Sunday, January 27, 2008 . 7:34 AM
Real Life - with added benefits
You really don't know the truth about something until you actually experience it. I never fully understood the hype about Second Life until yesterday - when I actually downloaded the software and started exploring this virtual world.
Second Life is a virtual world where people can explore, buy and sell, and socialize online. It's roughly like a visual chatroom.The title of this post sums up what I concluded after my Second Life experience - the reason for its popularity is not just the money-making opportunities it provides. Above all, Second Life is popular because it is exactly like real life, only with perks.
Realistic roleplaying
Like most MMORPGs, people in Second Life can be what they want and do what they want under the mask of their avatar. But unlike most other MMORPGs, it is not a "game". Second life is literally a whole new world, on the web. That's why participants in Second Life are called "Residents" and not "Players". And that's why it appeals even to ordinary people.
Traditional role-playing on the Internet required people to imagine characters and setting. Second Life sets the individual free of this mental chore. It's like why people generally choose TV over books - information conveyed visually is far more convenient.
So, Second Life is like living the first life with privileges - the real "you" is absolved of the responsibility for your actions. Not only that, people can fly and teleport in Second Life. Now that's something you can't do in the real world.
User-generated content
Second Life Residents can literally shape the world they live in. You can create objects and design your own avatar. Knowing you make a difference is a powerful motivating factor for people to participate in anything.
Creating a wooden cube (on the right) out of nowhere..
Henry Jenkins, MIT professor who has written extensively on computer games, says of Second Life: "It represents one end of a spectrum of player experiences which maximizes player generated content and minimizes the prestructured experiences we associate with most computer games." This implies that compared to professionally created games, users like the power Second Life bestows upon them.
To read more about Henry Jenkins' views about Second Life and Games Culture, do give his blog a visit.
Friday, January 18, 2008 . 10:20 PM
I'm sure many of us would have seen the really weird advertisement for "podcast.sg" on television. In case anybody hasn't watched it yet, here's the video (sorry, cannot embed, I'm still a computer "n00b" :-( ) :
Podcast.sg is a website in which Singaporeans can download and upload podcasts and listen to them. The guys in the video are basically talking about the ease of podcasting. A podcast, as some of us would already know, is an audio file that can be downloaded and shared. It's just another facet what we call "social media" - a group of new kinds of online media, which share the characteristics of participation, openness, conversation, community and connectedness.
What does the above advertisement, and its content, show about our society? Perhaps the reason that the folks at podcast.sg thought this advertisement needed to be aired, was because our society, in general, has certain misconceptions of technology; we feel operating in the sphere of social media is too difficult, so much so that we need people to tell us it's actually really simple. Or maybe technology is changing so fast, that more than the technology, we need the information about how the technology works. Or on another level, it could mean that while all this surfeit of technology can seem overwhelming and daunting, it really is simple to use.
There are various other facets of social media apart from podcasting. Many of us may have heard of the video site called "mocca" (also promoted by cheesy ads). Apart from this, as mentioned in our hand-out, social media includes blogs, social networks, wikis, forums, microblogging and content communities. New sites and technologies similar to the ones mentioned above are continuing to spring up everywhere on the Web. Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos recently introduced the "Kindle", an e-book device which may as well replace reading as we know it.
As I've shown you, dynamism practically defines Web 2.0. The Internet has become a hotbed of creativity. It is a plateau, a level playing field, a flattening of the world, if you will. Not only because of the technical architecture; but also through the norms it creates. The culture it brings about. The culture of participation, of democracy, as seen in social media. The culture of instant information gratification, whereby, thanks to hyperlinks, RSS, Wikipedia, and so on, we want information in bite-sized chunks, aided by videos and pictures if possible, and at our fingertips. The culture of constant innovation. In terms of communication, the Internet has satisfied our need for synchronisation - a vital element in all human face-to-face communication. An online community of people from different lands and timezones has come together in a dimension where time and space have negligible roles to play. We can speak on Skype to our friends and relatives overseas. We can chat with them instantly via MSN or Yahoo! Messenger. Thanks to message boards and forums, at any time of the day (or night), we are never alone in our love for things like cross-stitching or coin-collecting.
The future is tough to foretell, with so many changes happening so fast. The future does look quite bright when you look at the number of opportunities the Internet now presents us with. But there could be at least one possible obstacle to the innovation and creativity on the Internet. One underlying, taken-for-granted idea that we have in our society is the idea that "control is good". And that idea holds on the Internet too. For example, Google has bought Youtube, and Microsoft owns part of Facebook. The issue that this brings about is this: the Internet encourages creativity, but what are the limits to this creativity? Is creativity a synthesis of ideas from different sources or a totally original concept? Isaac Newton himself said of his brilliant creations: "If I have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." How do we create content without infringing on any copyright laws? How far should content be protected? What resources are free and what are controlled, and who decides this? What is responsible freedom of expression online? And what about our privacy? These are just a few of the questions we need to address as the Internet grows and realises its full potential in the future.
