What are the social/political lessons we take from Second Life?

Alright, I'm getting the impression from some of what I've been reading here and there, that the real purpose of Second Life (in the eyes of the Lindens) isn't so much to make money - that helps - but to really run a vast social-economic-political experiment.

Definately, this isn't a nanny state, nor is there much focus on control (certain changes forced on them by reality not-withstanding) - other then that, this has really been a "hands off" experiment as much as I think they can practically manage.

So - report card time. For ease of categorization, I'm going to break this down into four separate realms:

Cultural (social and political)
Economic
Craft/Technical (building, scripting, etc)
Force (social pressure, griefers, combat, etc)

Guess since I'm starting this I should contribute what I think. First off, I'd have to say when people are cut loose like in Second Life, they are much less conformist than they are in reality. What this really tells me is that in reality, there are a TON of restraints being forced upon people, whether economic, peer pressure, or outright fear (of being ostricized or losing ones job).

Under the economic realm, there are many more players than in reality - it seems every third person is creating and selling something on a small scale just to cover tier. Of course, the startup investment and barriers are much smaller in Second Life, so in a utopian society there are many more entrapreneurs than in reality - but not all of them dream of enormous wealth, just being "comfortable". I am also seeing, that when a few people are able to dominate by having resources unattainable to most (landbots, or in first life, large amounts of capital and political influence) that this whole system of smallhold players is crushed.

I am also seeing a shifting of cultural norms towards the knowledge elites - the nerds, I guess. Instead of socially ostricizing them, they are actually looked up to and admired in many instances. Content creators - the creative elite who put great effort into their abilities - are both the most successful and the most respected.

I haven't had much exposure to griefers (besides the ones going "???" when I calmly ignore their attacks because I happen to be editing something at the moment) or to any other kind of force, outside of ban lines and over-zealous security orbs. Honestly, I think that aspect is pretty well crippled in Second Life. But having been in environments where they had much more influence, it seems that the higher the threat level, the more people conform and withdraw.

Is this what Second Life is? An experimental utopian society?

LL historically has referred to SL as an experiment. The nerds who first started working on SL were trying to build the Neal Stephenson's Metaverse as depicted in Snow Crash. LL slowly moved away from that as it's impracticalities became apparent; core design principals were changed, features added and removed. The goal of modern societies are to be fair and just, it makes sense that LL would design a system for a progressive society. In a way it was one of the features of the Metaverse, despite the main character living in a storage locker, in-world he was somebody with influence.

People are more willing to fight for rights in SL, it seems because it takes less effort; not to mention the dissatisfaction with the little freedom society provides resulting they don't want to loose anymore rights.

Addendum:
The main reason SL is as peaceful as it is, is because that is what people want.

Actuaslly as far as content creation & services go, more like 10% of us may be constructive, I suspect many of the rest of us just feed the economy cash buying the content the others have created, we might build on or 2 items or a house, give copies to friends, but never market them.
Few of uas may sell a few items but have spent way more than that inworld.

I think that potentially more useful are the personal lessons one can learn from SL. Relationships are more fluid, and most people I speak to make friends much faster in SL than RL. Which means that one's social life is greatly speeded up. Therefore there's a lot of potential for finding out about other people and social interaction (including across different cultures), with the benefit of less long-term risk (which acts as a damper in RL).

Now I'm waiting for some smart-ass to complain that this thread isn't a question about how to clear your cache, and this <whiny voice> isn't a discussion forum </whiny voice>.

Wouldnt it be great if SL was able thro this medium to break down a lot of the social/political barriers in RL and work towards a solution to world peace? Maybe im being over optimistic but as most of the trouble in the world is caused by greedy governments etc. everywhere, whilst we are as people have the opportunity to rise above that here and put things to one side and concentrate on the good rather than the bad in the world.

A dream perhaps? but im sure its possible, eventually

Could you expand on this a little more please?

Often when I hear people calling for fairness, what I'm hearing is people wanting to grab something from someone else.

For example, for some people the idea of fairness in regards to land is that everyone gets their own little parcel of land; for others, everyone has the same option of getting land; others are willing to limit the options to those with premium accounts; etc. Some think land prices being a voluntary thing between both buyer and seller is fair; others think land owners are unfair if they will only sell at a higher price; others that SL itself is unfair if anyone can't afford land at all, etc.

