Conversations from the cutting edge

Over the course of the day I have been attending the Metaverse U Conference in Second Life. In my previous blog post I stated that the key negative of virtual conferences is not being able to network; well I have to somewhat eat my words as I met a couple of very interesting people through the event. Katherine W. Prawl is a founder of one of the most amazing educational experiences in Second Life: the International Space Museum. It has received a huge amount of attention and deservedly so.. it is stunning.

She has also been around Second Life since 2005, and had some great things to share about the emerging new virtual technology. And then through Katherine I met Piet Hut, who is a Professor at the the Institute of Advanced Study. I started by asking Katherine why people would invest their time in Second Life..

Katherine: I think it’s because creating is fun; Humans are instinctively creative, and instinctive teachers. Those are probably two of the most frequently encountered activities here. Other than playing But that’s part of it, too

MB: When you say fun, what are your thoughts on this idea that Second Life (SL) is a game?

Katherine: Well, I don’t consider SL to be a game, unless life itself is a game. Some people do tend to treat life like that. There is an element of competition to it, so in that sense it’s game-like. But the competition is unstructured, just like in life. One might compete with the avatar next door over what your house looks like, or what your clothes are like. Just like in Real Life.

MB: what is the point of SL?

Katherine: To me, the point is that there is no intrinsic point. It’s what you want to make it, like real life

Piet: mostly, in the 80s email was the new big thing; in the 90s the web, in the 00s virtual worlds (VW), and SL is currently the biggest. If you ask: what is the point of email, or of the web, what to say? It is simply part of our life. Ten years from now, we will not be able to imagine how life was before VW.

MB: What can SL offer?

Katherine: What the Web promised — a Point of Presence. But in a VW, that presence can be interactive.

Piet: More than anything else, SL offers presence, co-presence with others. It appeals to our nervous system, evolved to function in 3D. 30,000 years ago, we started making cave paintings, 2D. And objects, graven images, 3D but non moving, and books, and other more abstract things. For the first time we are now back to the pre-literature and pre-artistic world, to experience 3D life and yet in an artistic way; the first time we can have our cake and eat it, after the Neanderthaler period.

Check out Katherine’s blog by clicking here.

More on Piet by clicking here.

Filed under Conversations from the cutting edge, Interesting People Interviews, Virtual Reality, Web 2.0 | |