"Coming of Age in Second Life"

My brother-in-law sent me this book and, I must confess, I was already biased against it since he'd noticed while "flipping through it" that the author was apparently able to arrive in a house, the author magically owned, AND apparently even more magically built, AND apparently was wearing clothes he created ... all on day 1. So BIL to me was, of course: he did this on day one? And you are still buying clothes and houses and that three years later?

I presumed this was just brother-in-law being annoying ... he and my sister sometimes take turns in that ... but, yeah, book says you are, on first logging in, "suddenly teleported in Second Life, alone in your home." There is also a startlingly misleading picture of what Second Life apparently looked like when the author arrived. The author supposedly joined SL in 2004 - I wasn't around then, but even in 2006, NOTHING looked that good, let alone arrival areas! (and I arrived through Big Brother SL, so was spoiled from the beginning).

Mostly I am annoyed at the moment because so many different experiences are being conflated. That was NOT good anthropological practice, nor, I am sure, the 2004 experience. I know, because it was not even the 2006 experience! And I am not sure new SLers even today somehow magically create their own houses and clothes on DAY ONE.

Perhaps the book will pick up from here. If the author is around, I'd be very interested to know where picture 1.1 was taken in 2004.

I've been meaning to read that, haven't gotten around to it. All that on day one. Wow. I was still learning to walk and get a box off my head on day one. I didn't have a house for probably 6 months, til I had some land to put it on and even then didn't understand even basic building. That really sounds out there.

I have no idea how 2004 was but "clothes he created" could mean "Library fabric adjusted into vaguely t-shirt shape with sliders." Very possible.

I think I just missed my 2nd rez-day (no big deal to me) and have built a grand total of two houses and one skybox that I'm still not certain are releasable even as freebies. Clothes that look like anything I would want to wear are out of the question. Scripts are just so much alchemy to me.

Granted I don't have much time on my hands, but that book sounds like propaganda.

I read that book a while ago and can't remember the context of the portion that you are referring to but, in general, I thought it was very well researched and written. It is fairly academic in nature so some parts are a bit slow but overall I enjoyed it and thought it was quite accurate for the time frame in which it was written.

When I arrived inworld in 2006. we had the pathway Orientation with the talking parrot that was quite magical. The First Land program was in effect the so I went searching for a 512 plot and there were lots available.

I really think they should bring First Land back; having that little plot got me buying more land a lot faster than if I had had time to develop a landless lifestyle in SL.

So I did have a nice orientation and land on day one as well as finding a free house really fast.

Unfortunately I had no idea of plot sizes so the free house was way too big for a 512.

But I wore boxes on my head until I found someone to help on Help Island several weeks in. And I didn't realize that you could buy skins until I was in for several months!

I think the SL arrival experience really varied depending on when you first entered SL since when I took my alt thru Orientation in 2007, the wonderful path had become a dreadful city square where nothing really worked. I really wish they would go back to the path.

Sounds like the book has painted a very rosy picture. I can't imagine someone building anything on day 1! It took me ages just rotating that huge free house on my little plot before I realized that it just wouldn't work. I lived in a glass cube for ages after that.

Hummm. Haven't seen that book. It does sound like they didn't accurately relate their actual initial experiences though.

But in my case, for my first avatar, in Sept 2005...

Orientation: Maybe 10 minutes

Off to the Mainland, to a sim whose name I have been told by a friend was their home sim.

5 min later, I was no longer in a newbie avatar, I was an anthro fox. Free avatar.

20 min after that, I had spent over L$3,000 on a top-of-the-line anthro fox avatar, bought prim hair and I adjusted it to fit that avatar, and I had made my first set of custom eyes and had modified some free clothes to make a unique outfit.

By the end of the first hour, I was standing on the parcel where new friends had told me my earlier friend called her "home point". I didn't have build rights on any land in that sim, nor were any private parcels for sale, so I didn't try setting up a house on any open land there. But I could have rented a treehouse apartment then and there, and been living just 50 M from my friend, who I had yet to see in-world.

Yeah, my control of the movement controls was still a bit shaky. I had a hard time keeping up with an experienced person who I was supposed to follow as they walked around the sim... But in just that first hour I had done quite a lot.

If I had chosen to start as a Premium Account, I very well could have had a house on my 512 M2 First Land parcel in that first hour.

for those that aren't familiar with it, you can read *portions* of the book here. personally, i'd recommend it as an interesting read:

http://books.google.ca/books?id=QmFQK7y6r_8C&printsec=frontcover#PPA6,M1

As i recall, he was quite explicit in outlining the context and scope of his research in the first few chapters. It was probably one of best researched publications on SL that I've read. Although I'm sure there may be some errors here and there in the book, you might want to withhold judgement until you've finished reading it. I think he's still quite active in SL and has a research centre in-world so I'm sure he'd be willing to answer questions you might have about his work.

Well, I definitely should not have judged the book by its beginning, as it is turning out to be really interesting and solidly researched. Mea culpa! I'd recommend it pretty highly - it is very cool to read analysis of things like lag!

Maybe he bought one of the packages with the Blumfield/Shermerville new resident houses. That was a kind of experiment to see if new premiums wanted everything there for them when they joined.

...now if only some of the later owners still could get that stuff.

Mari
(who is also a Shermerville Resident)

I don't think it was a bad idea. Rather, though, I think an optional program that provides everything but only for a month or two might be better - just letting people find their footing before being released into the wild with 512m2 tier.

Over the years SL has generally changed from a focus on creation to a focus on consumption. That's generally a good thing - it's because the market has made content such high quality and good value that there is no longer any real need to.