Regarding scripts, some think it was unfair to release the source code for the client, as it undermined the livlihoods of scripters; some think it is unfair to write a script that does allows one to do something quicker and more easily than without the script (e.g. landbots, copybots), others that it is unfair to interfere with such people when they are working within any published guidelines/ToS.

All of which is to give background to my request for more on your observations about a general quest for fairness.

I think LL is the final arbitrator of what is fair in their world. And their idea of fairness seems to be hands off as much as legally possible.

Sort of a Laissez-faire position.

I don't think it's an experiment. Although I'm sure Philip will find it interesting and will often look at Second Life in the same way a scientist looks at a cage full of rats.

Philip Linden: "Ewww! They're makin babies"

Ultimately, Second Life is just a number. Go to the main page and you'll see a number with the words "Online Now" beside it. That's what Second Life is to Linden Lab. Nothing else matters.

I dont agree with that at all. they wouldnt have developed the system to this extent if it wernt for their inherent interest in it. if it were only for the numbers (the $ ) I dont think we'd see a system anywhere near as interesting as it is now.

I'm here to be entertained, not to be educated. But if Iwere it would be that Humans are a very mystfying bunch of creatures.

I agree with you. But things change. What somebody wants today isn't necessarily what they want tomorrow.

Philip wanted a metaverse yesterday. Today he wants a huge "Online Now" number.

What I find, after 2.5 years of being an SL resident is that the ideals of Libertarianism are destined to failure with real people. Without structure and rules, criminals and outlaws have too much power and opportunists are rewarded far more than honest workers.

I am here for a good time. I think some people take themselves too seriously here and are still trapped by constraints of their society. SL makes Dada art movement look positively orthodox. Just enjoy yourselves and relax. I am a Neko and so I can't really be taken seriously anyway.

Why couldn't I think of a way to say exactly that? LL has attempted to make a place that is "perfect" for everyone. And pretty much left to the residents do whatever it is they wanted without any guidance or "intervention"..........the result is pretty close to anarchy. While that works for some, for most it just leaves them almost totally naked to the exploits and aggression of a few. Rules have to be put in place. And once in place they have to enforced.....and that is were this "experiment" fails miserbly.

I don't think it's the ideals of Libertarianism SL is disproving but rather the ideal of anarchism: Unfortunately, people can't "just all get along" because some will abuse it, and so an agreed institution to apply necessary force is an unavoidable evil.

Frankly, SL seems to be getting along better under its laissez-faire-as-possible regime than RL is among its several governments. Griefers are a nuisance, but are contained far better than the criminals in RL. Scammers exist, but don't hold high office in SL as some do in RL (I am thinking of the Enron crowd as well as the crooked politicians that abound in the state where I live). The landscape is cluttered and sometimes ugly enough on the Mainland, but there are plenty of well-ordered islands if that's your preference. I'd say SL is making libertarian ideas look pretty good.

I think it' too early to talk of a "failure".

I basically agree that Second Life is a world of chaos, somehow. But I like to compare it to the internet in its early days. Back then, the technical possibilities were only slightly smaller than today (except for bandwidth), but it was a bloody mess, with animated background homepages and horrible web shops popping up everywhere.

Why was it like that? Because people didn't know what to do.

It's the same with Second Life. People don't know what they are doing. They start to build horrible 1:1 copies of the first world. As if a virtual world wouldn't have more to give.

PEOPLE LACK IMAGINATION

That's all. I am using Second Life for one week now. I have a bunch of ideas what is possible and how to implement, and most of these ideas seem profitable to me. To make a living in the first life, that is.

It really is a shame people don't think one step further.

Why do you rebuild and copy the first life? That's not what people want to have, I'm shure.

And that's why Second Life just sucks like hell at the moment.

But I'm confident there will be people who see the chances this world offers, and how to lead it out of chaos...

Not everyone comes here to make a profit. Also, saying you know what evryone wants or doesn't want here is a bit presumptuous, especially form someone who has only been here a week. I'm sure you know what you want, or at least think you know, and that's fine. Let the rest of us figure it out for ourselves.

I'm not prescribing anything. Everybody may do as he wishes.

