I'm not a participant in Second Life. I think the concept is sort of interesting, and have, ever since I read Snow Crash (thanks, bdp!), but the two times I've visited the site with the idea of signing up, something kicks in and says, "Can you imagine anything more eye-gougingly boring?" The thought of creating an avatar reminds me of those flat dolls with press-on clothing and accessories my sisters used to have. Dealing with people acting out fantasies behind a cloak of anonymity -- well, it's tiresome enough in text-only forums.
Nonetheless, I sometimes hear a story about Second Life that makes me wish I could just jump in. Case in point: Gen. JC Christian's report of his infiltration of the Second Life Republican Headquarters. Absolutely hilarious. Screen shots included.
3 comments:
Heh, that's a funny post. I'm a big Neal Stephenson fan, but I think I'll wait till the "reality" is a little less "virtual". (Hmm... should that be more virtual? Whatever. Can't wait for the brain jacks!)
I propose: Virtually, more real.
I'm with you on the brain jacks. I do like the idea of being able to meet up and roam around in cyberspace using modes beyond exchanging text. I just don't like what I perceive as the learning curve and/or prep work required for Second Life participation. I'm only an early adopter for things I'm really interested in, and I'd say that jacking in (isn't that William Gibson's phrase?) only rates at about the "yeah, that seems sort of cool" level.
After reading Snow Crash and some early cyber-punk novels where users "jacked in" to the network, I always thought it would be kind of cool to be able to do that, but just like the Internet, the only interesting things happen when there are interesting things happening. That's one of the problems with things like Second Life -- unless there's some "fun" involved that I can't get in the "real world," I'm not really going to be interested in it. For a lot of us, it was the concept of being able to do something that's cool, not necessarily what we do once we have the capabilities.
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