The problem is, psychologically, in terms of happiness no amount of consumption can make up for the reduction in the common individual's ability to contribute. No society has ever solved this problem.

Also, the bar has been raised exorbitantly. If the challenge is to "have a house" the choice is to either spend months learning about SL concepts, sculpties, construction, plus mastering a graphics SW package, plus learn about LSL, etc or go ahead ... or to buy a prefab which usually costs about 1000 L$, then it takes some real creative determination to take the long, hard road doing it yourself.

That is indeed very true and SL, in this regard, is very much like RL.

I suspect that's also what is fuelling SL's sales engine. For many designers sales revenue is a measure of how much the product of their creative energies is appreciated. Most won't do it just for the money.

Wow, my very own thread! Thanks to everyone for these comments. I’m going to give some quick responses/answers to questions, and I’ll check in later and add more if needed. I’m always thankful and flattered when people discuss my work – who isn’t?

These comments/answers are basically in chronological order as they appear on the forum.

#1
@Triz: you say: “he'd noticed while "flipping through it" that the author was apparently able to arrive in a house, the author magically owned, AND apparently even more magically built, AND apparently was wearing clothes he created ... all on day 1.”

Uh, no… you’re talking about where I try to give, as I say on page 8, “a portrait of what an uneventful afternoon might have looked like during the time of my fieldwork. I do not intend this portrait to be representative of everyone’s experience, just one example of what life in Second Life could be like during my fieldwork.” It is NOT what I did on day 1! If only – it took me a lot of time to build my house!

#2
@Triz again: you say: “Mostly I am annoyed at the moment because so many different experiences are being conflated. That was NOT good anthropological practice, nor, I am sure, the 2004 experience.”

Your annoyance apparently changes later (yay!), but actually it is normal anthropological practice to try and summarize the patterns you see. An ethnography isn’t the same thing as just repeating the exact words of everyone you talk to. The point being that there are shared meanings in a culture and we can try to identify what some of these might be. It’s no more a “conflation” than to say a dictionary “conflates” all of the different ways people use words. Well that’s the point, and of course there are always words and meanings of words out there that any edition of a dictionary misses or gets wrong, but that doesn’t make a dictionary without value, or some dictionaries more useful than others.

#3
@ Denali: you say: “Sounds like the book has painted a very rosy picture. I can't imagine someone building anything on day 1!”

So this is just Triz’s understanding from earlier – I didn’t build anything very pretty on day 1, though I did learn to build fairly quickly…

#4
@Triz: you say: “Well, I definitely should not have judged the book by its beginning, as it is turning out to be really interesting and solidly researched. Mea culpa! I'd recommend it pretty highly - it is very cool to read analysis of things like lag!”

AWWW! Thank you. I actually had a lot of fun writing about lag. That’s one of the things I love about anthropology: looking at the stuff that seems boring or lame, because sometimes when you scratch the surface those things are really interesting.

#5
@Osprey: you say: “Maybe he bought one of the packages with the Blumfield/Shermerville new resident houses.”

You should know me better than that, since we had our first interaction on Sunday, February 13, 2005! (Anthropologists always take good notes.) STILL the earlier misunderstanding out there. I did not every buy a house, thank you very much. I build all my houses myself, and keep rebuilding them because it’s so much fun. If you go to Ethnographia (in Dowden), you will see the latest incarnation of my house which I just finished a couple weeks ago. I found a great wood texture from Textures R Us for the main building, and did a good job incorporating my waterfall (I think!). And all built by me me me!

Okay, there are some quick answers. If you have any other comments or answers just add them to this thread and I’ll check in later and try to keep responding. Or if people ever want to have a book chat or whatever inworld, just im me and we could do that – we could use my house in Dowden or there are lots of other good places.

Shhhh - I never interact and tell ;-D

Naw, you just film it and post it on YouTube!!!

Originally Posted by Yumi Murakami
Over the years SL has generally changed from a focus on creation to a focus on consumption. That's generally a good thing - it's because the market has made content such high quality and good value that there is no longer any real need to.

<I personally hope that people never give up the need to add content and create. Though there is already many fine content creators, there is always room for more. An artist's take on something is unique and I celebrate it.>

Originally Posted by Paola Delpaso
I suspect that's also what is fuelling SL's sales engine. For many designers sales revenue is a measure of how much the product of their creative energies is appreciated. Most won't do it just for the money.

<To add to that thought- If the search engine in SL were more reliable and had not been tinkered with so much, it would be easier for designers to be found or appreciated and gauge results on this more effectively.

So *that* is where that YouTube video came from! (Just kidding )

Heya Tom. Been a fan of your work for ages, and very nearly popped by my old school to say hi once when you were giving a talk in Primverness that one time a few months back. I got a degree at the university you are at now. Trouble was, I had business later that afternoon and not enough time to make it back.

Not to freak you out or anything (I woulda called first or something before showing up!) but thought it might be cool to say hi.

I have yet to meet *anybody* from SL in 'first life' ~ though it was really close once, I almost was gonna meet Croquet from Caledon down at Harbor House diner once (they never close!).

http://www.harborhousecafe.com/index.html

I've been there! Great, now I'm hungry. (Good place, folks)

It depends. "Ars gratia artis" is still perfectly possible, but the "incremental improvement" experience of creation is a lot less likely now, because money and eyeballs have been made much harder to get.

And "incremental improvement" is obviously a key part of virtual worlds, because the most popular game-style ones (WoW, etc) basically depend entirely on it. I suspect the reason for this is that it's something that most of the "middle intelligence mildly techy" type of person who is most likely to be found on virtual worlds, has experienced as a child, and then lost in adulthood.