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(you can click on the picture to enlarge)
It took me a while, but as I promised, this post is dedicated to “Second Life”.
Before I start writing my personal impression of the virtual realm, I want to explain, in short, what is “Second Life” (which from now on will be called SL as everybody nicknames it) and why the hell am I picking on SL from all the virtual worlds out there.
The first time I heard about SL was about 3 years ago, during my undergraduate studies, in a theory oriented course. The idea of SL was presented as a just another array of ways in which people could escape from the real world- some people start playing “hide and seek” in the streets of Tel Aviv, while others play in the streets of SL. The discussion was so short and superficial, I didn’t even think about trying SL myself.
Since we moved to the US the numbers of times in which I’ve heard about SL has risen dramatically. It seems that everyone has their own second life world: I’m sitting as a listener in a class about video games that has dedicated some time for SL, I paid a visit to “Linden Lab” (SL company) offices and heard the people that create SL talk about it, some faculties at MIT have their a SL island, I went to a conference about SL in Harvard and the list goes on. As time passed by my curiosity increased, until one day I decided that I need to know what it is all about!?
Well, as I have been told at “Linden Lab” offices, SL is a platform, not a game. Basically it’s a free virtual world: everybody can download it, sign in, pick a name and a character and dive in. After signing in you can be whoever you like, build your own house or business, make new friends and be part of events and groups. It’s not a game in the sense that you don’t have a narrative or a mission, and similar to the real world, one has to find something to do in SL or else be bored to death.
After this short introduction I think it’s time to share my experience as a freshwoman in SL.
The first thing you have to do is pick a name, you can create any first name you want, but you have to choose a last name from a list. Being a little lazy in the creative name department, I choose the name: Gila Gregan, - it sounds a little Irish and who knows, it might turn out to be a superhero name (like Peter Parker and Peter Petrelli). I’m not sure why I had to choose a last name, or why I had to display it, my dream was to be “Madonna” in my second life. Another unresolved issue is am I automatically related to all the other Gregans? Maybe we’re a big virtual family and from now on I’ll have to celebrate Jewish holydays with them in SL?
The interface allows you to change every feature in your avatar: general height, leg height, upper body width, boobs yes / no, large / small, firm / saggy, separated / tight, skin tone (almost every RGB color you can imagine) eye size and shape, nose size, wide / narrow, opened / close, up / down, lip size and shape- wide / opened / lifted, hair color, shape, haircut, shoes, gloves, clothes, and the list goes on, you can make all these changes without spending any money. If you do want to spend money you can make yourself really pretty with smoother skin and much more realistic character.
So without paying attention and although I decided prior to entering, not to spend time on my appearance, I found myself choosing a new nose, and without even realizing trying to find my own nose. I know that a lot of people create their avatar in their own shape, or at least with a few improvements they would have done in the real world if they had the money, the courage, or the ability to avoid social critic. Like for example if you’re slightly fat you’d make a slim version of yourself as your avatar, if you feel you would have been happier being just a little bit taller, you’d make an avatar that looks like you but a bit taller. I know that there are a lot of people whose main goal in going into SL is making their avatar looks as close as possible to their real image, to accomplish this goal they spend a lot of money and time. So eventually it turns out that one spends real time and money to become the same as the real self in the virtual world.
After making your new identity you can start your journey in SL. Then it hits you. You realize that the SL interface resembles much more a video game’s interface than a computer program. Your avatar is right in the middle of the screen, you are controlling it by the arrow keys and when you want to do something, you have this circle of options, which I spent a lot of hours using in “Monkey Island 2”.
For me, this interface gives the feeling of a game and with it the notion that I have some kind of mission to complete (save the world, maybe), that’s when I realize that I have no mission at all but to be the character I’ve created and to make something of my virtual life. I think the people at “Linden Lab” need to update the interface to something much brighter that looks more like a program interface or a web interface, and just to get them started I created this rough sketch:
There’s something deceiving in the name “Second Life”, and I think that it has to do with unclear intentions as most deceiving things are. The creators of SL wanted it to be a platform, a tool, for the real life. And indeed SL is slowly becoming more and more relevant in business life. For example companies make their transatlantic conferences through SL and save money time and CO2 emission. In this case SL is a tool that serves the real life of a specific time and space, the intersection between the real lives and the virtual is specific and well defined. In this case SL is not an alternative to the real lives and not running parallel to them. The same way one goes to work, to the shop or the bank, one goes to SL in order to do stuff. A very interesting example of using SL as a tool and expanding the connections between the real and the virtual life is presented in the work of Drew Harry from the Media lab http://web.media.mit.edu/~dharry/.
