Do We HAVE To Use Voice??

The webcam thing is an interesting subject. The technology for picture phones has been about for years, actually.

http://webserve.govst.edu/users/gaskrau/picphone.html

But why didn't our grandparents all rush off to use it? Well, possibly for the same reasons people in SL often don't care for voice--

A) It didn't enhance their phone calls, really. Facial expressions help conversation, but aren't that important.
B) It afforded an intimacy with a casual caller that they didn't want
C) One could turn off the video, but would be accused of hiding something. Besides, then, what was the point of having it in the first place?
D) Perhaps the biggest point, it cost money. Again, why pay for something that was only a novelty?

Decades later, it seems as if everyone but a few Luddites (like me) has a camera phone. But the thing is that said camera phone offers things that the picture phone does not, and controls what pictures are sent (i.e., it seems to be more for sending a quick picture of one's dog rather than of oneself).

Similarly, webcams are becoming popular. Why? I'm not sure (don't like them myself), but I'd guess that it enhances the internet experience for some in ways that the picture phone did not. Or perhaps it's a generational difference.

Either way, I find it interesting.

Standard response from someone you don't know: I use it to talk to my spouse/parents who live far, far away!

Standard response from someone you know well enough to be honest: sex/exhibitionism

Now you know .

(Edited to add that years ago, webcams were handy to easily snap digital pictures, but since digital cameras are now so cheap they replaced that particular use of a webcam)

I want to sound like Mel Gibson ^^

That's easy. Just get really... REALLY drunk, then start spewing hatred!

I wasn't directing all my comments at you, Coco. I was speaking in general for the most part.

Plus "voice" is the future of gaming. Many new games coming out have it. Many games already out are installing it or will in the future. This is just part of the gaming worlds advancing technology.
So, you're either part of it or you're not if you don't chose to be but it's coming whether you personally approve or not.

This really doesn't add up. All over Europe firms are being encouraged to make allowances for people with disabilities, people with disabilties have to be welcomed everywhere (and so they should). The idea that the future is a land that doesn't take into consideration a disability like deafness is ludicrous.

The future will be voice turned into text.

There's a difference between accepting voice as a feature to Second Life and being accused of "hideing teh evil secrits!!1" because your age old habit of keeping quiet at the computer for a gazillion and a half legitimate reasons is all of a sudden "suspicious."

If you get distracted or have to go AFK for a minute while missing a text conversation, you can catch up by reading the history. Miss some conversation by voice? Too bad. Want chat logs from an important meeting? Too bad. You have to bring a recorder and fast forward/backward to find the information you want, or bring a notepad and take notes. Inconvenience is TEH FUTEUR. Your quickly searchable and incredibly low storage footprint text logs are obsolete! Distorted mics and disorienting crowd chat hum is the way forward! It's your patriotic duty to use voice, pressing mute empowers Hitler!

You were doing well upto that point. Voice is an addition, it's certainly not the future and you pointed out many good reasons why.

All I know is that I don't want to sit around with headphones and microphone on talking to my computer. Am I the only one who thinks this is kinda weird? It all reminds me of Scotty in Star Trek 3 talking to a 20th century computer except that he didn't have on headphones and microphone. Maybe if we could just talk to our computers like they did in Star Trek it might be a different matter.

I wont use it. My girl and I may, on our own land, alone and in private, use voice together. But outside of that, I'll never use it. I don't want to hear everyone and their mother speaking to me. I didn't get into SL for voicechat.

Again, I don't personally "approve" of voice "or not."

It's not a matter of approval. I'm saying I do not WANT it. For ME. I do not want to use it. There may be an instance in which I want to use it (and I have a pleasant female voice, and I am female), but I quite doubt it. I doubt it enough not to get a microphone/headset. I'm sure if some unforseen circumstance should come along where I would feel a real need for it, I would use it, for that circumstance.

I don't disapprove of just a whole BUNCH of things I personally don't want - skydiving, playing chess, a trip to Tangiers, liposuction, a speedboat, you name it. Just not my thing.

I'm also not into the future of gaming. When I have done online games, I've never team played them in the first place. If I'm not a part of team playing, so what.

In SL, I'm a company of one person, and the friends I work with companionably (they work on their stuff, while I work on mine) don't want to use voice either, so that works out perfectly well. I'd rather use text with my customers, and I'd rather use text with strangers. I also really, really don't want talking in voice to some of the guys who come up to me in SL. AND - I hate the telephone.

Lol - you're kind of reminding me of a car salesman or something, trying to sell me on the thing. It just isn't going to work! I don't want it; don't need it; don't like it; that's all there is to it.

And if you want to talk about approving of something, I will gladly tell you that I very much approve of Voice for those who want it, of course! I approve of chess playing and skydiving, too! They're just not for me.

I applaud your enthusiasm for something you think is cool, though, and understand that you wish others would appreciate it as much as you do. That's natural.

coco

I am ugly but far from underage

Cam I would probably not use

voice I will...

oranges and apples my friend, oranges and apples

I remember awhile back at a town hall, philip linden laughed and said voice chat was totally against "his religion" (so to speak)


Heh. those were the days.

Actually, that was satire towards the end.

I've never before seen any sort of passive suspicion towards people who calmly decided not to partake in an entirely optional and oftentimes inconvenient feature. Actually, it's feature which hasn't revolutionized the world despite being around since forever.

People have to get used to voice as a luxury toy and be fully prepared to communicate via text if they're going to deal with the public. Customers shouldn't expect voice for customer service from SL companies.