I don't talk about making profit, I talk about a lack of imagination. But most innovations come to life because they are profitable. Sadly, most companies coming here to make profit are a perfect example for the lack of imagination. Translating first life products 1:1 to second life is not "it".

I think most people don't use the second life possibilities because they are not used to having no limits. They don't free themselves from physical restrictions, for example.

I'm really interested in how this will evolve over time...

I guess the subtleties of that statement went missed. Independent of design and intention societies grow and form. LL has designed a mold for society, but they have largely stayed away from making it conform to any mold.

What is so empowering about SL, silver spoon or not, you can be influential in the world. LL could easily make it so only silver spoons have influence. LL is an equal opportunity discriminator.

@Hildolfur: You have touched on another aspect of SL. It's not that people lack imagination, they just haven't gotten into a creative mode. Most people who buy cars in SL, never drive them on the roads in SL, they park them in there driveway or they sit in inventory. Why do people build houses with kitchens and bathrooms? Why own a bed, your avatar doesn't need to sleep. Its what people feel they need. People are social creatures, they setup systems to make there lives easier, this includes systems of objects and places. Systems from the real world are adapted for the virtual world because the niche has not been adequately filled in the virtual world. Without giving thought to it, they port existing systems instead of trying to create new system, creating new systems take incredible amounts of thought and hard work. It's not a lack of imagination, it's an unconscious avoidance of work.

My avoidance of work is far from unconscious.

Everyone KNOWS the noobies are the SL economic masters.

Its like a child prodigy thing

I see the complaint that things aren't original enough quite often here, and I think the main reason is that art and creativity tend to be evolutionary. People tend to take something they've already seen and improve on it rather than branching out completely anew. You can build entirely original structures that have no link to the real world in SL, but they'll just look like abstract sculptures and might not be widely appreciated.



This depends a lot on how you define influence. If you mean social influence - that is, ability to affect other people - then that is actually harder to get in SL than in RL because unlike RL, if you have social influence over something that's important to someone and they don't like what you're doing with it, they can always just quit or ignore you.

I would also guess that creativity is tempered to some extent , by the programs limitations. You can dream up anything, but sometimes it isn't practical, in world. Again SL mimics RL.

True, SL WAS a social and creative experiment back in 2003 and promised much to content creators, artists, social visionaries and such.. but not much of that is true now.

The recent restrictive campaigns to get 1st world moral limited thinking into force ' ban age-play, ban gambling ( what's next??) show how increasingly the so called vision of virtual life is being dominated and crushed by the petty politics of politcally correct American corporate life and advertising sponsorship policy and by the pressure from lobbyist usa groups who want to make worlds like SL subject to the same bland do-goody interfering restrictions that govern their dull 1st lives. We are watching the 'Disneyfication' of 2nd life and it's not over yet...

Also the ever increasing drive to make BIG subscriber figures by drowning SL in freebie accounts to build the population graph figures up and make it 'mainstream' ( which is working) is there simply to build SL up to the 'Google' type sell-off to make its founders and now the archetypal millionaire profit backers attracted to it, into even richer zillionaires.

It's no longer at all the brave new world i Saw in 2003 nor is it the content rich creative experiment it was with most mainland sims now a cluttered mess of clashing builds, land for sale signs, and commercial enterprises, its becoming a 1st world advertiser platform, a money driven online economic vehicle, a mainstream news item and publicity vehicle for 'self-made virtual millionaires' and a PR arena for certain 'clique' interests who have allied themselves with this financial imperative. we all know the names of those Avatars don't we and how many magazine articles they have about themselves

Ok let's NOT kid ourselves, it is and always was a BUSINESS. and our attempts to create an artistic and meaningful virtual alternative existence are no longer the selling messages used to promote the game. SL is becoming another 'make money online universe' like Project Entropia.. unshamedly stressing how that 'make real time cash from online time' is the major motivator to so many to join. In reality we are all just pawns for whatever reason we join in the eventual result that the already rich backers of the bigger and better SL will add a few more tens or hundreds of millions to their already massive and obscene fortunes.

Think anything else and you are just a dreamer... but then wasn't that dream why many of us in the early days joined SL and other variants and still love virtual life., to create, to explore to boldly go where the McMoney Machine hasn't yet gone before..??

Here, here.