But if people will only use SL as a tool “Linden Lab” won’t earn any money, so they also need people that don’t see SL as a platform but as a game (the same way the interface indicates) or more specifically as some kind of an MMO. If it’s an MMO, like “World of War Craft”, or if you have other reasons to spend most of your time in the virtual world, SL is not your SECOND LIFE, it’s your first and maybe your only. Maybe the real life becomes your virtual life because it’s as surreal as the virtual world to other people and the existence in the virtual world replace your existence in the real world. In the year 2008 one can have the opportunity to choose a side dish with his hamburger meal, a cellular phone company, to choose between 6 pairs of jeans and “virtual” or “real” existence. But just as you can’t wear two pairs of jeans and talk on the phone through two cellular companies at the same time, you can’t be present in the real and in the virtual world at the same time, you have to choose. It doesn’t mean you can’t be sometimes here and sometimes there and it doesn’t mean that these two world don’t collide and interact with each-other (they do, all the time, and I found these interactions the most interesting part of time) but they are not a mirror image of each-other, and it isn’t possible to be in both places at the same time, as someone once said, “…you have to choose… the blue pill or the red pill”.
SL for me was an unfulfilling experience; right now my real life provides the drama of a medium size soap opera. My new real life seems like a virtual world to me, so I can’t find myself really concentrating in the virtual one. My real life mission of finding a new life is too intensive for adopting another mission of creating a new virtual life. It’s a very interesting tool and I’m sure that I’ll get back to it from time to time.
But then, I realized that things are not so different from what I had already known. Nothing in the
For example-
-I dress the same as everybody, it’s true I have a bizarre green bag and an orange coat but, they were a bit strange in
-I know most of the brands and shop names; if I don’t know them specifically I recognize the marketing method behind them.
- I understand the language and most of the time I can even understand the slang.
-The TV broadcasts the shows I used to download from the web.
-I can buy most of the foods I used to eat in Israel in the supermarket.
-I talk with my family and friends on a regular basis using messenger, skype and emails.
And so on.
I was raised in an immigrant’s story-teller family, and I’m just realizing that 30 years ago a change in where you live was something that one (my parents for instant) experienced in a much different way. One either traveled much slowly, hence having a lot of time to be in the state of in-between places, or, one was arriving to a new place which was dramatically different from the old place, thus the change was noticeable right away.
I’m not saying that 30 years ago changing countries was easier, on the contrary, I’m thankful for the Hollywood movie industry and Skype inventors who made it free, I’m arguing that today this process is much more confusing. If I’m not thinking about it, I can’t feel that I’m in a whole different place, but the alien notion lurks everywhere and strikes the moment I open my mouth to speak. In today globalization economy and mass transatlantic transportation, if you change your living environment, the change isn’t represented in big things like clothing, food, language, forms of entertainment, lack of communication and culture, but in small and personal aspects of life.
The speedy journey here and the lack of significant differences from my homeland, made me feel as if I can rent a car, drive for 2-3 hours and be back in my familiar environment. The notion that I’m not so far away and the rational knowledge that I am far away keeps clashing in my moments of awareness, for now, the score is 1:0 for the irrational. I’m still waiting for this comprehension of distance to strike me.
For conclusion, to reinforce my argue that from the global point of view, things look just the same, take a look at these pairs of Israeli and American familiar logos. I especially picked logos of established companies that got on their way long before the internet era and the beginning of the globalization discussion.
The question that occurred to me is why are these logo so similar? What does it mean?
I have two answers.
The first one is literal- the Israeli graphic designer copycats the American. The
The second argues that the same type of companies desire to pass the same kind of message. A big and established bank wants to say “I’m big, I’m reliable, you can trust me, give me your money” both in Israel and in the USA, so it uses the colors blue and red with a straight forward text and a symbol that winks to us for a movement.