The addition of voice is just fine. There may be people who can't type due to medical issues, and would rather talk than train up a fussy speech-to-text program. Voicing with your friends could be fun. It's a healthy option. Going all Witch Hunter on people who decided not to use voice is just sick though.

SL businesses will have to be more diverse than what has been known in traditional business before 1995, about when the web was finally accepted by majority of businesses as a key medium.

From studies, 60% of people are auditory. The majority of people are auditory and do quite well in business that are managed on auditory strengths. Because of that majority, other types being visual and kentic strengths in people go unrecognized and unoticed by them. 10% of people are kenetic. That leave only 30% are visual. It's probably easy to contrast someone that relies on kenetic strengths, but it isn't so easy with those that rely on visual strength. Just because someone is mainly visual doesn't mean that they are deaf. Visual people can have auditory senses that excel past those with auditory strength, but it is in general that a visual person relies on visual strengths.

You'll find many big brand named business that are run by auditory strengths. Try to contact Wal-mart, Target, Sears, Nordstrom, Arco, or Cheveron where you can communicate in a written/visual way instead of using your mouth. You can't without being thought of as a spammer if you send e-mail. You look deaf if you go in the store and write messages. You look... well... you know

Part of it comes down to this: Do you use SL as merely another RL communication tool, or as something else? Do you put your RL name and address in your 1st life notes of your profile? If not, then you should think twice about using voice, because the human capacity for recognizing people from voice alone is very great.

And that leads to yet another problem. Many people sound quite similar; I know two persons who almost exactly sound like me. If one of your unknown voice twins engages in hot, sweaty and above all public sex acts, some co-workers could start to look at you in a funny way. On any other communication platform, be it telephone or 1:1 messenger voice chat, people usually don't have such a large audience of anonymous people who could be their RL neighbour, their rich aunt or their employer.

Not to mention the horrible oedipus complications when you realize you finally recognize the voice of the person you are having hot anonomous public voice sex with..

As your Dad.

or Mom

or Boss

the days before the corporate sell out.

Someone should find the actual calender date where Second Life became First Life Online.

Or maybe a time line of "milestones"

Jig - if you refuse to use voice, you will be bound, gagged, tied to the nearest Linden totem pole and have unsavoury things done to your avatar!

CArlos really all of this has nothing to do with "approval" it has to do with personal tastes and wants and likes and dislikes of certain things.

I dont care if you use voice and I dont think anyone else would either. I also dont disapprove of you using it. I do however by comments made get the feeling that there will be a population of voice users that will "disapprove" of me using voice or not.

Its been coming in online games now for about 5 years. If it existed in those games I would not use it either except with the rare exception.

There are different types of gamers I dont "like" raiding its borring as hell I "like" crafting I dont approve or disapprove of raiders and I dont approve or disapprove of voice. Voice chat is put in mainly because people were using teamspeak or ventrillo for group activities to games decided to capitalize on another way to draw customers so decided to put it in as a part of the game. I'm still waiting fot a game that was scrapped and restarted 5 years ago to implmenet voice. They finally launched I think the game was Tabula Rosa and it was supposed to have voice chat incorporated but it doesn't.

When I play other games everyone else uses teamspeak or vent and I dont and I belonged to huge guilds where everyone was always on the teamspeak/vent server and I wasn't. It never bothered me or them really.

So honestly what you like others don't like. There are many things I do and activities in seconlife that I enjoy that you may not. It would not be appropriate for me to force it on you anymore then its appropriate for someone who 'likes" using voice to come up to me and say I should try it and I will like and and then I will use it.

You miss the point. It doesn't appeal to a certain population of people they dont like the idea and many have tried it and its not new. Yes its appearance in many scenarios is imminent and well there is a significantly large enough section of the population who will not use if for a whole host of reasons

I think at this point I would ask that you dont judge those who are not going to be plugging in a mic harshly as "approving" or not or as being a gender or as "voice haters" this is not the case. Its not something we want to do when online. I think you will find those that dont want to chat it up online have a noise filled type work day with people yammering at them all the time in many cases. I know this is my reason. I play second life to relax and have fun not to have more people yammering away at me and despte how much I write I'm actually a quiet person. I"m the type of person who gets stress when yammering away its not relaxing I have a type of voice that does not project well and I spend most of my day pretty much in "yell" mode as I call it even though I am just trying to project it. By the end of the day I'm tired of "yelling" and yes it feels like I am yelling and I dont want to have to go to an atmosphere where I have to continue this activity. If there was no other option to communicate other then with voice chat I would not be playing second life maybe I might login to craft or something but I would not be interacting with anyone because I dont want to chat it up because I am tired I want peace and quiet and to listen to nice music or watch a nice TV show and not always be "on" in a game.


You find this hard to understand from what I can see, but the fact of the matter is some of us just dont want the stress of always having to talk 24 hours a day. So please dont judge those harshly because they dont want to do something you want to do otherwise I insist you pick up blender this minute right now and start churning out sculpties even if you hate it!

Ohhhh....*Another reason not to use it*

I spend my working hours talking to a roomful of "Cutting Edge Hardcore Gamers, with over active hormones" each day. I don't want to do it in my leisure time.
I'm all for the feature being implemented if it doesn't have a negative effect on the general performance of the "SL Thingie". I'm not ineterested in peoples reasons for wanting to use it. Conversely, I'm not interested in people's reasons for not using it. I just wish it would get here and be done with, so we can find some other nonsense to fight about.

Game Stop? lol

High School.