Digital Life »News & culture
What is Second Life? And why should you care?
beingzoe over 2 years ago | 3 responses    

I need to be more informed.
I read your posting and watched the video and came away feeling a little lost. The more I read what you said and watched the video I was reminded of the need to open my mind to some of these kind of things that are going on around me. We just got back from seeing Sex and the City and it is full of product placements and brands which TV and the movies have been doing for years. Now to enter the world of a second life and have a hotel ask us to view their property and stay there is a whole new dimension not to mention seeing the various characters sipping a coke, using a particular cell phone etc. Looking back our intention, albeit not well defined, with Cotradeco was to have people step into Cotradeco and share with us and others what they are doing and how they are using our products. I am babbling way too much here but as I said I am struggling to understand this and how it has become part of our daily lives. I want more.

I wish I had more to share with you. My own understanding of Second Life and how this might affect the future, tomorrow or 20 years from now is unknowable.

However, I have added a follow-up post that shares the portion of the BBC documentary I refer to above, that caused me to reconsider Second Life in the first place.

Hope that helps. I will say that product placement, even in a live performance is child’s play in comparison to what’s coming.

maybe i can shed some light on the subject for you. second life is anything but a game. in the (very near) future, you (yes YOU!) will be handling many of the things you do in your real life right there on the second life grid. im talking about going to the bank, seeing a teller, transferring funds, making a withdrawl or any banking task you would have to drive your car to do today. need to make the weekly shopping trip? you can save gas. go to ralphs grocery store (i dont know if this particular grocery chain has a presence in SL yet, but they will), grab a virtual cart, walk down the dairy aisle, grab a gallon of milk, read the label, check the price and drop it in your cart. same with imitation crab. go to the checkout (many of the merchants in SL have automatic point of sale devices in world, so there probably wouldnt be a cashier, unless the management decides they would like to pay someone to check you out), enter your payment information and in a couple hours, your milk and imitation crab gets delivered to your (real life) door. the possibilities are really unlimited. major companies are getting sims (65,535 square virtual meters and 15,000 “prims”) and having a presence in world. check out the IBM sims. they have virtual server rooms where they experiment with new energy usage and cooling methods for server rooms in the real world. i dont have the exact numbers, but they have dramatically brought the cost of having a server room down. personally, i have offices there, where i can have meetings with people that want to buy products i have for sale on http://dugz.biz. SL is developing “HTML on a prim” (primitive. the basic building block in SL), where you can have your real world website in world. (HTML on a prim isnt developed to where it has hyperlinks yet, but theyre working on it. right now you can just click on the prim and go to the website on the embedded firefox browser, or your own) i have my website displayed on the wall in my offices.
the really cool thing (not that what ive said isnt really cool) is that every single thing you see in world, with the exception of the ground and the sky, is created by the residents. this means you or i can create a clothing item, a vehicle, a cool haircut, a new skin, or anything we can imagine and sell it to the other residents.
there is a lady in world (anshe chung) that makes a 6 figure (maybe more by now) real world income by buying and selling land in world.
also, anything you create belongs to you. you can design clothes in world, then make them and sell them in the real world. its a perfect test ground for new items that you can create for free, rather than making a hundred thousand shirts in real life, without knowing if theyll really sell.
if youre a real world architect, you can build your design(s) in world and see if they are viable in the real world, without even one shovel hitting the ground.
there is an economy there that converts to real dollars by about 250 “linden dollars” to one real world dollar. (it varies just like the dollar against the euro or yen or pound, etc.) there are people making serious money there. i know disk jockeys in world that pay thier rent by spinning tunes for tips at clubs.
this is seriously so much more than a game.
i must add a bit of caution…this is addictive. there are people that spend 18 hours a day in there. it can really become your first life, while your real first life crumbles. be careful!
i could go on all night about this subject, but i have to work in the morning. get in touch with me if youd like to have any questions answered. ive been a resident for like 5 years.
i hope this has answered some questions.
have a lovely day!

SL: doug donovan,
Bristow 87,37,46