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Task: Create an avatar in a 3D environment, spend time exploring a 3D environment whilst thinking about the role of identity in the virtual world. Keep a diary of at least 4 weeks of your experiences:

Week One:

The virtual environment i have decided to document and blog over the next 4 weeks is probably the most well known of the lot, Second Life. Second Life has been very well acknowledged over the past year by news and technology websites and journals, as well as a number of high profile companies including the local Nottingham based pharmaceutical company, Boots.

My choice to use Second Life was probably finalised once visiting the community's website. On my first visit to the website, www.secondlife.com, i was fairly impressed. The website displays a large quantity of screen shots showing the variety in avatar design, settings and potential things to do and explore whilst in the Second Life community.

The next stage is to install the application and get signed up. This took no time at all, the download and installation was very straight forward, and the same can be said for the sign up process. It was only when i got to the next stage i started to get a little less impressed.

During the sign up process your asked to choose a basic avatar which you will be then able to change in anyway in order to make it look like yourself. Given the choice of the bunch i felt that the fairly tall Caucasian male with longish brown hair probably would suite me best. Only problem was he was also wearing medieval boots and a cape. But I'm sure this can be changed :)

My initial avatar looked something like this:

As you can see, a little bit...old school?

OK, so we've got all the bases done and all there is to do now is make my avatar look a little bit like me, explore this sub-parallel pixelated world and think about the role of identity in this alternative environment.

When you first enter Second Life with your avatar you start off in a special area for novice user to help them understand the controls and functions.

In this novice section is where the majority of people start to customise their avatars. As did i, i thought best do it as most do (make it look like yourself) so i get the genuine Second Life experience - i think attempting to talk to people dressed as a 1300's vampire hunter might not go quite as expected. After figuring out how to change my clothing, Second Life uses a fairly complex menu-ing system, i applied fairly common clothing, slightly baggy jeans, a long sleeved t-shirt. My normal attire really...

Well...except for a few parts...

As you can see, a fairly normal clothing style, with err...the medieval boots and cape! I have tried many things to get rid of the cape, unfortunately it either wont let you, or the menu structure is so complicated it would require many hours to even get to grips with the basics.

Soon as i left the novice learning area i received a request to make 'Mahulu' my home area. Being a novice user i said yes. It was here i initially found one of the darker sides of Second Life.









Mahulu is an area of Second Life, created by users and can only be described as a haven for wannabe cyber-vampires. A strange concept i know. Below is an image from the inside of Mahulu:

As you can see from the picture, all the people in here have avatars dressed in gothic clothing, after hunting around a bit, i say hunting - i mean trying to escape, i even found a very pale avatar floating and requesting to bite me.

These people obviously enjoy the idea of vampires. However i feel that there maybe two different types of people in this area.

The first, the most harmless of the two - those who enjoy vampire related media, books, films etc are given the opportunity to live the lives of their heroes. Having told someone 20 years ago you wished to be a vampire might have caused some alarm bells to ring. You would probably have been a cause for concern. Despite this i believe that there are a number of reasons in modern culture why this behaviour might be considered almost normal. I think the recent increase in vampire films, and those in which vampires are given a positive form (ie Blade, Underworld, Queen of the Damned etc) have a lot to do with this. After all, someone running around a PC monitor dressed as Batman wouldn't be that strange...would it?

The second of the two types of people however i fear might be a cause for concern, especially if children can gain access to these parts of Second Life. To be honest, i was never asked to verify my age to gain access, this part of Second Life was shown to be when a mature content was turned on!

I believe that some people in the 'Mahulu' area of Second Life are not just living a super-hero type fantasy but are actually trying to live out a sexual fantasy. Now this is cause for concern. Allowing people to express there desires online, in my personal opinion, is fine. However i don't think enough is done to section this almost fetish related area from the business and educational features that can be achieved in Second Life. Evidence for this can be seen within moments of entering this area (and many others like it) by the language used by and directed to different users in that area.

After doing a bit of floating around, literally, in Second Life it is very evident that Mahulu is definitely nowhere near the only area with some potentially adult content. It is also very obvious it is by nowhere near the worse of those that do. After this slightly alarming few days discovering Second Life and have decided to give it a break for a few days. Will report back next week.


