Second Life – A Second Chance at Authenticity

This week I attended my first conference held entirely in Second Life. The event was a Symposium on the Evolution of Communication sponsored by the New Media Consortium (NMC). I’ll admit, I was quite skeptical about the value of attending a two day conference in a virtual world, but I was willing to give it a whirl.

A little background on my so called Second Life: Spring 2007, I had zero desire to stick even my little toe in SL. I’m not a gamer and this “world” seemed so pointless. The graphics looked like something out of the 80’s. What could I possibly learn there?

Then, the fated day came, when my fav curator asked, “Glenda, what should we be doing in Second Life for museums?” I gritted my teeth, and responded that I would investigate (sigh). As I explored this strange new place it was anything but love at first sight. I forced myself to keep going back. My goal: to try and find something meaningful on each trip down the rabbit hole.

19 months later with just a handful of hours of in SL I was still far from enamored. But each trip in, I kept thinking, “there is potential here, I can feel it.”

I never would have guessed that NMC virtual conference would be so mentally stimulating and interactive. As the first day drew to a close I was trying to explain to my peeps how amazing this experience was. My RL friends eyed me warily, claiming that Second Life was just another way geeks withdraw from the real world. To which I responded, “I think SL is an opportunity to reveal your authentic self.” After the peels of laughter subsided, I continued:

I’m not saying that SL is perfect. Far from it. What I’m saying, is that SL is a place that gives us a blank slate that begs the question, “who am I”. You can take the question seriously, or not. That is up to you.

As you create your avatar, do you choose to recreate your own image or do you choose to explore the other side? In RL, so many things can inhibit us from being who we want to be, but in SL, the only thing stopping you is your own imagination. Freed from earthly limitations including gender, appearance, disabilities, social judgments and even gravity you can choose to spread your wings and soar to your potential.

If you can imagine it, you can achieve it.
If you can dream it, you can become it.
– William Arthur Ward

5 comments

  1. Interesting perspective Glenda on a virtual existence in a pseudo-reality – I suppose one of the key points about such activity is that someone only ‘gets as much out of it as they put in’ – investing personal effort is the only way to get anything meaningful in return.

    As with cyber chatrooms (of olde) though – the trouble is that when the lines of reality gets blurred and people start living out their fantasies – their ‘real life’ characters become unknown in such communities too. That leads to the bizarre occurrence of maybe knowing someone’s thoughts and feelings really, really well (the authenticity you refer to), but then not knowing much about who they are if you met them in person. SL and similar environments (gamers in ‘World of WarCraft’ springs to mind) gives people an opportunity to really exercise their imaginations and unwind among a community of (hopefully) like-minded souls, and that’s a good thing. So long as it doesn’t interfere with living in the RW…then I don’t see anything wrong with it.

  2. Matt…good points. One interesting option in Second Life is to actually connect your “first life”. For example, on my Second Life profile, on my “first life” tab I have listed my real name, my real URL and posted a picture of the real me! Most of the folks I hang with in SL do this as well (the education/museum crowd).

    I will agree that SL has a highly addictive factor for some people. Luckily I’m not one of those people…my RL is too rich to have it usurped by my SL :)

  3. Hi, Glenda,

    Great new blog look! I love it!

    BTW, at 1:00 tomorrow, there is a faculty panel session called “Virtual World Teaching in Second Life—Is Anyone Learning?” which includes Susanna Herndon, Paul Resta, Leslie Jarmon, and Jerome Bump. They’ll discuss how Resta and Bump piloted SL in their classes. Come if you can!

    I go in occasionally, but don’t really have the time to spend. Leslie and Joe Sanchez have done some really cool investigating for using SL in the classroom.

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