to spoil anybody's fun, and I don't oppose Second Life per se. It's amazing and wonderful technology, with many wonderful possibilies for entertainment and art. I just don't want to see the internet being made over like this. I just want to do what I can to make sure that Second Life stays where it belongs... in Second Life. I reserve the right to change y mind about Second Life, to decide that I like hanging out there, but to always hate the hype, and the threat of graphical gigantism that it represents.