WCET 2008 – Second Life Debate
In this very entertaining session (title: Is Second Life the Second Coming for Higher Ed?) Barry Dahl and Alfred Essa debated the merits of Second Life. Barry– a loud and animated presenter like me– took the con side. Barry’s thesis in short? Second Life is the Second Coming… of Stupid. Alfred– smaller, quieter, and with Zen-like equanimity– took the pro side. Alfred’s thesis? There’s a lot of good stuff happening in SL and Barry doth protest too much.
Alfred began with “4 Dogmas of Information Technology”:
- Everything in the physicsal world will become a node… aka the Internet of Things is coming
- 3D interactive worlds will become our primary interface… the blurring of the “real” and “virtual” worlds
- IT is democratizing innovation
- Technological change is exponential ala Kurzweil and The Singularity is Near
I agree with these, being a true believer in Kurzweil’s thesis and a future world that will be something in between thos predicted by Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash and Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End.
Alfred went on to outline three core strengths of SL: its economy (which provides incentives), its community (which embraces diversity), and the relative ease of development (which allows for individual creation). I’m not wholly sure that we’ve reached a point where I would call SL’s development tools easy, except in comparison to 3D modeling tools outside of SL, but that is a significant change.
As one who studies complex systems Alfred sees tremendous potential for studying them in SL (not to mention SL itself as an example of a complex system).
Barry brought up a number of legitimate criticism, beginning with the “stupid factor”– novelty of flight is short-lived, non-sensical replication of boring real-life environments, poor graphics– and moving on to accessibility, griefers, lack of institutional readiness, and broadband access requirements.
In the final rebuttals Alfred made a strong point about physics and other systems which can be more easily tested and contextually modified in SL than in real life, and the weaker point that as a foreign language learner he could meet with other foreign language learners.
To which Barry– in what should be a law like Godwin’s Law, but built around the invocation of comparisons to Blackboard instead of Nazis– wondered aloud about Linden Labs’ role and identity issues and whether they might not just become another Blackboard like provider.
As a possible hedge against that, Dahl brought up the idea of an education oriented virtual environment, free of the dangers of porn and virtual prostitution, and out of the control of any single, profit-making entity. This is an idea with some merit, but I wonder how different the worries of porn and prostitution really are given how they used to be such a scare tactic when it came to students on the web. And might not the Education Second Life be a bit Creepy?
As I commented during the session, it seemed to me that Barry and Alfred were both right, they were just arguing about different points in time: Barry recognizing problems with current incarnations of SL, Alfred recognizing some strengths now but also how much better it will be in the future.
The thing that Barry’s proposal for an SL-like environment for education works against is the notion I share with Alfred that SL doesn’t just represent a new environment, but the future environment that, in some shape, will consume and replace the web as we know it. Which makes Barry’s proposal akin to someone 15 years ago, aghast at the porn and other offensive images available on the web, proposing an education Internet or EdWWW that would prohibit those activities and make an environment that was safe for students and their institutions…