After hearing about Second Life for the first time this week I looked into this internet pseudo community, to truly gain a sense of what it entailed. I understood it as an online 'life' outside of the reality in our everyday lives. We can be who we want to be in regards to looks, lifestyle, career, etc. When I came acorss this video of Second Life, where people with accounts can be trained as firefighters, it really made me think. Do we find our satisfaction in life through the public sphere and abilities of the internet? Maybe when you were younger you always wanted to be a firefighter but your parents forced you into being a business student. Second Life not only gives you the ability to become a firefighter but see what training and hardwork it takes to be one. This notion of being able to create a second path for your life, is so beyond what I think anyone would have ever thought to achieve out of the internet. When we participate in such online programs as Second Life, we may be recreating a life that we hoped was ours. This social network is something that elminates all cultural boundaries of real life, and allows for the impossible to longer be impossible. We can eliminate the notion of boundaries that is so readily enforced in everyday life. Is this a positive use of the internet? Are there negative impacts to creating such an unrealistic life for oneself?
déjà vu
14 years ago
Oh Second Life, as someone who has played the game before... all I can say is that its not as dorky as it looks.
ReplyDeleteI believe that SL is a positive use of the internet. many people use the program to communicate to friends overseas, as least I do. I find it much better than sitting on MSN with them just talking. So why not go on SL build a character and randomly discover this virtual world.
I agree with you Second Life does give the player ability to be who they want to be, but only to an extent. On SL I never pretended to be something I wasn't. People I talked to on there knew I was a university student living in Canada, I never hid who I was.
Second Life is a weird thing, I guess actually playing it helps you understand it much better. So if you are looking to find more out about it, I'd say download it, try it out and if you don't like it then its not a big deal, just pressed uninstall.
I like the perspective of using Second Life to live out dreams that never seemed achievable. More than ever people have become less inclined to follow their creative intuition when searching out careers, most of the people who shied away from a path in the arts usually find themselves regretting it 10 years down the road.
ReplyDeleteMy only criticism of playing out this fantasy through the game is that I feel like it could lead to Second Life appropriating real life and ultimately taking priority over one's reality. I think that the more entangled people become with the game the more likely they are to lose their grip on reality, leading to a slew of social and financial problems.
I'm not sure if that's jumping ahead but it just seems like a path that has been taken far too often with video gamers.
Yes I agree that Second Life and programs like it can provide one with opportunities we never thought exisited. I think that its great for people who have missed out on an opportunity and feel as if this online world can help them get another stab at it. However, I also feel that it is a little dangerous to get wraped up in this fake world. People can forget all about their social lives and become obsessed with the internet, programs like Second Life. If people use it, they should create and maintain a balance.
ReplyDelete