Week 2:

After last weeks introduction to Second Life and a slightly alarming examination of its user base i decided to go and have a look for landmarks and areas that may be familiar to me. I did a search for 'Nottingham' under place. This returned 1 result, and it wasn't Nottingham. It was a graphical re-construction of a market place from the 'Robin Hood' era of time. Even that wasn't very interesting.

After having a quick chat to a few colleagues it became evident that searching for different University areas were fairly easy to navigate to, so i gave that ago. When searching for Nottingham Trent University 0 results were provided. I'm not entirely sure i understand the search function as companies and organisations i was fairly sure had Second Life simulations weren't returning any results. Either way i did a search for the second closest Uni, Nottingham University. This did provide a result.

Below an image of my avatar exploring around Nottingham University:












The above shot was taken from inside a graphical representative of their main building, the Trent Building. Unfortunately, although expectantly, some areas of Nottingham University's area were restricted to students and staff on their University only. An image of me attempting to access the restricted part of Nottingham University's area below:

It is evident from this though that Nottingham University is using Second Life for more than just, well, experimenting with 3D environments. From what i could gather it seems that even fairly important documents are being transferred through Second Life. Another area sculpted on a beach was also used for students to save there work to electronically.

I'm not entirely sure how using Second Life to do this would be financially, securely or conveniently over a university's intranet site - like NTU's Now site. However I'm sure there is a reason for it, it may be for a more educational approach for some students.

Later this week i decided to try and find some more places i know. To be completely honest not many locations i searched provided many results, never mind areas i was permitted access too. During this fairly frustrating search function i did, almost by accident, figure out how to remove my medieval clothing accessories!




















Given my new slight obsession with DSLR photography i decided to look up Nikon, my favourite camera manufacturer. Surprisingly Second Life has a fairly comprehensive catalogue of Nikon related areas. The majority of which are fan bases and groups as opposed to physically explorable locations. However, there was one location which i decided to give a small visit too.

This Nikon area, I believe was fan based and not produced by the corporation, although i could be mistaken. The main clue i got that made me believe it was fan based was that all text throughout this area was written in Spanish (i think), which, as you may have guessed, isn't Nikon's country or origin. Despite the language issues (me not knowing Spanish), this part of Second Life could be used as a resource for education or camera fanatics. The main building on the Nikon site contains references as fact sheets for Nikon's breakthrough cameras throughout history. This shows a a real potential for Second Life as an information resource. When the technology used to operate Second Life improves (e.g. Internet speeds, graphic cards etc) this could be the next Wikipedia.

Below, an image of me in the Nikon area - now wearing a free Nikon t-shirt:

















Week 3:

Week 3 of 4 and I'm getting a bit bored if I'm honest. I've done a bit more exploring, and I've not found anything i really feel is worth reporting. And I'm pretty much at the end of patience in looking for excitement within it.

However i feel Second Life as a whole does deserve a general review. Personally, its not for me. At the moment anyway. Despite this i can see it's appeal for some people. I can also see why it could also be quite dangerous too.

In my personal opinion i believe that currently Second Life has limited uses. The uses it does have though could improve some peoples quality of life. After all, Second Life is a virtual role-play, whether you play yourself or an alter-ego. For some, an alter-ego is the closest they will ever get to a normal existence. I can see how being able to socialise without criticism or segregation from normal society is tempting to some. Especially those with physical health conditions. People that are bed struck or with very abnormal disfigured bodies may benefit from Second Life as it gives them some insight into living a normal life, from a social aspect at least.

Despite it's use for good and to help those that are unfortunate compared to most. I believe that there is risk that an over-use of Second Life may impair peoples real social skills. Mainly as it doesn't fully represent the true actions of most people and people may become accustom to their social methodology in Second Life and start using more of it their real life. A social methodology of a vampire is a worrying thought.

From a information and educational perspective i think Second Life has got a long way to go. I believe that it could be very effective for transmitting information in multiple forms. This would mean that text, film, audio and interactive based information could all be sourced at the same time. However i do feel that there are some website already that offer a similar experience, and these don't require you to sign up and run around with a little 3D avatar before you can gain access to it.

In conclusion i believe that Second Life has the capability to one day be used for all your online needs and requirements, however until they do so i feel that Second Life's cons probably do outweigh it's pros.