IBM Questions Second Life

On November 30th IBM hosted a Virtual Worlds event in London for European press.  IBM teamed the real world day with a global “think tank” in Second Life. I was lucky enough to be among the 33 bloggers, thinkers and researchers IBM invited to join the brainstorming session on one of their sims that day.  Roo Reynolds blogged about the event here and provides links to the chat transcripts.

The purpose of the session was to illicit thinking about developing a perspective of what Second Life means - and what might be the potential of such virtual worlds.  With Roo’s permission, I thought it would be interesting to open IBM’s discussion to a wider audience and post some of the questions we discussed – with the hope you will jump in with your answers.

[Clarification 12-29-06:  The responses to the following questions are mine, not Roo's. The questions were posed - these are my answers.  Poor Roo should not have to take the blame for them. You can see eveyone else's answers on Roo's chat transcipt.]

Here's the first:

1)    What makes Second Life so interesting with only 9000 people logged in at the moment?

My answer:  Second Life is so interesting because:

a) it is built around social concepts: social gathering, collaborative “building,” the ability to bring into SL some social artifacts like music, activities (shopping, games, movies), and tools with which to create.  These things mirror the social nature of 2D networked communities and the sociological shifts in network behavior.

b) It is one of the few truly “accessible” playgrounds to explore the concepts of the web as 3D. 

c)  SL offers immersive experiences that cannot be replicated within a 2D environment – this has potential for learning, prototyping, training, entertainment, experimentation, marketing.

d) It is opening new technological opportunities for technology developers/service providers. 

I believe the early “game babies” are also driving the commercial interest in SL – and that this trend will only increase.  Expectations for this just-entering-the-workforce group are high - and they will continue to exert pressure toward more immersive user interfaces.

How would you answer the question?

Comments

[Hassan Davis]

And, what are the things that you do not care for about Second Life (if anything)?

[Linda Zimmer]

There are lots of things that aren't "there yet."

Second Life isn't scalable. The tools put a great deal of "literacy" requirements on users. The interface isn't intuitive and the learning curve is fairly steep. And, for enterprises the shared environment can present privacy issues.

There's a lot to like, though, and I'm more focused on the benefits and opportunities it presents now and in the future.

What do or don't you like?