Second Life growing up
There are two *great* news about Second Life. One is that Second Life developer Electric Sheep Company received a new $7 million round of financing. The other is that Linden Lab said on Tuesday it will launch integrated voice capabilities.
In a radio interview on Monday the interviewer mentioned the ongoing commercialization and professionalization of Second Life and asked my opinion on the inevitable negative comments that have been raised. I answered by recalling the similar debates on the web of the early nineties. Many people wanted to “protect” the pristine beauty and baby innocence of their favorite toy from commercial interests and used to say that business would kill the internet. But what happened, on the contrary, was that business interests provided the money that fueled the technical growth of the web, drove prices for consumers down, and enabled most people in the Western world to afford, access and enjoy the web. I see no reasons why the same should not happen for the metaverse.
I must say that I tend to keep away from those elitist ivory tower intellectuals who think they know what the “little people” want, or need, better than the people themselves. 15 years later, we know that the people have voted for Google, MySpace, YouTube, BitTorrent, music and movie downloads (legal or not), simple and fast flight and hotel reservations, etc. Similarly, the people will choose what they want in the metaverse. So I say Welcome to Big Business in Second Life if their money can help provide a varied, robust and interesting metaverse for the people. I want to see *more* business and marketing in Second Life if it can help creating a sustainable content development industry able to create compelling quality content that all users can enjoy.
It was also predictable that the announcement of the forthcoming integrated voice capability in Second Life would trigger a wave of outrage among some residents. There has always been some tension between those who see Second Life as a means to escape reality and those who see Second Life as an extension of their life in brickspace. In the first category there are many people who choose to be a completely different and separate person: men posing as women, old posing as young, sometimes women posing as men and young posing as old, “furries” etc. They are afraid that voice would give them away. I belong to the second category of users (in Second Life I am me posing as myself), but understand the concerns of the others. I do not think this is a really big issue because the two categories are already separated: they do not do the same things or go to the same places in Second Life. With the growth of the metaverse, there will be plenty of places to go for both categories of users, and members of each will be able to live *their* SL in *their* part of the metaverse.
But I will never understand those who think that since they do not want to do something then nobody should be free to do it. In Second Life, those who do not want to use voice will be free not to use voice and go to places where nobody uses voice. This should be enough for them - they should not try to force their choice on the rest of us. Having a wide range of options to choose from is, I think, always a good thing. Those who cannot tolerate the lifestyle of others should, perhaps, learn to live and let live.
Posted by G.P. on 02/28 at 03:22 PM