A big food cooperative wants to give you the impression that it’s not that huge and that every time you step inside you enter a neighborhood grocery shop with a personal service. So the logo is designed with a non formal font, colors and decorations.
And then, for mixing everything up again I’m wondering if these cultural-visual truths are axiom for every culture (blue and red means power and credibility, orange- informality, and so on) or maybe they are only a Western-American truth that influence other parts of the world by globalization economy.
Again, I will be happy to hear your comments about this post.
In the following week I’m going to dive into Second Life for the first time, I will write about my experiences in the virtual realm on the next post.
Since I moved to the Boston area I have been attacked by information. I am both new to the US and a job searcher thus every piece of information is interesting and crucial.
Here are some examples: bus and subway schedule and routes, grocery shops and prices, internet sites of potential companies for employment, federal internet sites, interesting HCI information, people’s names, new words in English, cool places in Boston, ATM code, banking system, how to get from here to there, place to have a haircut, new monetary, schools for master degree, place to get a good Guinness, people that can help me, how to charge my Charlie card, where to see a movie, inches Fahrenheit foot and miles, and the list goes on.
These fractions of information are exciting and overwhelm at the same time.
My first lab project is to organize this information.
The first type of information is physical: city structure.
When we first arrived in Tel Aviv I was terrified, the city looked so big and strange. It took me about a year to feel comfortable, to know where to find things I like and how to get from one place to another, and then I didn’t want to leave.
I made two cognitive maps, one of Tel Aviv and one of the Boston area. These maps represent my physical knowledge of the city, my use of space. I’m going to update the Boston map every month and compare the maps to each other. The maps represent individual and temporary knowledge; they change from one day to another.
One more clarification-the Boston map shows Boston, Cambridge and Brookline- about 5000 hectares (12300 acres), while the Tel Aviv map is much smaller in scale, it shows about 75% of its territory, approximately 3900 hectares (9600 acres).
These two maps can reveal some secrets about me; the most obvious is my means of transportation. In Tel Aviv I used to walk and ride my bike, so
the map is created by long lines that connect to each other. In Boston (Cambridge) I ride the T, and the map is created by dots, as if I’m bouncing around from one place to another.
The second type of information is metaphysical.
This type contains information that has to do with the fact that I started a new chapter in my life; I came to a place with new people and a new culture.
Organizing is basically the action of dividing, so same as before, I divided the information to four groups. In order to represent the information as mathematical data I strained my brain for half a day (math is not my strong side) and came with a very simple equation.
1. Number of uses- the number of times I use this piece of information, if I didn’t really use it- it gets the value 0.1. (In the people group number of use means
the number of times I interacted with those people)
2. Number of days in the US- I will continue to update this table every month, so number of days in the US will always be in increments of 30.
3. Constant- has the value of 1, 2 or 3 and it represents a capacity of information that specific information object contain. 3 being the highest, 1 the lowest.
4. E- is the amount of effect the specific information object has on me, and it is represented by the simple equation:
E=
(Number of uses/Number of days in the US)*Constant*100.
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The numeric information is represented as a radar graph that helps me compare the influence every information group has on me in a specific month, for example you can see that I interact less in the second month with the new monetary, because I got my debit and credit card.
That’s it about information for today, I’ll be very happy to read your comments about this post: subject, maps, graphs and equation, or whatever you want to write about.
Gila
I’m Gila. I’m an Israeli Landscape architect. I finished my B.Landscape arch degree two years ago. Since then I have managed to keep myself busy, for example, I worked in three landscape design offices, lived in a Bauhaus building in Tel Aviv, started learning illustration, made a children’s book, started building websites and the list goes on.
I moved to
As part of my work at the lab I will study issues that are related to spaces both virtual and physical, information design, cognitive visualization, reality and fiction, globalization vs. localization, interfaces, games and much more.
This is a new experience for me, exploring things that interest me and are part of my day to day life, with the ability to spread out as far as my interests go.
I’m hoping that the audience (which is you…btw) will be willing to join my research by writing comments and personal ideas about the topics I’ll be exploring.
Bon voyage!
