I am having a pretty horrible week, between receiving more bad news from a doctor about my continuing neck and shoulder pain, and stupidly getting myself into a single-vehicle car accident that has left me with a very badly dented rear bumper. But yes, despite these problems, I am still working on my OER textbook about the metaverse. Here’s a sample of chapter two, which is all about Second Life:
Here’s the text, in case you don’t want to squint at the screen capture above:
In many ways, this chapter is both the easiest and the hardest one to write for this entire book. It is the easiest to write, because of the nearly two decades of experience I have had in Second Life since I first set foot in the platform in March 2007. In that time, I have created and embodied a small army of avatars (as I mentioned in the Preface), built and furnished homes, explored other people’s creations, made friends and acquaintances from around the world, took part in fantasy and historical roleplay, and attended countless events, ranging from conferences to concerts. However, that same lived experience makes it harder for me to write about Second Life, because it makes it more difficult to step outside of my biases toward this virtual world, and look at SL from a detached, critical perspective.
What most casual observers don’t understand about Second Life, which has now been operating for over 23 years, is that it still exists, and that is still is a very profitable endeavour for Linden Lab, the company founded in 1999 by Philip Rosedale. Wagner James Au, in his book The Making of Second Life, writes memorably about those humble first days:
“Building the metaverse wasn’t even the company’s main goal when it began operations in 1999, in a warehouse on Linden Street, a narrow alley in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley. Like many parts of the city during the Internet’s first boom times, the street teetered between gentrification and drug-addled squalor. On one end of Linden were upscale restaurants serving the arrogant young mandarins of dot-com excess; on the other was an unattended parking lot with a clientele who often slept in their cars. Linden Lab’s immediate neighbors were wholly appropriate for the world that would eventually emerge from their servers: a dubiously grungy auto body garage and a fetish boutique.” (Au, 2008 p. 34)
I will probably continue to drop bits and pieces as I continue to write. Obviously, I won’t be posting to this blog as often as I used to, which is understandable. I just wanted to let you know that I’m still here.
P.S. Yes, I found and fixed the small typo in the screen capture, in the transcribed text!
